ForeignPolicy.com

If the southern Afghan province of Helmand were a country it would be the world's leading producer of opium and its derivative, heroin. More than half the world's heroin originates here--much of it destined for the veins of junkies living in Europe.

In June 2005, U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials and Afghan police raided the office of Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, the governor of Helmand, and found nine tons of opium in his office. He is no longer the governor.

Paul Wolfowitz's provocative critique of foreign policy realism has several key flaws. Most importantly, he sets up an artificial and contrived version of realist thought and fails to engage the problem of positive and negative variations in America's stock of power.  

Peter Bergen has taken issue with me on whether the danger of a "safe haven" for al Qaeda justifies an open-ended US commitment in Afghanistan, ...

During the 1980s covert campaign against the Soviets, Pakistan's General Zia ul-Haq told CIA Director William Casey that being an ally of the United States was like living on the banks of a major river—"The soil is wonderfully fertile, but every four or eight years the river changes course and you may find yourself alone in the desert." Since then, Pakistan has remained cognizant of Zia's warning and insulated itself from fully allying with the United States.

This Google Earth image of a mysterious building in Northern Burma posted by the New America Foundation's Jeffrey Lewis on the Arms Control Wonk blog has ...

The United States and China have more in common than their paramount importance in the global economy. The citizens of both countries share the same basic complaint: bad healthcare. As the White House prepares to roll out its plan to overhaul the United States' woefully inadequate health insurance system, it may be instructive to look across the Pacific, where an even more ambitious effort is underway to give access to healthcare to the millions left behind by China's rapid economic… more

The panel featured Daniel Levy and Amjad Attallah of New America, Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and Rob Malley of the International Crisis Group. Listening to the panel, talking to Levy and Malley afterwards, and reflecting on the way ...

President Obama's special peace envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, is just wrapping up his latest visit to the Middle East. It's his third trip since being appointed and this time in addition to Israel, the West Bank, and Egypt, included Saudi Arabia and North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria), with an emphasis on a comprehensive regional peace, building on the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. (Mitchell has yet to visit Damascus or Beirut, something unlikely to take place until after… more

These are rough days for Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan’s president is beset on all sides by critical U.S. politicians and pundits, a hostile judicial establishment, a resurgent al Qaeda, and an increasingly militant religious extremist wing. Smelling weakness, two ambitious former prime ministers, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, are plotting their triumphant returns from exile. Musharraf may finally be running out of options. Speculation is rampant that he may soon have no choice but to take off his military uniform and… more