James Soriano

James Soriano is a retired Foreign Service Officer who spent three decades in the State Department, most of them in the Middle East. He has published on counter-insurgency, most recently a September 2016 essay for the National Defense University.

recent articles

China is fighting for its life—and its soul

Mark this date on your calendar: November 19, 2023. This date would sound the timer for the disestablishment of the People’s Republic of China if the Chinese Communist Party has the same life span as its late Russian cousin. Russia was a Communist dictatorship beginning with the Bolshevik coup in November of 1917 until December … Read more

When Suns Collide

Americans like to think of themselves as living in a classless society, and historically this is largely, but not entirely, true, with a large middle class dominating the country’s economic, political, and social life. In the traditional social model, there was a small and moneyed upper class above the middle class, typically marked by its willingness … Read more

The Sin of Silence

In the Inferno, Dante Alighieri, a critic in his day of Church leadership, famously put the souls of at least three popes in hell, as well as countless other clerics who go nameless, their faces blackened beyond recognition. However, one cleric he does meet along the way is Ruggieri degli Ubaldini (d. 1295), the archbishop … Read more

A Syllabus of Errors: An Update In Ninety-Five Sentences 

On October 31, 1517, a 34-year-old Catholic priest affixed a notice of disputation, consisting of ninety-five theses, to the door of the castle church in the German town of Wittenberg. That act has come to be seen down the ages as a dramatic gesture of defiance and an open declaration of rebellion. It was not. … Read more

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