Charting sectarianism in Syria
Nearly seven years of war are often blamed for hardening local ethnic and religious hostilities in Syria, but sectarianism is nothing new in that scarred land — its cornerstones were… Read more »
Bahraini exile campaigns against crackdown
Bahraini authorities have deported eight stateless Bahrainis, whom they had previously stripped of their citizenship, since January 29, 2018, Human Rights Watch said today. The deportations followed an appeals court… Read more »
Dancing with danger? Europe’s populists ‘waltzing into the mainstream’
Central Europe’s populist revolt against the EU isn’t about safeguarding the West, notes Dalibor Rohac, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. It’s about rolling back freedoms and cozying… Read more »
Preparing for North Korea’s authoritarian breakdown
If the regime of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un was to collapse, whether from internal problems or external force, one of the most pressing problems facing the United States, China,… Read more »
China’s sharp power makes democracies ‘look like strategic amateurs’
Has China’s sharp power offensive left the West’s democracies looking ‘like strategic amateurs’? An opinion piece by Chinese media outlet Caixin Global is touting the idea of “globalism with Chinese… Read more »
Truth Decay: How does online activism affect democracy?
UK Prime Minister Theresa May delivered her sharpest rebuke yet to the tech industry on Thursday, in a keynote address to the World Economic Forum that focused on the digital… Read more »
Russian trolls ‘only part of the disinformation problem’
Russian agents created 129 events on the social media network during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, according to Facebook’s testimony to Congress, shedding more light on Russia’s purported disinformation drive… Read more »
Digital deceit: waging war with disinformation
There is nothing new about either fake news or Russian disinformation campaigns. Back in 1983, at the height of the cold war, an extraordinary story appeared in a little-known pro-Soviet… Read more »
Tunisian unrest symptomatic of healthy democratic evolution
Some view Tunisia’s recent demonstrations and the government’s response as a dire warning that the end of the country’s experiment with democracy is near, notes Safwan Masri, the author of… Read more »
Russia employing sharp power in Mexico’s elections
Russian meddling has recently become a fixture in Mexican politics too, analyst Maxim Trudolyubov writes for Newsweek. “They [Russians] are trying to create a world in which the electorates are… Read more »