John Andrews

Foreign critics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan deride him as a quasi-dictatorial megalomaniac. But Erdogan—who was Turkey’s prime minister for 11 years before being elected president in 2014—is now a reckless gambler, too.

What will constitute yet another act of war in the Middle East? On May 12, four oil tankers in the Gulf—two of them Saudi Arabian, one from the United Arab Emirates, and the other Norwegian—were attacked with explosives as they lay at anchor near the Strait of Hormuz.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.” George Santayana's dictum seems particularly appropriate nowadays, with the Arab world, from Syria and Iraq to Yemen and Libya, a cauldron of violence; Afghanistan locked in combat with the Taliban; swaths of central Africa cursed by bloody competition – often along