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Publications

John R. Haines

Russia, Iran, and the (Increasingly) Lonely Superpower

March 17, 2015

Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness. -Ferdinand Marcos There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. -Eric Hoffer “The Lonely Superpower” is the title of Samuel Huntington’s 1999 essay in which he...

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Jakub Grygiel

The Tyrant’s Hopelessness

March 13, 2015

Tyrants, degenerate kings who ruled according to their own will and not the law, occurred relatively frequently in the history of ancient Greece (with the exception of Sparta) and Rome. They are also the protagonists of tragedies, dialogues, and...

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Chris Miller

Russia’s Second Asian Pivot

March 13, 2015

  In the aftermath of Western sanctions on Ukraine, many analysts have predicted that Russia will reorient its economy away from the West, with which it has profitably traded energy in exchange for investment and consumer goods, toward the...

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Chris Miller

Why the Kremlin Reads Zizek

March 13, 2015

Slovenia’s celebrity Marxist theoretician Slavoj Zizek gained a new and unexpected endorsement on Saturday. A leading expert on interpreting philosophers from Marx to Lacan to Hegel, Zizek is not a newcomer to Russian politics. He has written on the...

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Barak Mendelsohn

Accepting Al Qaeda

March 13, 2015

Since 9/11, Washington has considered al Qaeda the greatest threat to the United States, one that must be eliminated regardless of cost or time. After Washington killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, it made Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s new...

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Michael Cecire

The Kremlin Pulls on Georgia

March 13, 2015

As Russian forces consolidate their gains in Ukraine over the flat protests of Western leaders, the specter of Russian revanchism is keeping much of Eastern Europe on edge. But lumbering tanks and legions of insta-separatists aren’t the only concern. Ukraine isn’t...

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Private: Joseph Braude

New Pressures on the UN Security Council to Lift Its Arms Embargo on Libya

March 13, 2015

Pressures mounted on the United Nations Security Council yesterday to lift its international embargo on arms to the Libyan government. In an interview with journalist Valerio Robecco, Libyan UN ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi said, “A time limit should be set...

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Tally Helfont

The Best of FPRI’s Essays on the Middle East, 2005-2015

March 9, 2015

he Middle East - a region as complex and fraught with challenges as ever - continues to hold U.S. policymakers in its thrall. Though they may want to pivot elsewhere, the Middle East keeps pulling them back because the...

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Mackubin Thomas Owens

The Obama Administration’s Strategic Black Hole

March 7, 2015

The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 mandated that the president issue a national security strategy (NSS) report. According to the legislation, the purpose of this document is to provide the president with the means to communicate...

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The Hon. John Hillen

Foreign Policy by Map

March 7, 2015

George W. Bush left office with his activist foreign policy in disrepute. Fast-forward six years: President Barack Obama has pursued, in some respects, the opposite approach, and yet he has reached an even lower foreign-policy approval rating — around...

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