As even a democracy like the United States has shown, waging war can benefit a leader in several ways: it can rally citizens around the flag, it can distract them from bleak economic times, and it can enrich a country's elites.

When I wake up in the morning, I think about Syria.

Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable.

'Acting as if...' I decided, ridiculously in retrospect, that my experience covering women's volleyball for my college newspaper was sufficient for me to at least try to become a war correspondent.

There is a convergence of crises that makes it challenging to keep the world's attention.

Democracies are expense-averse and they think in terms of short-term, political interests rather than a long-term interest in stability.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.