By: John Hulsman

Dr. John C. Hulsman is Senior Columnist at City AM, and Founder and Managing Partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a global political risk consulting firm. More of John’s work is available on his substack

Obama’s got it right: Why it’s in the West’s interest to help the Kurds out

August 11, 2014

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” For the second time in this doleful summer, the Islamic State (IS) has astounded the world. Following its stunning success in June – snatching and then consolidating territorial gains in eastern Syria and western Iraq into a terrorist state the [...]
Israel and Hamas both think they won in Gaza: This crisis is doomed to fester

August 5, 2014

After four weeks, the guns over Gaza have been stilled, at least temporarily, as a three-day ceasefire has gone into effect. Further, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – satisfied that, in destroying 32 tunnels, it has significantly (if temporarily) degraded Hamas’s ability to directly strike Israel proper – has announced it is leaving the Palestinian [...]
Dagger in the Kremlin’s heart: Europe’s sanctions have revived a comatose West

July 30, 2014

“We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender.” John O’Donohue, Irish poet MY GOD, they’ve finally done something. In the end, it wasn’t the horrific shooting down of MH17 – highly likely by Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine – that goaded a seemingly inert Europe into decisive action. Even after this [...]
Putin has exposed a chilling truth about the West: It no longer exists

July 22, 2014

Somehow Europe’s leaders have managed to undershoot even my subterranean expectations. Ahead of an EU foreign ministers meeting yesterday to plan a common response to the Malaysia Airlines atrocity, leaks made it all too clear that this whole process would not amount to much. But the results – even for the EU – are almost comically [...]
We’re staring into the abyss in Gaza: Only the US can halt this deadly cycle

July 21, 2014

“If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” Moshe Dayan, Israeli politician and military leader IN GAZA, the inexorable logic of destruction continues apace. Since the Israeli ground incursion into the Hamas-dominated enclave began on Thursday, the death toll has risen tragically. Sunday was the worst [...]
There will be more Putins – and more Flight MH17s – if Europe fails to act now

July 21, 2014

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” – The Wizard in L Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz In her able, forthright way, Hillary Clinton has just painfully called Europe’s bluff. Speaking just after the horrific details of the Malaysian plane disaster became clear – where it looks increasingly likely that murderously clueless [...]
This Middle East tragedy will become a catastrophe if Obama missteps now

July 14, 2014

My wife recently passed along to me an almost unutterably beautiful video from the Royal Shakespeare Company. In it, Camille O’Sullivan performs “Daughter, Dear Daughter” from the Bard’s moving The Rape of Lucrece, giving voice to the universal anguish of a parent burying a child. It ends with the harrowing plea, “Then live, sweet Lucrece, [...]
How to defeat Isis: We already have a playbook for beating these extremists

July 6, 2014

MUNICH – As the Fourth of July comes and goes, I have been jokingly told by friends that I share a trait found more often in East Asian cultures; that of ancestor worship. One of my sons is named after both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, so fervently do I believe in the civic religion [...]
The end of Iraq: The outlines of a more stable region are finally in sight

July 2, 2014

IT SHOULD come as no surprise to anyone that Iraq is an unnatural construct. Even as the British were establishing the pushmi-pullyu state following the Great War, the danger signs of its viability were there for all to see. John Van Ess, an American missionary and old Mesopotamian hand, explicitly warned his friend Gertrude Bell [...]
Risk tolerance: Why decadent Europe is whistling as chaos reaches its gates

June 29, 2014

WILL the US ramp up its involvement in Iraq? And if so, on what terms? Will Europe build on its new partnership agreements with Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia to draw an effective line over which an expansive Russia would not dare cross? Will Israel persist in rattling its sabre, while Western powers search for a [...]

Subscribe