Back in the early 1980s, when Poland was frozen under martial law and Czechoslovakia, as it was then still called, suffered under one of the stupidest of all of communist regimes, the Polish dissidents and the Czech dissidents resolved to have a meeting. By separate routes, they made their way to their mutual border, high [...]

LONDON - As I write, men in expensive suits are sitting in slick offices all around me, talking on the phone to Almaty and Bangalore, swapping bonds and oil wells.

All political careers end in failure, a British politician once said. Even so, politicians rarely fail as spectacularly as did Silvio Berlusconi, who at long last resigned Saturday night, to the cheers of his countrymen (“la commedia è finita!” writes an Italian friend) and the approval of stock markets around the world.

My friend J grew up in Chicago, but spent his summers in a small town on a Michigan lake. His family, because they came from the city and because they were “summer” visitors, were slightly more privileged than those who lived in the town. Nevertheless, the town considered itself “middle class” and the children observed [...]

BENGHAZI, Libya - Young men in fatigues hang around outside the offices of the Transitional National Council, carrying rifles and flashing V (for victory) signs at visitors. Inside, older men in leather jackets sit on sofas drinking tea, while temporary officials cope with clashing appointments and race up and down the hallways. It’s just how one [...]

On paper, it isn’t easy to reproduce the oddity of the Occupy the London Stock Exchange rally that took place on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral last weekend. It’s all very British — people are cooking pots of porridge on the sidewalk — yet reverent homage is being paid to the original Occupy Wall [...]

NYAMATA, Rwanda - The white altar cloth in the Catholic Church of Nyamata is still stained brown with blood. Shoes, dresses and trousers worn by families massacred within the sanctuary lie, gently decaying, atop the pews. The hole in the church’s iron door, blown open years ago by a grenade, will never be repaired: The Catholic [...]

The Libyan adventure shows a dwindling capacity for intervention After Muammar Gaddafi and his ghastly children fled Tripoli, Libyans desecrated his statues and stamped on his posters. As it turned out, the Libyans really did hate Gaddafi enough to rise up, arm themselves and overthrow him. Gaddafi’s own elite units mostly melted away when the [...]

On Sept. 11, 2001, the post-Cold War era that had begun so euphorically on Nov. 9, 1989, came to an abrupt end. The “long decade” that stretched from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the World Trade Center was marked by military spending cuts, domestic political scandals and a general sense [...]

Finally, the Libyan revolution is ending the way it was supposed to. “A few sharp victories, some conspicuous acts of personal bravery on the Patriot side and a colorful entry into the capital,” as Evelyn Waugh would have put it. That was the Western policy for the war — except that the war went on [...]