Brian Till is a Research Fellow with the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the author of Conversations With Power. More
Brian Till is a Research Fellow with the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. He writes on foreign policy, the strengths and shortcomings of the millennial generation, and the perils of the digital age. Previously a nationally syndicated columnist, he is the author of a book of interviews with former global leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Fernando Henrique Cardosso, Bill Clinton, F.W. de Klerk, and Pervez Musharraf: Conversations With Power.
The death of the album and the rise of the single perhaps mirrors the broader societal shift. The Internet makes the infinite accessible, yet, in the hours we spend tethered to the sprawling enigma, we tend to pursue what we already know, rather than search for the foreign. More »
The sport that stands to gain the most from the advance of high definition is, without question, ice hockey. In the mid 1990's, Fox played with FoxTrax, a comet-like tail that trailed pucks as they frenetically bounced around the rink, the color and length of the digital appendage delineating speed. It was an abysmal failure. But it addressed the main complaint voiced by television viewers -- and, for that matter, live game viewers: that damn, little puck is hard… More »
I think the argument that Iraq -- in both the best and worst case scenarios -- will end up looking quite similar to Lebanon has a good deal of merit. At worst, the nation could slide into a protracted civil war, its various ethnic factions backed by regional proxies, with a neighbor -- likely Iran, though perhaps Turkey -- eventually invading to provide moderate stability. Hundreds of thousands more might die, perhaps closer to a million, with Baghdad, like Beirut… More »
The various images of Barack Obama cast as a Nazi that have emerged over the last year are, without question, reprehensible; but understanding the pictures, and speaking to the part of this nation that--if not directly printing the banners--gets a hearty chuckle out of them, is crucial to ending the political stalemate at hand. The images are perhaps less about Obama than his supporters and the fervent groundswell that he inspired. Hitler was a particularly… More »
Twenty years after the revolution that made him an unlikely world leader, Vaclav Havel commiserates with Obama, discusses the particular challenges of being a writer in public office, and offers advice to citizens of repressive regimes today.
