ARTICLES

“Perfection Has No Future Tense:” Putin’s Legacy (PDF)

By Sir Roderic Lyne

It is a Russian paradox that, while the results of elections since 2000 have been known in advance, the year before the election is a time of tension and uncertainty. Elections, even rigged elections, act as a focal point for grievances. This year has followed the pattern. Anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny’s success in…

Choosing Words With Purpose: Framing Immigration and Refugee Issues as National Security Threats to Avoid Issues of Social Policy (PDF)

By Loren Voss

There is a startling similarity across the globe in the language politicians and media organizations use to describe people fleeing for their lives. In response to a growing number of desperate and displaced people, the rhetoric coming from governments and newspapers is largely the same…

 

INTERVIEWS

The North Korean Challenge: Interview with Mira Rapp-Hooper and Dingding Chen (PDF)

By Rebecca TeKolste

The United States and North Korea have been closer to active war over the last year that at any time in recent memory. The unpredictable tweets of U.S. President Donald Trump and retorts of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have both caused alarm and generated hours of cable news drama. This interview focuses on the interests and incentives facing both sides, as well as China…

Counterterrorism as a Chronic Disease: An Interview with Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price (PDF)

By Rebecca TeKolste and Will Wright

Counterterrorism has become both a hidden and explicit part of our daily lives, forming one of the most characteristic US defense strategies of the twenty-first century. Civilians understand terrorism to be one of the primary security threats to the population, but we know quite little about the real attacks until they happen…

The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon: An Interview with U.N. Professionals Annabella Skof and Bastien Revel (PDF)

By Virginia Leape

Lebanon has been a primary destination for people fleeing the Syrian War and it has become home to almost 1.5 million Syrian refugees, which now constitute almost a quarter of the population of country. YJIA spoke with Annabella Skof and Bastien Revel, who work for the United Nations on this issue, in a discussion about the policy dilemmas and policy solutions for this crisis…

As Myanmar Burns, The International Community Looks Away: Interview With Journalist Francis Wade (PDF)

By Rebecca TeKolste

Francis Wade is the author of Myanmar’s Enemy Within, the book that debuted just ten days before violence erupted in the Rakhine state against the Rohingya population in August 2017. Since the publication of his book, around 650,000 Rohingya have been displaced, principally into Bangladesh. Wade and YJIA…

 

PHOTO ESSAYS

A Textbook Example of Ethnic Cleansing: Photographs of the Rohingya in Myanmar (PDF)

By Ahmer Khan

An estimated 605,000 Rohingya refugees have flooded into Bangladesh to flee an offensive by Myanmar’s military that the United Nations has called the world’s “fastest developing refugee emergency” and a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Of those who have crossed the border – 60 percent are children, according to the UNICEF…

 

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Review: Democracy Dies a Slow Death (PDF)

By Luke Johnson

On August 19, 1953, the democratically-elected nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was forced from office with the help of the C.I.A. and British intelligence, and put under house arrest for the remainder of his life. The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi took power and ruled as an autocrat until the 1979 Islamic Revolution forced him from power….

Book Review: The Search for a Russian National Idea (PDF)

By Julia Sinitsky

Serhii Plokhy, an eminent historian of Early and Modern Ukraine, starts Lost Kingdom with an anecdote about the opening of one of Moscow’s largest statues, that of Vladimir the Great, unveiled in November 2016 by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Vladimir the Great, the man who brought Christianity to Kievan Rus, and ruled Kyiv…

Book Review: Drawing the Sting: The Logic of Preventive Engagement (PDF)

By Ellen Chapin

As Syria burns, China rises, and North Korea threatens with its nuclear arsenal, U.S. national security experts have been forced to lurch from crisis to crisis, without any time to step back and look at America’s role in the global world order. In his new book, Preventative Engagement, Council on Foreign Relations fellow Paul Stares identifies…

Pence’s Empty Promises to Christians in the Middle East (PDF)

By Amy Fallas

During an address delivered to attendees of the World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians in May 2017, Vice President Mike Pence declared that “no people of faith today face greater hostilities or hatred like those who follow Christ.” The Vice President emphasized how the Trump Administration is strengthening their commitment to persecuted…