Commentary

This past July, Iraq and France’s TotalEnergies finalized the Gas Growth Integrated Project, a $27 billion energy deal aimed at Iraq’s natural resources and improving the country’s electricity supply. Despite Iraq’s natural wealth, decades of conflict and corruption have...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) heads of state and government participated in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July — the fourth summit the Alliance has held since the full scale Russian invasion...

On January 17, 2022, a little after 10 a.m., the Iranian-aligned Houthis in Yemen carried out a surprise, deadly drone attack on the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Abu Dhabi. Paris responded by activating, for the first...

Sending Kentucky to Korea  On July 18, 2023, the USS Kentucky, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, docked in Busan, South Korea. The USS Kentucky is one of 14 Ohio-class submarines tasked with conducting nuclear deterrence patrols and carries up...

Not since the Cuban missile crisis have island nations played such critical pieces on the geopolitical chessboard. Recent intelligence leaks, for example, reveal that China is planning to construct a signals intelligence facility in Cuba in order to monitor...

South Korea is no stranger to walking the tightrope between the United States and China. In terms of foreign policy, South Korea is determined to remain close to the United States defensively while maintaining its close economic relationship with...

Despite a concerted effort from the People’s Republic of China to teach Lithuania a strong economic lesson for opening an unofficial diplomatic representative office in Taipei (and allowing Taiwan to do the same in Vilnius), it appears that Beijing...

Throughout Russia’s current, renewed invasion of Ukraine, the three Baltic states have been continually working to improve their defense, even as they send military aid to Ukraine (the scale of which—compared to the Baltics’ own defense budgets—is staggering). The...

Morocco made a surprising announcement last year, on July 5, 2022. The Maghreb-Europe Gas Pipeline, which had up until November 2021 transported billions of cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas every year from Algeria to Spain via Morocco, would...

Following a twenty-year war shrouded in bloodshed, the United States military pursued a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. This abrupt troop evacuation, coupled with the Afghan government’s unsuccessful ceasefire and the 2020 Doha Agreement, has empowered the...