TBILISI — Why do conspiracy theories and general charlatanism so often receive their strongest support from the world’s dictators? Sure, dictators are almost always oddballs themselves, but that cannot be all there is to it.

NEW YORK — At a summit with US President Donald Trump in Helsinki last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin proved that he remains a master of the tradecraft he perfected in the 1980s as a Soviet operative in East Germany.

MOSCOW — “The wise man builds bridges; the fool builds walls.” That was the sentiment splashed all over Chinese editorial pages last week, when the United States imposed 25 per cent tariffs on some $50 billion of Chinese goods.

After nine months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the leaders of the Republican Party appear finally to be waking up to the harsh reality that their country stands at the edge of an abyss.They now have a choice: they can either continue to collaborate with Trump, thereby sustaining

In the 1970s, US president Richard Nixon instructed secretary of state Henry Kissinger to convince the leaders of hostile communist countries that he could be erratic and volatile, particularly when under pressure.Kissinger, a shrewd practitioner of Realpolitik, saw the potential

US President Donald Trump must be giddy: this week, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, he will finally meet his Russian counterpart and strongman-hero Vladimir Putin.It is rare for someone who has reached the exalted office of president of the United States

Last week’s chemical attack on the rebel-held Syrian city of Khan Sheikhoun compelled US President Donald Trump to strike for the first time at Syrian President Bashar Assad forces. With the bombing of an airbase in western Syria, the Trump administration stepped into a gapi

What unites “America first” President Donald Trump, Poland’s political puppet master Jarosław Kaczynski and Russian President Vladimir Putin?Trump and Kaczynski, chest-thumping nationalists, should revile Russia’s revanchist leader for his expansionist policies in ex-Soviet count

US President-elect Donald Trump seems determined to revive a forgotten Hollywood genre: the paranoid melodrama.Perhaps the greatest film in this genre, “The Manchurian Candidate”, concerns a communist plot to use the brainwashed son of a leading right-wing family to upend the Ame