May 8, 2012  |   From Oct. 1, 1986, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is seen after a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting about Nicaragua with Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I. Photo by Cynthia Johnson//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images. Call it the curse of the chair of...

January 18, 2012  |   Omani fisherman in a harbor along the Strait of Hormuz. Photo by Marwan Naamani/AFP/Getty Images. In the salons of foreign policy wonks in Washington and New York, a fast and furious debate is raging over whether the United States...

January 3, 2012  |   The U.S. Capitol. Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images. As the weighty foreign policy journals weigh in with their year-end editions, there's a surprising result: far less about the implications of the Arab Spring and more about the economic and...

December 19, 2011  |   Former Czech President Vaclav Havel during a newspaper interview in Prague, Czech Republic, on Jan. 18, 2011. Photo by Photo by Lidove noviny/Ondrej Nemec/isifa/Getty Images. The man and his setting could not have been less prepossessing. That, in itself,...

December 9, 2011  |   British Prime Minister David Cameron. File photo by Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images. In one of their most famous clashes during World War II, Winston Churchill told Charles de Gaulle, "Each time [Britain] must choose between Europe and the open sea,...

November 18, 2011  |   Leader of the Popular party Mariano Rajoy at a campaign rally in Sevilla, Spain, on Thursday. Photo by Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images. The financial storm sweeping across Europe is about to claim another victim -- the Socialist government of Spain....

November 11, 2011  |   Soldiers return home to New York City, ca. 1919. Updated Nov. 11, 2011: Because their casualties from World War I so overwhelm those suffered by U.S. forces in their 20 months in the conflict, many European nations...

October 10, 2011  |   Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reacts to exit poll results of Sunday's parliamentary elections. Photo by Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images. Even in turbulent times, Polish voters have demonstrated that a not-too-bad economy beats a bad economy for an incumbent...

October 4, 2011  |   When I accompanied a group of editors and producers to Korea in November 2007, the big news was the pending final approval of a multi-billion free trade agreement between Washington and Seoul. Four years later, it is still pending. But...

September 29, 2011  |   There's little resemblance these days between politics in the South American nation of Venezuela and those of the United States -- except when it comes to dates. As U.S. Republican contenders slog through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina this...

September 7, 2011  |   It may feel unseemly to ask if any nation benefited from 9/11, but it is becoming increasingly clear that China has emerged far stronger since the attacks on the United States a decade ago. In the months right after 9/11,...

August 5, 2011  |   Photo of soldiers in Afghanistan by Getty Images. In the theater that is Washington, the new version of an old debate about defense spending may seem like phony drama, but there are also real issues behind the arguments. First...

July 12, 2011  |   Since the end of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian officials often have complained that the United States tends to treat their country with less respect and deference than a great power deserves. But that was the hardly the...

July 4, 2011  |   Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of Thai ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, celebrates her victory in Bangkok Sunday. Photo by AFP/Getty Images. Just a year ago, the pictures from the center of downtown Bangkok were of clashing demonstrators and soldiers; the shopping...

May 13, 2011  |   Taipei 101 towers over Taiwan's skyline. Photo by Flickr user tylerdurden1 "Rashomon" may be Japanese -- not Chinese -- theater, but the relationships between mainland China, Taiwan and United States often seem to resemble the film's portrayal of various...

May 12, 2011  |   Opposition Workers Party supporters celebrate after winning five Parliament seats in the May 8 election. During a trip to Singapore in January, one of my stops was at a local university journalism class. The professor was...

May 11, 2011  |   The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that thus far, he has seen no evidence that senior Pakistani officials knew of or abetted Osama bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and former FBI...

May 3, 2011  |   Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Canada might be heading for more polarized American-style politics after Monday's national election. The ruling Conservatives finally have a majority in parliament after five years of minority governments. Prime Minister Stephen...

April 28, 2011  |   There was a time, decades before royal weddings were televised spectacles to entertain vast audiences, that such unions really mattered in the destiny of nations and influenced the course of wars and diplomacy. As long as there have been...

April 18, 2011  |   True Finns' Timo Soini Tea Party-like politics may be arriving in Europe. That is how some European political analysts and commentators are interpreting the results of Sunday's parliamentary elections in the Scandinavian nation of Finland, where...

March 19, 2011  |   Of all the occupants of the lofty seventh-floor offices of the Secretary of State, perhaps none wanted to appear on the NewsHour more than Warren Christopher, whose death was announced Saturday morning. As secretary during President Clinton's first term, Christopher...

March 9, 2011  |   Gary Locke with President Obama Updated at 5:56 p.m. ET Gary Locke is on track to be the first Chinese-American -- and the first Asian American -- to become U.S. ambassador to Beijing, but what...

March 4, 2011  |   ROTC cadets in Princeton, N.J. Harvard and its graduates have made a lot of history since the college's founding in 1642. On Friday, Harvard made a bit more, when it formally welcomed the return of military...

February 25, 2011  |   Irish opposition leader Enda Kenny On Friday, Irish voters have a chance to punish the government so many of them blame for the country's massive economic woes. And they are expected to do so with a...

February 15, 2011  |   It used to take decades for academics to sort out revolutions. For instance, Crane Brinton's still-revered "Anatomy of a Revolution" was first published 20 years after the Russian Revolution and centuries after the French and...

February 10, 2011  |   Singapore merlion and towers Beyond the forests of tall buildings that dominate Singapore's skyline, a visitor can feel -- if not necessarily see -- the presence of China. A tiny city-state of nearly...

February 8, 2011  |   May 14, 1968: Armed police face a crowd of student demonstrators during the student riots at Paris. As analysts and pundits search for historical precedents to sort through the events in Cairo -- Iran in 1979...

December 15, 2010  |   A snowy Champs-de-Mars in Paris. PARIS | If you want to find a world capital in the Northern Hemisphere less ready than Washington to cope with a sudden snowstorm, try Paris. A record December snow (up...

November 19, 2010  |   Imagine if the leaders of the Confederacy had appeared on South Carolina Public Television in late 1860 to lay out plans for seceding from the Union and attacking Fort Sumpter. A peaceful version of that scenario may be playing out...

November 3, 2010  |   French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron exchange copies of treaty. At a moment when there's a growing consensus in Washington that U.S. defense dollars will level out or shrink, two of America's...

October 29, 2010  |   NATO leaders will convene next month in Portugal at a moment when NATO casualties in Afghanistan are rising and there are growing reports of corruption in Karzai's government. Recession-battered nations large and small are cutting their defense budgets, and...

October 11, 2010  |   Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache. Photo by Dieter Nagl/AFP/Getty Images A new maxim appears to be developing in politics from Central and Eastern Europe into Western Europe: the further down the economy goes, the further right go the politics....

October 8, 2010  |   It was only last spring, amid the Greek financial crisis and divisions among European Union nations on how to respond to it, that some voices of alarm arose about the future of the European common currency, the euro, and even...

October 1, 2010  |   The Cold War has been over for years, but its two capitals -- Washington and Moscow -- are going through similar political storms these days, both having managed to lose their mayors. The mayors, Yuri Luzhkov of Moscow, and...

September 27, 2010  |   The brothers Miliband: Ed and David (right) at the Labour party conference in England. Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Updated Oct. 4 Editor's Note: We have confirmed with his staff that Ed Miliband did indeed serve as an...

September 24, 2010  |   The president got the news on his cell phone of a successful anti-guerrilla raid while jogging through New York's Central Park. But the president was not Barack Obama learning of the latest U.S. special operation in Yemen or Pakistan. It...

September 22, 2010  |   President Obama may be doing more Asian diplomacy than he anticipated during Thursday's meetings at the United Nations General Assembly. He will be talking with the premiers of Japan and China -- who at the moment are not talking to...

September 15, 2010  |   Protests in France. Photo by Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images Perhaps it is "au revoir" to the good life. Why else would thousands of French men and women be on the streets protesting what seems like a small change in the...

September 8, 2010  |   When American politicians write their memoirs, the strongest emotion they normally evoke is a measure of sympathy for all the trees shredded to convey reams of turgid or evasive prose. Not so for their British counterparts, who settle scores,...

September 7, 2010  |   It took more than two weeks of horse trading to win the votes of independent members of parliament, but Australia now has a government with the narrowest of majorities. And that is an accurate reflection of the election last month...

September 1, 2010  |   It's been 20 months since Israelis and Palestinians sat down across a table with each other, and that has meant quiet times for the dozens of Middle East analysts and advocates in Washington's think tank world. But the Wednesday-Thursday meetings...

August 31, 2010  |   Europeans who could afford it this year are wrapping up their traditional month-long August holidays. But many of Europe's political leaders either scaled back or canceled their vacations, and few ventured far from their capitals. So much for a European...

August 24, 2010  |   A new uproar has developed in South Africa over proposals by the governing African National Congress to impose curbs on that country's dynamic and freewheeling press. Two legislative proposals have drawn criticism not only from local and foreign journalists, but...

August 23, 2010  |   Australia's voters have proven again the wisdom of ancient dramatists who warned that regicide can be the most dangerous of political acts. Julia Gillard, who came to power two months ago, ousting sitting Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, is hanging...

August 19, 2010  |   If you think politics is a bare knuckles sport in this country, try Australia, where the brawling inside the major parties can be more intense than the contests between them. This weekend's national elections are proving the point again. The...

August 11, 2010  |   In two major national magazines this week, there are simultaneous articles on the confrontation between Israel and Iran over the latter's probable development of nuclear weapons. The articles in The Atlantic and The New Yorker are written from two...

July 22, 2010  |   Eleven years ago, the United States and its NATO allies were bombing the Balkan nation of Serbia in a campaign to protect ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. On Thursday, the International Court of Justice ruled that Kosovo's declaration...

June 18, 2010  |   Former France Libre members salute Charles deGaulle's grave. Photo by Francois Nascimbeni/AFP/Getty Images A small radio studio in London came back to life Friday, 70 years after it was the venue for lighting the flame of resistance in Nazi-conquered...

February 4, 2010  |   For all its much noted nightlife, Bangkok seems to be a city of many early risers. In the pre-dawn hours, street vendors begin hauling out the carts that will dispense breakfast, lunch and dinner -- soups, stir-fried vegetables, noodles,...

December 31, 2009  |   As 2009 winds down, NewsHour foreign affairs editor Michael Mosettig looks back at a defining moment of the decade. Friday, Sept. 7, 2001 | The NewsHour gained and broadcast an exclusive television interview with Mexico's President Vicente Fox, who...