It’s a truism of Washington scandals that it’s not the initial actions that lead to legal disaster, but the attempt to cover them up. It’s possible that is the case with Friday’s indictment of former national security adviser Michael Flynn -- and in the broader investigation of the Trump team’s contacts with Russia. But there is much we still do not know.　This sweater has been unraveling from a thin initial thread. When I reported on Jan. 12 the phone calls between Flynn and Russian Ambassador S

The friendly words exchanged between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping this month softened the edge of a Chinese economic and military buildup that a recent study commissioned by the Pentagon described as “perhaps the most ambitious grand strategy undertaken by a single nation-state in modern times.”At the Beijing summit on Nov. 9, Xi repeated his usual congenial injunction for “win-win cooperation,” and Trump responded in kind, calling Xi “a very special man.” Trump also complained about the Chin

Amid the slithering mess of problems that emerged in 2017, the one that bothers me most is that people don’t seem to know what’s true anymore. “Facts” this year got put in quotation marks.　All the other political difficulties of the Donald Trump era are subsumed in this one. If we aren’t sure what’s true, how can we act to make things better? If we don’t know where we are on the map, how do we know which way to move? Democracy assumes a well-informed citizenry that argues about solutions -- not

A funny thing happened to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on the way to the exit door: He didn’t leave. He may be “Dead Man Walking,” as many Washington analysts assume. Yet he’s still pursuing the same list of quiet but mostly correct diplomatic goals as when he took the job 10 months ago.　Tillerson has had a catastrophically bad encounter with official Washington. The White House disdains him; the State Department resents him; the press corps mostly scorns him. Tillerson presses on as if he d

Nearly two weeks after the double political explosion that rocked Riyadh, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to be doing damage control in ways that may help stabilize Saudi Arabia and the region.　The first bombshell was the Nov. 4 arrest on corruption charges of 201 prominent Saudis, including princes and government ministers. Now MBS, as the 32-year-old crown prince is known, is beginning a resolution process that may settle many of these cases out of court.　A senior Saudi official told

As President Trump ends his Asia trip, he might sum up the 12-day journey with a revision of the remark attributed to Julius Caesar: Veni, vidi, blandivi. I came, I saw, I flattered.　Trump’s trip was closer to a pilgrimage than a projection of power. The president rarely explained details of US policy. Instead, he mostly asked other leaders for help, lauded their virtues, and embraced their worldviews.　Along the adulation tour, Trump spoke of his “really extraordinary” relationship with Japanese

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is being held by Saudi authorities under what Lebanese sources say amounts to house arrest in Riyadh, apparently as part of the Saudi campaign to squeeze Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.　A startling account of Hariri’s forced detention was provided Friday by knowledgeable sources in Beirut. It offers important new evidence of the tactics used by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to bolster his rule by mobilizing anti-Iran sentiment at home an

Has there ever been a covert action that backfired as disastrously as Russia’s attempt to meddle in the 2016 US presidential campaign?Granted, we know all the reasons Moscow is gloating: Donald Trump is president; America is divided and confused; Russia’s propagandization of “fake news” is now repeated by people around the world as evidence that nothing is believable and all information is (as in Russia) manipulated and mendacious.　But against this cynical strategy there now stands a process emb

Russia’s cybermeddling in the 2016 US presidential election has been accompanied by what US and European experts describe as a worrisome Kremlin campaign to rewrite the rules for global cyberspace.　A draft of a Russian proposal for a new “United Nations Convention on Cooperation in Combating Information Crimes” was recently shown to me by a security expert who obtained a copy. The 54-page document includes 72 proposed articles, covering collection of internet traffic by authorities, “codes of co

Looking at photographs of the ruined, desolate streets of what was once the Islamic State group’s capital of Raqqa is a reminder of the overwhelming, pitilessly effective military power of the United States.Perhaps it’s a tribute to the inevitable nature of American force, once it‘s engaged, that the fall of Raqqa this week provoked so little public discussion. Commentators focused on whether President Trump had dissed the parents of America’s fallen warriors, but they barely seemed to notice th

As President Trump prepares to head to Asia next month for his most important overseas trip yet, foreign intelligence services are undoubtedly trying to assemble personality profiles to explain this unconventional, risk-taking, domineering president to the leaders he will meet. How will they describe Trump? Probably not with the same hyperbole we sometimes use in our daily news commentary. Foreign governments aren’t as easily shocked or offended as journalists. They‘re used to bullying autocrats

Critics have complained about US President Trump’s bombast on foreign policy, but some GOP insiders worry about a less visible problem -- a hollowed-out bureaucracy that has been slow to develop and implement strategy.Skeptics say that on major issues -- Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Russia -- the Trump administration hasn’t explained clear, systematic plans for achieving results. Even where there seems to be a coherent diplomatic strategy, as on North Korea, the president often undercuts it w

Various cultures have different phrases for expressing the idea of having it both ways at once. “To take a swim and not get wet” is an Albanian proverb. Poles talk about “having the cookie and eating it.” Iranians want “both God and the sugar dates.”The Trump administration has been weighing a contemporary geopolitical version of this straddle. Hard-liners have been urging the president next week to decertify the Iran nuclear agreement but insist that he wants to strengthen the deal, not break i

Top US officials have said repeatedly that America is seeking a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis with North Korea. But President Trump‘s insulting comments toward North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appear to have made such a negotiated settlement more difficult.In the chaotic government-by-Twitter atmosphere of the Trump administration, no senior leader has publicly questioned whether the president’s trash talk about “Rocket Man” and his threat to “totally destroy” North Korea have undermi

The Trump administration often talks about North Korea policy as if it’s an on-off switch. President Trump thundered Tuesday that the US will “totally destroy” North Korea to defend itself and its allies. But Defense Secretary James Mattis blandly insisted the next day that it’s “still a diplomatically led effort.”Somewhere in this maze of public statements-including Thursday’s announcement of new economic sanctions on North Korea -- there’s a nuanced American policy. But the seeming binary opti

When you discount the rhetorical overkill, the most surprising thing about Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations Tuesday was how conventional it was. He supported human rights and democracy; he opposed rogue regimes; he espoused a global community of strong, sovereign nations. Pretty shocking stuff.Because he’s Trump, the zingers got the headlines: He repeated his childish, snarky (but sort of funny) playground denunciation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “Rocket Man is on a suicide m

The Trump administration, already struggling with a big nuclear problem in North Korea, is about to raise another one by questioning the implementation of the nuclear agreement with Iran.A senior administration official said that President Trump will share his concerns about Iranian compliance with global leaders gathering next week for the United Nations General Assembly. The official said Trump wants tighter inspection of Iranian facilities and a re-examination of the “sunset clause” that woul

How can news organizations avoid the trap that President Trump has laid for them in his attacks on the media as a one-sided “opposition party” that caters to anti-Trump elites and purveys “fake news” to readers and viewers?Part of the answer is simply for journalists to keep doing their jobs, aggressively and fairly. We’re not in the business of making friends, but of holding powerful people and institutions accountable. And ultimately, it’s only this feisty, independent voice that will preserve

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has often been the silent man in Trump’s foreign policy team. But out of the spotlight, he appears to be crafting a broad strategy aimed at working with China to resolve the North Korea crisis and with Russia to stabilize Syria and Ukraine.The Tillerson approach focuses on personal diplomacy, in direct contacts with Chinese and Russian leaders, and through private channels to North Korea. His core strategic assumption is that if the US can subtly manage its relat

When today’s historians look at the confrontation between the United States and North Korea, they’re likely to hear echoes of ultimatums, bluffs and botched messages that accompanied conflicts of the past, often with catastrophic consequences. “The one thing that’s certain when you choose war as a policy is that you don’t know how it will end,” says Mark Stoler, a diplomatic and military historian at the University of Vermont. This fog of uncertainty should be a caution for policymakers now in d