By Todd Robinson, Paul F. Diehl, and Tyler Pack
The apparent use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in Syria and the potential development of nuclear weapons by Iran have brought “red lines” to the forefront of public discourse and policy-making. In the former, U.S. President Obama threatened retaliatory measures were Syria ever to use chemical weapons against rebels in its civil war.
Read MoreBy Moctar Aboubacar
The field of international development cooperation is being increasingly influenced by “emerging donors,” countries like South Korea which are capitalizing on their own development history to engage developing countries with innovative policy experiences.
Read MoreBy Kari Lipschutz
This paper uses the Nigerian case to illustrate the serious effect this type of institutional crisis can have on the ability to mitigate the negative externalities of resource development.
Read MoreBy Goitom Gebreluel and Kjetil Tronvoll
Considering the unique history of colonialism and artificially created nation-states in Africa, the incidences of secession have been surprisingly few. Through a comparative analysis of Eritrea, Somaliland, and South Sudan, this article aims to account for post-secession variations in fragility, as well as contextualize the challenges South Sudan is currently facing.
Read MoreBy Marc Grossman
The purpose of this article is to describe how, building on the foundations laid in 2009 and 2010 and validating the whole of government approach, the SRAP team pursued a diplomatic campaign to support U.S. objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Read MoreBy Amitai Etzioni
The start of a second Obama administration provides an opportunity for civilian authorities to live up to their obligations in this matter and to conduct a proper review of the United States’ China strategy and the military’s role in it.
Read MoreBy Yangmo Ku
To what extent could North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-un follow the path of economic reform that Deng Xiaoping adopted in China starting in the late 1970s? This article analyzes the role of individual leadership, domestic context, and systemic considerations to determine whether or not China’s past is applicable to North Korea’s present. This comparative study shows that the prospect for economic reform in North Korea is not very promising.
Read MoreBy Salar Ghahramani
International financial relations have largely been defined by cross-border trade, foreign direct investments, and global banking relations. This paper demonstrates that another activity, sovereign investments by special vehicles known as sovereign wealth funds, is rapidly redefining the traditional paradigms, providing both opportunities for further integration of the financial markets as well as posing particular challenges for policy makers.
Read MoreBy Dawood Ahmed
The United States has been carrying out drone strikes within Yemen and Pakistan since 2002 and 2004 respectively. Opponents have attempted to halt the use of drones by invoking legal arguments against the United States government. In doing so, they have overlooked the possibility that it may have taken ‘two to drone.’
Read MoreBy Hugo de Zela Martinez
The history of the Organization of American States (OAS) mirrors that of its member states and their sixty-four-year-old struggle to balance the principle of non-intervention with exceptions to it in the name of democracy and human rights.
Read MoreBy Hilary Dauer
The pesantren is an essential part of many Indonesian communities. It disseminates ideology, both religious and political, through the key community services it provides such as education for the community’s youth and the administration of important religious rites. Through the provision of these services, pesantrens provide the ideological underpinning for societal stability.
Read MoreBy Cassandra R. Veney and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Since the 1990s, Kenya, like most African countries, has undergone a protracted transition to democracy. Studies on the subject tend to focus on specific events, actors, challenges, and roadblocks and offer prognoses that are often soon overtaken by new developments. In many studies ethnicity looms large as an explanation.
Read MoreBy Aiden Warren
In its drive to produce fissile material for weapons, augment its weapons production facilities, deploy additional delivery vehicles, construct additional nuclear reactors, and expand its reprocessing capabilities, Pakistan has clearly placed the expansion and improvement of its nuclear weapons arsenal at the heart of its overall security strategy.
Read MoreBy Thomas Graham
The future of the Russian-led effort to consolidate the BRICS (the BRICs plus South Africa) as an influential multilateral organization is less certain because of inherent contradictions in the members’ ambitions, prospects, and security challenges. The United States engages Russia for strategic, not economic reasons.
Read MoreBy Jolyon Howorth
The total absence of the European Union, as a bloc, during the Libyan crisis of spring 2011 has led analysts to pose tough questions about the future of Europe as a collective security actor. The progress made toward the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) since 2003 was to some extent a reflection of the extraordinary nature of this relative pooling of sovereignty in the security field.
Read MoreBy Andreas Borgeas
This study finds that militant Islam amongst the Uighur in Kazakhstan remains a fringe and localized presence, which will struggle to gain sufficient popular support for historical and contextual reasons. Even so, the United States can take specific steps to help Kazakhstan ensure that Islam remains a moderate—rather than extremist—force in the country.
Read MoreBy Paul Rexton Kan
This article explores the online clash between the hacker group, Anonymous, and the Mexican drug cartel, Los Zetas. This type of cyberwar was unique: it was an incident where two clandestine non-state groups used the digital domain to attack each other and it was largely a private affair.
Read MoreBy Nicoli Nattrass
U.S. commitment to fight- ing AIDS in Africa has traditionally been, and still is, buoyed by bi-partisan support. This support has remained strong post-2007. Even so, the view is widespread that African country governments ought to take greater ownership of combating the problem and reducing aid dependency in managing it.
Read MoreBy Stephen S. Roach
The United States needs to wean itself from excess consumption and subpar saving, while China needs to do the opposite—greater emphasis on private consumption and the absorption of surplus saving. These transformations are daunting but provide major opportunities for both nations.
Read MoreBy John-Michael Arnold
The phenomenon of strategic surprise—a category of unexpected events so consequential that they call into question the premises of existing strategy—has posed a recurring challenge to U.S. foreign policy. Although there is a voluminous literature on the subject, most scholars have focused on surprises unleashed as a deliberate strategy of states in their effort to seize the advantage against adversaries.
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