A great deal of the foreign affairs commentariat's focus over the last few days has been on Obama's Middle East tour. The four-day political vacation has been heralded by the White House as an important intervention at this early point in Obama's second term, and clearly marking out his renewed...

A spectre has been haunting US diplomats for the past month; the spectre of a hawkish Japan, tired of playing its role as a subservient geisha to Washington's soft political power games with Beijing, and seeking to carve out its own intransigent niche in East Asia geopolitics.

And the White...

I'd like to begin with a point of clarification. When I previously wrote in defence of dangerous thought, I should have laid out a caveat that distinguished between the sort of thought that outlines and calls for positive change, and the sort that is downright offensive. I was...

The UK commentariat loves a good old witch hunt. Just look at yesterday's Twitter activity when Philip Gould's passing became public knowledge. The deep divisions of opinion are marked; yet both left and right became united in their open hate, with calls for Gould to be forgotten coming as quick...