Since 2006, Russia and the United States have been sparring diplomatically over NATO’s plan to deploy radar and missile interceptors to Europe.

The U.S. and NATO claim that the European “Missile Shield” is designed to be able to shoot down nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles emanating from Iran or North Korea. Russia claims it is a NATO attempt to undermine Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence. Turkey claims neither is true.

All are at least part-lying, and they know it. Here’s why.

First, NATO’s initial plan was to base 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar…

There’s an old cliché in American politics, so often repeated that it’s taken as a law of nature. When gauging the public’s mood about a politician, or politics in general, one sentence nearly always captures the complexity of the people’s hopes, frustrations and political preferences:

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

Countless sociological studies have shown that when economic times are good and wages are rising, populations nearly always favor their incumbent government, even if the people are having their civil liberties curtailed and their voices silenced (see Russia,…

Somewhere over the Atlantic in December a courteous Turkish Airlines
flight attendant handed me that rectangular blue paper that every
person headed to the U.S. at one point has to fill out.

The form is standard and designed to eliminate most of the work
customs and passport control would normally have to do. You write down
for them your flight info, the countries you visited before this
particular U.S. arrival and other information readily accessible via
air-travel manifestos and the stamp sections of your passport.

You then answer “no” to a series of questions about any…