Clifford D. May

Is America prepared for a catastrophic cyberattack?

Attacks intended to shut down financial systems, electricity, water supplies, transportation, communications -- perhaps even the entire U.S. economy could happen. What's the plan?

January 26, 2021

The many reasons Biden should not enrich Iran’s rulers

Tehran sponsors Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and other countries, Shia militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

January 19, 2021

Biden must heal the nation and show world adversaries a unified America

What a marvelous time to be America's enemy! Despots, dictators and other assorted villains are gloating.

January 12, 2021

Europe capitulates to China’s rulers

The challenges facing what we used to call, with pride and confidence, the Free World are daunting. Illiberal authoritarians of various stripes are increasingly assertive and audacious.

January 5, 2021

Islamic Revolution 101: Ambitious Iranian theocrats seizing power still widely misunderstood

In early 1979, I was sent to Iran to report on the rebellion then underway. I was woefully ignorant of Iranian history, politics and theology.

December 29, 2020

Will Biden learn from Trump and keep making America secure again

"Build Back Better" was Joe Biden's campaign slogan. How different is that, really, from "Make America Great Again"? Both BBB and MAGA suggest the need for restoration, for reversing deterioration and decline, for fixing what's broken.

December 22, 2020

We can’t predict what Biden’s foreign policy advisers will advise

We are now in that quadrennial season when Washington wonks spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to divine the policies of the next administration based on the individuals named as presidential advisers.

December 15, 2020

The forgotten refugees of the Middle East

How much does the average Palestinian know about the Jewish refugees from Arab countries? My guess: very little.

December 8, 2020

The Cold War with China has begun

China has been waging a Cold War against America for years. The current administration has recognized that reality.

December 1, 2020

Abu Muhammad al-Masri’s assassination exposes relations between Tehran and al Qaeda

The assassins were professionals and they had planned carefully. On Aug. 7, 2020, around 9 o'clock on a warm evening, they rode a motorcycle down a street in Pasdaran, a well-off Tehran neighborhood.

November 24, 2020

U.N. and other international organizations hijacked by despots

With the defeat of the Axis Power in 1945, the United States emerged as the strongest military, economic and cultural power on earth.

November 17, 2020

The death threat to free speech in France

How consequential will it be if the French acquiesce, agreeing to carve out an exception to free speech in deference to Islamists? Very.

November 10, 2020

Charting Natan Sharansky’s journeys: From prison to politics to an exodus from Africa

Natan Sharansky was born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky in 1948 in Stalino, a grimy Ukrainian coal town renamed Donetsk following the death of the second Soviet dictator in 1953.

November 3, 2020

Chinese Communist Party seeks nothing less than global domination

Mr. Xi is pursuing not global leadership but global domination. His intention is to build a new illiberal international order, one with rules made in China, for China and enforced by China.

October 20, 2020

How Russia and China weaponize technology to manipulate the masses

Tyrants have learned to use high technology to spread disinformation while, in totalitarian countries, censors have become adept at repressing truthful information they find inconvenient.

October 13, 2020

Gen. H.R. McMaster on the urgent need for ‘strategic competence’

There was a simplicity to the Cold War. Free peoples, and those who aspired to that status, were threatened by communism, a totalitarian ideology aggressively propagated by the Soviet Union, an expansionist empire.

October 6, 2020

After Abraham Accords, time to look at Palestinian-Israeli conflict with fresh eyes

Before there was a Palestinian-Israeli conflict, there was an Arab-Israeli conflict. Last week, on the White House lawn, that older conflict was put to rest.

September 22, 2020

At 75, the U.N. General Assembly in need of reform

The 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly is underway. Publicists are calling it "historic." I suspect you're thinking: Is this exciting or what?

September 15, 2020

Stopping jihadists is a mission worth discussing during presidential election

The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington were a wakeup call. They led a low-intensity armed conflict that, 19 years later, remains inconclusive.

September 8, 2020

Battle for Belarus: Former Soviet republic struggles to become a real republic

It was once thought probable, if not inevitable, that from the ashes of the U.S.S.R. would arise liberal democracies. But few Soviet republics have become real republics.

September 1, 2020