I am sharing my recent testimony on the role of Russia and China in Venezuela, to the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. The testimony is available at the website of the Subcommittee for the Western Hemisphere at http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA07/20170913/106398/HHRG-115-FA07-Wst....

Here is my essay on the Foreign Affairs website on how Trump was forced to back down on his plan to withdraw from KORUS—at least for now.

I am sharing my latest work on security challenges in Trinidad and Tobago, based on interviews with security experts in the country during my recent trip to Port of Spain. This report originally appeared in Global Americans.

From August 24-31, 2017, I had the opportunity to travel to Trinidad and Tobago, just off the north coast of South America, to speak with defense and security experts regarding the challenges facing their country and the work of the government to confront them.

This report was originally published by Military Review.

There has been much discussion about China’s GDP surpassing the US. Less attention has been paid to forecasts that India will become not only the most populous nation in the world by 2025, but that by 2050 the size of the Indian economy will also surpass the United States.

It was an eventful July 4th weekend in the Land of Lincoln. The Illinois Senate over-rode Governor Bruce Rauner’s veto to pass its first state budget in over two years. This was the longest state budget impasse in the nation since the Great Depression.
 
Meanwhile, the mean streets of Chicago remained mean. The City recorded 15 homicides during the holiday weekend and over 100 shootings. Although down slightly, Chicago is on pace to record over 700 murders in 2017.
 

Republicans know that the terrain for next year’s midterm elections could be treacherous.  Off the record, they bemoan their inability to enact their agenda and mourn President Donald Trump’s unpopularity.  In principle, the GOP still might get its act together and pass a tax reform with new tax breaks for middle class taxpayers.  Events unforeseen and unimagined could offer Trump a platform to renew his poplar appeal.  Even so, they’re ignoring the signs that a sagging economy next year will dominate the 2018 campaigns.

While the rest of the world is preoccupied with the now familiar crises in the MENA region (refugees, the Syrian civil war, Yemen) the newly reelected president of Iran appears to be making determined moves to shift Iran’s economy from dependence upon energy resources to reliance on taxation revenues.