Snapshots

The time to fret about when China will acquire drones is over: it has them. The question now is when and how it will use them. But as with its other, less exotic military capabilities, Beijing has cleared only a technological hurdle -- and its behavior will continue to be constrained by politics.

In his scholarship, Waltz asked the tough questions about the difficult and important issues. He was motivated by both theoretical and policy questions, the latter often setting the agenda for the former. He was intellectually courageous, usually staking out iconoclastic positions -- some of which were initially derided, many of which ended up becoming mainstream thinking. No matter what one’s theoretical persuasion, he was an intellectual force that had to be reckoned with.

The recent Kerry-Lavrov initiative to end the conflict in Syria through talks was met with skepticism among those who believe that the United States and Russia will bring their own agendas to the table, that Bashar al-Assad will refuse to step down, and that the Syrian opposition is too fragmented to strike a deal. But those are common problems, and successful talks can be -- and have been -- started under just such conditions.

Ayatollah Khamenei has developed a four-part strategy to avoid a repeat of the 2009 presidential elections, which led to massive demonstrations and the discrediting of the regime. But the eleventh-hour declarations of candidacy by Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei have made his task more difficult.