Two new books lament the outsized role of the military in Israeli national security decisionmaking, blaming the generals for favoring force over diplomacy.

The United States' approach to counterinsurgency, championed by General David Petraeus, helped produce stunning results in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan.

If there's one indisputable fact about this most polarizing of figures, it's that he is hard to get rid of -- and every retreat, even his most recent withdrawal from political life, lays the groundwork for an eventual counterattack.

Halting Iran's progress toward a bomb will require the United States to make credible promises and credible threats simultaneously -- an exceedingly difficult trick to pull off.

The mood in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Dohuk -- the three largest cities in Iraqi Kurdistan -- is newly buoyant these days, and with good reason.

Israeli authorities in the West Bank have long worried about stopping Palestinian terrorism.

A nuclear-armed Iran would not make the Middle East more secure, argues Colin Kahl; it would yield more terrorism and pose a risk of a nuclear exchange.

Debates about the possibility of containing a nuclear Iran often hinge on judgments of whether the regime there is rational. But as a wealth of recently released Iraqi documents about Saddam Hussein's tumultuous reign in Iraq show, even an arguably rational leader can be unreasonable -- and very hard to deter.

Iraq is hardly the failed state that Ned Parker portrayed in these pages, argues Antony Blinken, the U.S. vice president's national security adviser. Norman Ricklefs sees Iraq's politics becoming more moderate and less sectarian. Parker replies that despite these improvements, Baghdad still violates human rights and ignores the rule of law.

When it comes to Iran's nuclear program, then, the United States and its allies should get out of the way and let Iran's worst enemies -- its own leaders -- gum up the process on their own.

Throughout 2011, a rhythmic chant echoed across the Arab lands: "The people want to topple the regime."

Nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become something close to a failed state.

Opponents of military action against Iran assume a U.S. military strike would be far more dangerous than simply letting Tehran build a bomb. Not so, argues this former Pentagon defense planner. With a carefully designed strike, Washington could mitigate the costs—or at least bring them down to a bearable level—and spare the region and the world from an unacceptable threat.

A pair of recent articles in this magazine highlighted two sides of Israel's current dilemma: the country does need to end the occupation, but Israelis also remain deeply skeptical of Palestinian intentions, and with good reason. Only one thing will break the paralysis of the Israeli center: if the Palestinians accept Israel's basic legitimacy.

Peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have failed miserably.

The greatest danger to Israel comes not from without—in the form of Palestinian intransigence—but from within.

Israeli settlements—and the military occupation needed to defend them—present a central obstacle to peace and to the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

No state with serious oil wealth has ever transformed into a democracy.

European leaders feel they have a right and duty to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Palestinian plan to ask the UN for statehood in September has provoked intense anxiety in Jerusalem and Washington.