Joel Brinkley

Ten years ago this month, President George W. Bush climbed confidently from the cockpit of a fighter jet that had landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln flight deck. He strode to the microphone and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq....

President Ma Ying-jeou sat at the head of large conference table in his presidential office, and inscribed on the wall behind him was the name of his nation: Republic of China. Beside that, in parentheses and smaller letters, was acknowledgment that he...

If you're looking for someone to loathe, I have a strong candidate to offer: Richard Falk, the United Nations Human Rights Council's "special rapporteur" for the Palestinians. Falk has pursued a long and, shall I say, controversial career since he...

WARSAW, Poland -- Simcha Rotem was stooped, his head bowed showing tiny wisps of white hair as he stood at a podium between two black menorahs spewing towering gas flames. Behind him a new, 40-foot-tall black stone frieze showed armed guerilla fighters,...

A plague of locusts swept through Egypt a few weeks ago, an estimated 30 million of the critters. Egyptian officials tried to downplay the phenomenon, hoping to quash any biblical analogies. They noted that locust swarms show up in the spring every now...

Just a few months ago, on New Year's Day, North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, gave a televised speech to the nation calling for reconciliation with the South. "The past records of inter-Korean relations," he intoned, "show that confrontation between...

On his first foreign foray as China's new president, Xi Jinping visited Russia and then Tanzania, two countries with which China has frosty relations at best. "China and Russia, as the biggest neighbors of each other, share many commonalities," Xi...

President Obama's makeup visit to Israel was a great success, by most measures, but don't expect peace between Israelis and Palestinians anytime soon -- despite Obama's ringing call for it. Relations between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin...

Just outside President Goodluck Jonathan's office sat 17 ambulances, just in case he or one of his aides fell ill. They were seldom if ever used. No actual health-care facility nationwide had as many, and in fact a few still have none at all. But as soon...

The forgotten war has just turned 10 years old, but of course almost no one took notice. Since early 2003, at least 300,000 people have been killed. More than 2 million others have been forced from their homes. And day by day, even now, the problems...

Here come those dastardly dams! In Asia, Africa and the Middle East, nations are aggressively building new hydroelectric dams, seemingly heedless of the potentially disastrous effects on the countries downstream. As examples, Laos broke ground on a...

Syria is fast becoming the new Somalia -- a nation whose central government wields little control over the bulk of the country while feuding sects and gangs fight each other as well as the thoroughly discredited president, Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile,...