Outside the Beltway

After more than three decades, the men and women held hostage in Iran for 444 days will receive at least some compensation.

Donald Trump displays some appalling ignorance about an important part of America’s military, but his supporters are unlikely to care.

Marine Le Pen suffered setbacks in the second round of regional voting on Sunday, but the party still seems likely to become more popular in the coming years.

Representatives from 195 nations reached an agreement supposedly devoted to addressing global climate change, but it’s really more hype than anything else.

Some analysts are already suggesting that Russia’s two month old intervention in Syria is becoming a quagmire. That seems to be a premature judgment, but it’s not accomplishing much more than anything the West is doing.

North Korea’s mercurial leader now claims to have thermonuclear weapons, but analysts are saying this is likely braggadocios nonsense.

Donald Trump’s plan to exclude Muslims from the United States is provoking condemnation, and confusion, around the world.

Europe’s anti-immigrant, xenophobic far right scored major victories in France yesterday.

For an Oval Office address delivered on a Sunday night, President Obama’s speech last night sounded more like a statement read from the podium in the press room.

NATO is extending full membership to the tiny nation of Montenegro, and there doesn’t seem to be a good reason why they’re doing it.

The German Parliament has approved expansion of the nation’s involvement in the campaign against ISIS, but that doesn’t make the current campaign any less incoherent.

The British Parliament has approved expansion of that countries airstrikes into Syria, but it’s unclear just how much of an impact that will have on the ground.

A vote is still as much as two years away, and support for staying in the E.U. still has the most support, but support for the idea of a British exit from the European Union has grown in the past several months.

The election of an anti-austerity government in Portugal is raising some concerns.

France’s President has spent the week trying to forge and agreement on an anti-ISIS policy, but the two nations that matter the most also disagree the most.

Tensions between Russia and Turkey remain high in the wake of yesterday’s incident, but there are some signs that things are starting to cool down.

Hillary Clinton’s recently announced policies toward the ISIS fight are as incoherent and misguided as President Obama’s and those of her Republican opponents.

A potentially big complication in an already complicated situation.

A new poll taken in the wake of the Paris attacks finds Americans increasingly fearful of ISIS attacks in the U.S., opposed to the admission of Syrian refugees, and not very confident in President Obama’s ability to deal with the ISIS threat.

Disturbing reports over the weekend that American leaders may not be getting the kind of unbiased intelligence analysis about ISIS that they need to make decisions.

Even as the focus of the Presidential race shifts to national security, Donald Trump continues to lead the race.

The United States and Europe are giving everything the perpetrators of the Paris attacks hoped for.

Another European capital is on edge over fears of a terror attack.

An apparent ongoing terrorist attack in Central Africa.

After thirty years in Federal Prison, Jonathan Pollard is a free man. Make no mistake, though. Pollard is not, and never has been, a hero and he deserves to be remembered as nothing but the criminal that he is.

John Kasich wants the United States Government to create an agency to spread ‘so-called ‘Judeo-Christian values.’

French officials have confirmed that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the man believed to be the plotter of last Friday’s attacks in Paris, was killed in a police raid early Wednesday morning. This doesn’t mean authorities in France or elsewhere in Europe are any less concerned about future attacks, though.

Even the people hired to advice Ben Carson on foreign policy seem to recognize that he is clueless on the subject, and has no apparent desire to educate himself.

Republicans insist that uttering the words “Radical Islamic Terrorism” is somehow important in the fight against ISIS and other terror networks, but it is entirely unclear what doing so would accomplish.

In the wake of the attacks in Paris, some people have argued that American solidarity with France, in contrast to seeming disregard for tragedy elsewhere, is something we should feel bad about. That argument is ridiculous.

Violence leads to irrational policy responses. Who does that help?

Syrian refugees have quickly become political footballs in the United States in the wake of the Paris attacks, and it’s become an exceedingly shameful display of pandering and fearmongering by a group of largely Republican politicians.

Confirming speculation that had already been all but confirmed, we now know that it was a bomb that brought down a Russian passenger jet on October 31st.

In the wake of the attacks in Paris, there’s a strong impulse to do “something,” but that doesn’t mean we should do something utterly foolish. And a no-fly zone would be utterly foolish.

France launched its first attacks against ISIS even as the investigation into Friday’s attacks continues, but it’s not clear that the retaliation really accomplished anything.

We are legally, morally, and practically obligated to respond. Let’s not do so stupidly.

We can draw a rather direct line from the Iraq war to the rise of ISIS.