Jamie Dettmer

Author Archive

  • Nov 1, 2024
    Dazed and exhausted, a Lebanese Shiite mother of four gestures to her baby bump — her fifth child is weeks away from arriving
  • Oct 28, 2024
    One of the country’s biggest exasperations is Western policymakers trying to strong-arm them into hasty political reform.  
  • Oct 18, 2024
    The account might be settled with the Hamas leader, the debt paid — but the war is not over. This is just the beginning of the end.  
  • Oct 15, 2024
    Even staunch Lebanese opponents of Hezbollah, who have long hoped to see the back of Iran’s most important regional ally, are recoiling at a military campaign that’s...
  • Oct 8, 2024
    Lebanon could well turn into a quagmire for Israel, and its belief that it can achieve “total victory” is premature. However, there can be no doubt that Iran and...
  • Sep 26, 2024
    “If Hezbollah didn’t get the message, I promise you, it will get the message,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday.  
  • Sep 21, 2024
    Some of Ukraine’s top army commanders questioned the cross-border assault into Russia, Ukrainian military officials tell POLITICO.  
  • Sep 13, 2024
    “Moving the chairs around.” That was a senior Ukrainian official’s take on the cabinet shake-up announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last...
  • Sep 3, 2024
    Every generation in a democratic country has had to decide the right balance between individual liberty, national security and community wellbeing.  
  • Aug 27, 2024
    The late American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, broker of the 1995 Dayton Accords ending the Bosnian War, used to say that warring parties will only strike a peace deal when both are...
  • Aug 20, 2024
    As Ukraine awaits a response to its Kursk invasion, the Russian leader is once again demonstrating he has an adversity problem.  
  • Jun 28, 2024
    Putin was going to do whatever he wanted regardless of what NATO and the EU did or didn’t do — he would have just come up with another excuse to make war, another great...
  • May 31, 2024
    Decades before the crack of two pistol shots in Sarajevo plunged the Continent into World War I, Otto von Bismarck famously predicted it would be “Some damn fool thing in the...
  • May 4, 2024
    As Ukraine struggles to contain the opening moves of an expected Russian offensive in the country’s east, there are again mutterings in some diplomatic quarters about the need...
  • Apr 24, 2024
    Ukraine’s leaders breathed a hearty sigh of relief when news broke that the U.S. House of Representatives finally, after six months of stalling and wrangling, approved...
  • Apr 17, 2024
    Just ask a Ukrainian soldier if he still believes the West will stand by Kyiv “for as long as it takes.” That pledge rings hollow when it’s been four...
  • Apr 3, 2024
    According to high-ranking Ukrainian officers, the military picture is grim and Russian generals could find success wherever they decide to focus their upcoming offensive.  
  • Mar 27, 2024
    Don’t think that social media memes and clever stunts will topple Putin. Only a defeat in Ukraine can do that.  
  • Mar 25, 2024
    The echo of gunfire and grenade blasts had hardly subsided on Friday before Russian and Ukrainian officials started trading accusations, blaming each other for the massacre at a...
  • Mar 4, 2024
    The first strike in Israel’s campaign to hunt down those responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks is likely to have already taken place.  
  • Feb 26, 2024
    Stuck in a “grin & bear period it” period, the country’s now facing a Russia that’s organized for protracted war and a West that isn’t.  
  • Feb 21, 2024
    The sad truth is the absence of any serious mass opposition to Putin inside Russia — let alone to his war in Ukraine — speaks volumes.  
  • Feb 8, 2024
    Nineteenth-century Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle believed that “The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.” But it isn’t always...
  • Feb 5, 2024
    U.S. President Joe Biden is getting drawn into a game of whack-a-mole eagerly engineered by Iran.