With the Israel-Hamas war escalating, the United States risks becoming involved in a larger conflict that could entangle some of the more than 40,000 U.S. military personnel based across the region. Why it matters: U.S. troops and military contractors in Iraq and Syria have been targeted in over a dozen …

Key points In addition to the 51 allies the United States is obligated by treaty to defend, it has a number of quasi-allies: states the United States is not committed to defend but to which it provides a substantial degree of military and political support. By creating uncertainty about U.S. …

Claims about the territory’s spiritual status have been revealed to be fiction. In December 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood in the middle of the Kremlin’s St. George’s Hall, delivering his annual address to the country’s Federal Assembly. Nine months removed from his formal annexation of Crimea, the Russian president …