It should be no surprise, I write today, that American officials desperately working to stave off military defeat and political collapse in Afghanistan find themselves cutting dirty deals with nasty people—like Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai. In Afghanistan,  a country that’s been involved in chaotic civil and international conflicts for thirty years, the people […]

There’s a beautiful kilim on the blogging room floor here at the stately Mead manor in Jackson Heights; I bought it in Peshawar about three years ago when I was giving a series of lectures on American foreign policy across Pakistan.  I couldn’t buy it in the market; the security situation in Peshawar was so […]

Sam Ayres, the official intern here at Team Mead, is turning 23 years old today. In lieu of an actual gift, which would only turn his attention to material things and away from the intangible rewards of interning, I’m posting our first Occasional Poem in his honor: a sonnet that John Milton wrote on his […]

Apologies to all who are checking this space, but posting has been slow for the last few days, and will be slow for at least a couple more.  Whether it’s the flu formerly known as swine or something even less glamorous, a virus of some kind is sweeping through Mead Global HQ.  I will spare […]

Well, not man-eating exactly and a giant only in relative terms, but this 4.7 inch spider is definitely more Shelob than Charlotte’s Web.  This BBC story tells the whole ghastly tale; my appetite for nighttime bush walks in Maputaland and Madagascar has suddenly diminished.I’m less surprised by the discovery of some new creepy crawly creature […]

Giving advice to the rising generation is always fun and sometimes even useful.  The most interesting piece of advice I ever heard was from a woman working as an American diplomat in Beirut.  My research associate was traveling with me at the time—healthy, single and in his early twenties, he was clearly itching to explore […]

I was a little surprised to read on the BBC website that the world’s temperature appears to have fallen over the last ten years and that the debate among scientists has shifted from whether this global cooling is happening to why – and to what, if anything, global cooling means.Frankly, I don’t have a clue.  […]

You could say that we began going wobbly over Afghanistan in March, when the much-heralded new strategy embodied the best nation-building aspirations, but did not quite add up to a renewed declaration of war. There are good reasons too. It is a huge leap from calculating how much we can afford to lose to trying […]

“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,” as Herman Melville summed up the whaler’s version of the Fourth Commandment (for most Protestants and Jews; it’s Number Three for Roman Catholics), “And on the seventh the same, and holystone the cable.”In that spirit, I’m posting a God-blog today, then it’s off to […]

Yesterday was one of those days when the phone calls don’t stop and halfway through the day I learned that I would be on the PBS Newshour with my old friend and sparring partner Zbigniew Brzezinski. Not having worn a national-TV worthy tie into the office that morning, I needed help, fast.Fortunately Lauren Gottlieb, my […]