Democrats reiterated Monday a threat to punish former President Donald Trump for not testifying at the impeachment trial in the Senate, which begins Tuesday. In a short filing responding to Trump’s lawyer’s 75-page trial memorandum, submitted Monday, the House impeachment managers — all Democrats hand-picked by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — wrote: [T]he House has invited President Trump to voluntarily testify under oath, yet President Trump immediately rejected that opportunity to tell his story. The House will establish at trial that this decision to avoid testifying supports a strong adverse inference regarding President Trump’s actions (and inaction) on January 6.…

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is pleased to make available to the public a keynote address by Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which will kick off the first MEI-CENTCOM Annual Conference. This closed conference will address the key challenges and opportunities for the Biden administration in the Middle East through a series of high-level conversations among experts and practitioners from the United States and the region. MEI President Paul Salem will provide opening remarks and introductions. In this pivotal moment of a new U.S. administration, amid major changes in the region including the signing of…

After four years of Donald Trump’s fitful tenure, America is awakening from a long, troubled sleep to discover, like the fictional character Rip Van Winkle, that the world it once knew has changed beyond all recognition. In that classic American tale by Washington Irving published in 1819, an amiable but shiftless farmer strolls out of his colonial village to go hunting in the Catskill Mountains. There he happens upon a group of mysterious men, drinks deep from their keg of liquor, and falls into a long sleep. He awakens to find that he’s grown a white beard down to his…

The attempt to reverse a democratic election in a classic quiet coup in America has now turned ugly and noisy. On the very same day as Joe Biden condemned the coup, he nominated Victoria Nuland as under secretary of state for political affairs: the same Victoria Nuland who clumsily revealed in a captured call that then vice president Joe Biden would be willing to "midwife" the Ukrainian coup. This is the generation of the quiet coups. The coups that cloak themselves in the guise of democracy. Coups that use, not bullets, but democracy to undermine democracy. These coups either disguise themselves…

Turkey and Mongolia are separated by some 3,400 miles (5,500 kilometers), but the two countries have a shared history and since the end of the Cold War cultural ties have provided the connections that have facilitated political and security relations, though economic ties have lagged behind given Mongolia’s distant geographic location and having two major powers as its immediate neighbors: China and Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, at which point Mongolia abandoned communism, Mongolia has applied the so-called “third neighbor” concept to counterbalance to some degree the influence of its powerful immediate neighbors and help ensure its independence. Mongolia’s outreach to…