Mark Tooley

Mark Tooley is IRD’s president and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence. Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and is a native of Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church, published in 2008; Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century, published in 2012; and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War, published in 2015.

Follow Mark on Twitter: @markdtooley

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China is Mr. Potter

China, at least its despotic regime, has essentially become sinister Mr. Potter from It’s A Wonderful Life.

Decadence and Christian Pessimism

This week I attended an as always stimulating Trinity Forum talk, this time to hear New York Times columnist Ross Douthat discussing his new book “The Decadent Society.”

Christian Influence on US Foreign Policy

Formal religious adherence is declining, but America’s longtime religious self-identity as a lodestar of democratic responsibility in the world continues unabashed.

Defending Apartheid & Hating America?

There’s an odd column in American Greatness, on the 30th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s prison release, lamenting the fall of apartheid in South Africa, which it portrays as a calamity negotiated by “conniving Communists in the ANC and their knavish collaborator, F. W. de Klerk.”

Appeasement’s Eternal Lessons

Tim Bouverie’s history of British pre-WWII appeasement—Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War—compellingly recounts how the democracies, chiefly Britain, deferred confrontation with Hitler for much of a decade, only barely recovering in time to avert complete calamity.

Alliances for Democracy

This week I attended in Washington, DC, the annual gathering of the International Democratic Union, a coalition of over 70…

Righteous Might and the Battle of Midway

Midway is a magnificent movie about the 1942 naval and aerial battle that blocked further Japanese aggression in the Pacific….

Providence & The Berlin Wall

Thirty years ago this week, God brought down the Berlin Wall. Few expected he would, or at least not so…

Rejoicing & Baghdadi’s Death

Several Christian pacifists have warned against celebrating the death of ISIS terror chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who blew up himself…

Hope from Vietnamese-American Admiral

Huan Nguyen recently became America’s first Vietnamese American admiral.  His parents and five siblings were killed by the Viet Cong…