In February 2015, the Obama administration hosted a summit on countering violent extremism, analysts Colum Lynch and John Hudson write for Foreign Policy. But the phrase remains an “elusive concept,” even within… Read more »
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began making the rounds in the U.S. capital Wednesday, dozens of foreign policy thinkers, including former ambassadors to Turkey, released a letter warning that the situation… Read more »
Since January 2016, Carnegie Europe has asked authors from Europe’s Southern neighborhood to give candid assessments of the EU’s foreign policy toward their countries. In all but two cases—Palestine and Libya,… Read more »
Arab states in transition are confronted with a seemingly intractable task: rebuilding state institutions and social contracts in an era of global change, notes analyst Yezid Sayigh. Conventional approaches… Read more »
Under the right conditions, which must include a hard-headed approach and tough actions to check Iran’s ambitions, Washington can benefit from bringing Iran into multilateral forums where the United States… Read more »
Simply dismissing the uprisings [of the Arab Spring] as a failure does not capture how fully they have transformed every dimension of the region’s politics, argues Marc Lynch, a… Read more »
Tunisia is the only country to emerge from the Arab revolutions of 2011 as a functioning democracy, notes George Packer. But it has also sent a disproportionately large number… Read more »
A new global competition in “soft power” is underway between democracy and autocracy, but only one side seems to be competing seriously, according to Christopher Walker, Marc F. Plattner and Larry Diamond,… Read more »
Iraq is decidedly not lost to Iran—and today U.S. leverage is at a new post-withdrawal high, says Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations…. Read more »
Criticizing U.S. missteps in promoting democracy is certainly reasonable—particularly in light of the debacles in Iraq and Libya—but elevating these criticisms into high doctrine and principled critiques of democracy promotion… Read more »