Oil price collapse good news for Ukraine’s anti-corruption efforts
The global collapse of oil prices is good news for Ukraine, says Anders Åslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Ukraine: What Went Wrong and How… Read more »
Search Results for: Iraq
Russia’s economic ills fuel radicalism in Central Asia
Central Asia’s authoritarian governments have rarely found it easy to keep a lid on social discontent or to inoculate their countries against chronic instability in Afghanistan. Ethnic tensions and religious… Read more »
Forces of change coming to Iran?
Iran‘s president has called on the committee vetting candidates for next month’s parliamentary elections to allow more reformists to stand. In a televised speech, Hassan Rouhani said parliament was… Read more »
‘Iranian Spring’ or hard-liners consolidating power?
Two Iranian poets who face lashings and prison sentences have fled Iran in a rare escape for local artists and activists ensnared in an ongoing crackdown on expression in… Read more »
Time to pressure Pakistan military on Taliban
A key gathering opened on Monday in Islamabad in which four major countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States – hope to lay the road-map to peace for… Read more »
Islamic State’s social contract
How does the Islamic State/ISIS win the support (or at least the tax dollars) of Iraqi and Syrian civilians, who tend to be less ideologically committed to the cause… Read more »
The limits of realism
A staunch critic of promoting democracy and liberal internationalism, Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University, has an eloquent ode to realism in Foreign Policy magazine,… Read more »
When rhetoric collided with reality in the Middle East
President Obama came to office far more focused on showing the world that the Bush era was over than on any coherent strategy of his own for advancing human… Read more »
Has Arab Spring mutated into sectarian strife?
After Saudi Arabia’s execution of leading Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr sparked a violent protest at the Saudi Embassy in Iran’s capital, Tehran, Saudi Arabia quickly severed ties with its longtime regional… Read more »
Look out for Africa in 2016
Dwindling resources for democracy efforts from the United States government could not have come at a worse time, notes J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, especially… Read more »