By Dwight Bashir
The Arab Spring has reinvigorated debate about the relationship between religion and state across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Missing from the debate is the idea of a “third way” – the full embrace of freedom of religion as a universal right, with a robust competition among various religious perspectives in the marketplace of ideas.
Read MoreBy Sebnem Gumuscu
The Turkish government has been using different instruments, such as democracy promotion, Islamic solidarity, and economic interdependence to foster stability while playing for greater influence over the emerging regimes. Yet this instrumentalism, which benefits Turkey in the short term, unless well-balanced by tangible support from the Turkish state in treating the new regimes as equal partners, may decrease Turkish credibility in the medium to long term.
Read MoreBy Mark Dietzen
Turkey’s state-sanctioned denial of its genocidal past and the hypocritical US failure to speak truthfully about the Armenian Genocide threatens the reputations of both as well as their respective capacities for regional and global leadership.
Read MoreInternational development agencies have been at work in emerging and frontier markets for decades. Multinational corporations (MNCs) have only in the last decade focused their activities in these areas in anticipation of greater eco- nomic growth there.
Read MoreBy Jeffrey M. Bernstein
This article evaluates the logic of negotiations in Afghanistan’s counterinsurgency environment and argues that reaching “negative” peace through negotiated settlement is in the best interest of all relevant stakeholders. Rather than being seen as alternatives, negotiating and war fighting must be viewed along a continuum.
Read MoreBy Andrew Burt
Just days before the United States launched its first missiles into Libya, the Israeli navy confiscated a cache of Iranian-made missiles bound for the Gaza Strip. The Iranian precision-guided missiles, known as Nasr missiles or C-704s, are deadly to targets both on land and at sea. Revelations of such weapons’ dispersion are as striking as they are significant: Just as the technological edge that has come to define America’s military power was on full display in Libya, simultaneous events show that the US technological edge is eroding.
Read MoreBy Drew Peterson
Though the US foreign policy agenda is robust, the Obama administration should intensify its commitment to peace in Kosovo by taking a fresh look at the protracted differences in the dispute.
Read MoreBy Majid Rafizadeh
There are more reasons to believe that Assad’s regime will survive the current wave of sanctions and uprisings than to expect that it will be ousted. Among these are the lack of cohesion and the disorganization which characterize opposition groups marching in the streets.
Read MoreBy Jason Warner
With the July 2011 secession of South Sudan, and contemporary discussions of Palestinian statehood, observers rightly ask: is Somaliland next? Although it deserves independence as much as any of today’s attempted breakaway regions, a confluence of ill-conceived orientations from the United Nations (UN), the United States, and especially the African Union (AU) means that Somaliland’s wait to become an international “somebody” will not come to an end in the near future.
Read MoreBy Taylor Washburn
Robust copyright protection can be achieved without reifying unstable doctrines in international trade deals, and without requiring our trade partners to accept unjustifiable copyright term extensions. A TPP that incorporates these principles should be favored over one that does not.
Read MoreBy Aroop Mukharji
Last month, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced plans to slash the defense budget by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade, reducing the size of the army 14% by 2022.
Read MoreBy Jessie Daniels
There’s another one percent coming under attack these days – the US foreign aid budget.
Read MoreBy Dr. Robert M. Farley
The responses from Spencer Ackerman and Michael Cohen both boil down to the same point. Many people in the Middle East say that an Iranian nuclear weapon will tip the regional balance of power in alarming ways, and since there is “nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” the balance will be tipped.
Read MoreBy Spencer Ackerman
Ackerman suggest two reasons why Robert Farley is wrong in is assessment of the non-impact of an Iranian nuke.
Read MoreBy Michael Cohen
Another rebuttal to Robert Farley's article "Not the End of the World As We Know It: Nuclear-Armed Iran and the Mid-East Balance of Power"
Read MoreBy Christine Seisun
The ramp up of drone operations is counteracting the supposed drawn down of boots on the ground in US wars.
Read MoreBy Dr. Robert M. Farley
Robert Farley argues that a nuclear-armed Iran is perhaps not as consequential as people tend to believe.
Read MoreBy Patrick Disney
Israel has long maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity about its nuclear arsenal, neither confirming nor denying its existence.
Read MoreBy Andrew C. Miller
Many Americans assert that the new millennium marked the dawn of another “American Century.” The Chinese are equally convinced that the twenty-first century belongs to them. Some foreign policy scholars even foresee a “Canadian Century.”
Read MoreBy Mauricio Claver-Carone
Since Fidel Castro fell ill in 2006 and transferred power to his brother Raul, members of Congress have been weighing possible options in U.S. policy toward Cuba, partially by raising the fundamental question: “is there a viable pro-democracy movement in Cuba?”
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