Tag: William J. Burns

Iran ‘outsmarted itself’ in silencing civil society?

     

Iran in large part considers peaceful activism a “threat to national security,” and those who warn about festering popular grievances and rampant corruption are treated as seditionists, notes Tara Sepehri… Read more »

A populist foreign policy for ‘Defending the West’?

     

Does a “clash between internationalists urging the traditional US leadership role in the world and advocates of an ‘America First’ approach” reported by Reuters presage an impending foreign policy crisis?… Read more »

Arab Fractures: Citizens, States, and Social Contracts

     

Long-standing pillars of the Arab order—authoritarian bargains and hydrocarbon rents—are collapsing as political institutions struggle with the rising demands of growing populations, says a new report from the Carnegie Endowment…. Read more »

Russia’s information warfare – strategic ‘social engineering’

     

Russia’s ongoing information warfare against Western democracies goes well beyond hacking, according to leading expert. “It’s political engineering, social engineering on a strategic level,” said Thomas Rid, a professor of… Read more »

Fragile states need strategic, systemic, selective, and sustained response

     

  Fragile states may seem like a distant and abstract concern, but they are not, according to William J. Burns, Michèle A. Flournoy, and Nancy E. Lindborg. They are at… Read more »

A ‘new normative edifice’ against corruption?

     

Pope Francis has called corruption “the gangrene of a people.” US Secretary of State John Kerry has labeled it a “radicalizer,” because it “destroys faith in legitimate authority.” And British Prime Minister David Cameron… Read more »