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...

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...

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...

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a regional organization consisting of ten Southeast Asian member states. Established in 1967, it aims to promote economic and security cooperation in the region. The annual rotation of the ASEAN chairmanship...

West Africa has recently been rocked by military uprisings. In the past three years, rogue soldiers have overthrown the presidents of Mali (August 2020 and May 2021), Guinea (September 2021), and Burkina Faso (January and September 2022). The confluence...

The Ukraine grain deal, formally known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, is a joint agreement by Russia, Ukraine, and Türkiye that promises a safe Black Sea corridor for commercial ships to export grains from Ukraine under the supervision...

In October 2021, Sudan’s civilian government was overthrown in a military coup. The coup marked the conclusion of the two-year experiment in democracy for the country, which was ignited by a 2018 protest movement that ended the notorious rule...

With China’s 20th National Congress approaching, Xi Jinping is expected to extend his tenure by another five years, making him the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Xi has stated that he will pursue reunification by 2049 as...

In Somalia, 26 million people are expected to experience extreme hunger by February 2023, threatening hundreds of thousands of lives. Nearly half of Somalia’s population of 7.1 million people already face acute food insecurity. In the first six months...

Through trade, investment, and strategic diplomacy, China is re-shaping sub-Saharan Africa. Beijing has growing economic ties with Africa’s largest economies and Chinese firms dominate infrastructure construction projects. In 2020, nearly one-third of infrastructure projects in Africa worth at least...

On March 15th, the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) hosted a presentation “Educational and Health Issues Affecting Today’s African Women and Girls.” Moderated by Africa Program chair and retired ambassador Charles A. Ray, it featured...

In recent months, the phone lines between Ankara and Tel Aviv have been unusually busy. In November, following the release of an Israeli couple that had been detained while vacationing in Istanbul, Israeli President Isaac Herzog rang his Turkish...

As Arab states prepare to reconvene this March for the 37th Arab League Summit in Algiers, one topic looms large over the agenda: the readmission of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, expelled in 2011. An increasing number of regional players have...

Implementing sustainable farming practices and infrastructure development in Africa has been an ongoing challenge. Foreign resource extraction operations on the continent offer exchanges of raw materials for capital and critical infrastructure development. These infrastructure projects are crucial for cooperative...

As the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan came to a close, Americans saw Taliban violence increase as the group took over the country. Was removing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan the correct policy? Did withdrawing from a vulnerable country...

As the European Union works to maintain a competitive edge economically against Beijing and Moscow, regional cooperation initiatives throughout Europe have taken center stage. The Three Seas Initiative (3SI) is one such promising example. 3SI launched in 2015 and...

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus was the rare former Soviet state that remained strategically aligned with the Russian Federation. In 1999, Russia and Belarus reached an agreement to become a “union state,” which aimed to create...

On August 23, the Crimean Platform Summit was held in Ukraine. Announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the initiative has the goal of coordinating international efforts to de-occupy the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by the Russian Federation...

Often referred to as Guinea-Conakry to distinguish itself from nearby Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea, as well as the Pacific Island nation of Papua New Guinea, the West African nation of Guinea has an abundance of the world’s most valuable...

The Congo Rainforest is one of, if not the most, important regions in the world for biodiversity and carbon storage. With deforestation leading the Amazon Rainforest to emit more carbon dioxide than it can absorb, the Congo Rainforest is...

On February 8, 2021, U.S. President Joseph Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed in a call to continue “close cooperation to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.” U.S.-Indian cooperation has strengthened considerably in the past year against...

Sowing discontent and disruption is a tactic that the West has accustomed itself to when dealing with the Kremlin. The Baltic states are in a unique position in the face of these threats. Estonia and Latvia, specifically, have significant...

The Russian state-affiliated private military company known as the Wagner Group has proven adept at leveraging instability or weak institutions to further Russian influence abroad. Throughout 2020, the Russian Federation and Wagner have worked to support and enable Khalifa...

On October 4, Kyrgyzstan held parliamentary elections. Four political parties received enough vote to garner seats in the parliament. Of those four, three were closely aligned with then-President Sooronbay Jeenbekov. The results of the election sparked outrage against the...

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy project to expand the People’s Republic of China’s investment and trade ties in order to create “a big family of harmonious coexistence.” Hailed as...

The following is a report summarizing an event on the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan, featuring: Aaron Stein, Director of Research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute; Maia Otarashvili, Deputy Director of the Eurasia Program at the...

The past two weeks have seen an explosion of tense fighting and conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The region has been populated by ethnic Armenians for years, and since the fall of the Soviet Union, it has...

 According to Johns Hopkins University, Estonia’s novel coronavirus numbers have generally stayed similar to those of its neighbors in the European Union. With an infection number so far at just above 2,000 it is slightly above the rates of...

Wearing face masks stamped with a bright red X, demonstrators marched down Bishkek’s Freedom Boulevard on June 29 in protest of a bill regulating disinformation in Kyrgyzstan. The legislation, widely viewed as an attempt to curb freedom of speech,...

When a political movement becomes interwoven into an individual’s self-identity, said individual is unable to criticize that political movement without implicitly criticizing themselves. Conversely, to maintain the belief that individuals and the political movement that they are ingrained within...

From November 1884 to February 1885, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck convened 13 European powers and the United States to coordinate “commercial activity” in Africa and emerged with the General Act. Never explicitly stating colonialism, but connotating colonial principles,...

Speaking on July 11, 2019, at an international conference in Batumi, Georgia, European Council President Donald Tusk declared, “The collapse of the Soviet Union was a blessing . . . to the whole of Central and Eastern Europe.” Bulgaria,...

Over the past decade, there has been a gas revolution in the Eastern Mediterranean, where discoveries of large offshore gas deposits have set up some of the littoral states—notably Israel, Egyp,t and perhaps Cyprus—as potential significant players in the...

When addressing the case of Hoda Muthana, an American-born former ISIS member, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated, “Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States. . . . She’s...

Many expected the diplomatic relationship between the Russian Federation and the United States to fray when U.S. forces killed hundreds of Russians assaulting a U.S.-held Syrian outpost in early 2018. Yet, the Kremlin quickly distanced itself from the Russian...

The artificial intelligence race has kept the world watching in rapt attention. Will the People’s Republic of China beat the United States of America? If so, what are the implications? Kai-fu Lee, a former executive at Apple, SGI, Microsoft,...

In early August 2019, Kashmir, a region contested by India and Pakistan, had its decades-long special status revoked. When Kashmir was integrated in 1947, India gave it a certain degree of autonomy, going so far as to allow it...

In recent weeks, there has been controversy over who President Donald Trump would nominate as the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI) after the resignation of Dan Coats. This discussion makes it an appropriate time to ask some questions:...

Under the watchful eye of King Abdullah II, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring with its regime intact. However, that is not to say it has escaped the last eight years unscathed. The devolution...

As Israel prepares for its second election this year, there is one party that deserves extra attention—despite its relatively small size. Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) is a secular party; its leadership and platform are rooted in the ideology of...

Facing the existential threat of the then-rapidly expanding Islamic State in 2014, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki officially established the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to assist in the defense of Iraq. Ayatollah Sistani, a prominent Shia cleric, called...

As the battle lines in the Syrian Civil War continue to harden, some opposition forces and communities have chosen to reconcile with the Assad regime rather than prolong a conflict that they cannot win. With Russian assistance, the Assad...

The modern imperialist motives of the Russian Federation are often integrated into the notion that Russia is a revisionist power that behaves in line with its traditional national security interests. However, this argument oversimplifies the Kremlin’s foreign policy strategy...

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump called himself a “big fan of the Kurds” and also defended Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against them, remarking "Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, 'oh he’s using gas!’”...

The domestic and foreign relations of Latin American countries often do not garner much attention from the U.S. government or media until an exceptionally noticeable crisis occurs. As a result, the Russian Federation’s growing presence in this region has...

Khalifa Haftar, the leader of the Libyan National Army (LNA), has charged Tripoli to topple Fayez al-Sarraj, the Prime Minister of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). Since early April 2019, fighting has killed more than 300, wounded...

On March 25, the Kurdish-led and American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) transferred three Russian orphans, aged five to seven, to a Russian government delegation in northeast Syria. The transfer marked the beginning of the repatriation process for children of...

On December 1, 2016, Adama Barrow took the small West African country of The Gambia by surprise when he won the country’s presidential election, and became the nation’s third president in over 51 years. Largely as a result of...

Secretive interactions between Israeli and Arab officials, such as a group of Emirati military officials reportedly traveling to Israel to observe its operations of American-made F-35 fighter jets in July 2018, are small indications of the depth of the...

Throughout history, leaders in China have often resorted to implementing anti-corruption campaigns. Though these campaigns are a means of curbing extreme levels of corruption, they are also an effective method of pursuing political goals. The latest leader to utilize...

When farmer J.H. Stroh lodged an official complaint on behalf of his orchard farm in Stevens County, Washington, in 1926, his grievance painted a grim picture: damage to crops, livestock, and even metal fencing, all of which threatened his...

Five years into a geopolitically convoluted and logistically complex civil war in Syria, there appears to be no end in sight. Not only are numerous regional groups engaged in this conflict, but also the issue is further complicated by...

On March 18, Russia will hold its presidential election. The outcome is not in doubt: current President Vladimir Putin will be elected to a fourth term. Opposition candidates readily admit as much: one of Putin’s putative rivals in the...

On January 23, Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, gave a talk regarding his...

Since the Cold War, few crises have put so many Americans on edge as the escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. While Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Donald Trump continue to send mixed signals of...

Two words capture a broad swathe of U.S. and European political concerns over the past twelve months: elections and Russia. However, in a year when it seemed that every election threatened potentially dire consequences for American interests, the European...

Though seldom mentioned in the same breath as prolific Western jihadi producers such as France, Germany, and Belgium, Canada has a long and often overlooked history of producing jihadists. From the “Millennium Bomber” and the “Toronto 18” to the...

Since 9/11, scholars and citizens across the United States have heralded jihadi terrorist groups as the single greatest threat to American national security. Mendelsohn however, argued that this assessment is not only hyperbolic, but it also fundamentally mischaracterizes the...

Robert Strausz-Hupé, the founder of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, was a leading exponent of the field of geopolitics, a political framework that supports the examination of international affairs in the context of culture, history, and geography, in addition...

Since the early 1990s, the U.S.-Russia relationship has faced a series of ebbs and flows amid numerous attempts to build a better rapport. The reasons behind the failure to create a positive relationship have been the subject of much...

Among the many places where observers might have expected to hear the death knells of liberal democracy, Poland can’t have been high on the list. Yet, a number of developments in that country’s foreign policy and international outlook...

Professor deLisle began his presentation on what he referred to as one of the world’s most important bilateral relationships by discussing China’s growth over the last fifty years. While China is not yet on equal footing with the United...

The Trump Doctrine—a core of fundamental foreign policy beliefs—has so far proved elusive, said Dom Tierney in his opening talk to FPRI interns. In searching for the Trump Doctrine, Dr. Tierney categorized Trump’s beliefs into three distinct “baskets.” The...

Mr. Lawrence Husick began his talk on the admittedly complicated issue of cyber insecurity with a primer on the technological basics of cyber threats. Cyber threats can be executed with a variety of tools including, but not limited to,...

Dr. Samuel Helfont, started his lecture by highlighting how odd it is that Iraq has been such a central part of U.S. foreign policy for over 25 years. Iraq on the surface, according to Helfont, is not a particularly...

Although the purpose of this conference was to understand why America goes to war, it is more important in the case of the Korean War, Waldron argued, to understand why Korea and China entered the war. The Communist Party...

On June 19, the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) hosted a BookTalk on “Does Democracy Matter?,” a recently published collection of essays edited by Adrian Basora, Agnieszka Marczyk, and Maia Otarashvili. The panel featured Ambassador Basora and Nikolas Gvosdev,...

Bulgaria is a parliamentary representative republic, in which the president, elected by Bulgarian citizens, serves as the head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The President of Bulgaria is also responsible for determining and implementing the country’s...

The Syrian conflict has captured the attention of the world. Currently, at least 470,000 Syrians have been killed, and 13.5 million are in need of humanitarian assistance. Additionally, more than 11 million people (almost half of Syria’s pre-war population...

The foreign policy views of the Republican nominee Donald Trump have been called dangerous, treasonous, confused – and that’s just according to leading Republicans and conservatives. For example, the editor of The Weekly Standard Bill Kristol says, “It’s not...

The upcoming presidential elections in Moldova will determine whether the country further integrates with the European Union or develops a closer relationship with Russia....

Transnistria, or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), exists unsure of its place in the world. To its west, across the Dniester River, lies the breakaway region’s parent state, Moldova, and, beyond that, European Union (EU) member Romania. To the...

. Tsai must be pragmatic and diplomatic in order to get the results she hopes to achieve. Taking office in a tense political atmosphere, the new president must maintain the status quo with China if she hopes to initiate...

The past two presidents have been deeply engaged in promoting democracy in the Middle East. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Middle East emerged as a key region of strategic interest for the United States,...

The revolution in Tunisia has arguably been by far the most successful of the Arab Spring movements to date. Longtime president Zine El Abadine Ben Ali has been deposed, a new Constitution has been implemented, and the big-tent, secular...

Approaching the Islamic State On August 12, two teens from Mississippi were apprehended on their way to join the Islamic State (IS). One, a student about to enter a graduate psychology program, and the other an honor student and...

As of this writing, five Democrats are running for their party’s nomination for President of the United States: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb, Martin O’Malley, and Lincoln Chafee. Of these candidates for president, three (Sanders, Clinton, Chafee) were...

This infographic was created to illustrate the strategic relationship between Israel and the Arab Gulf States, categorizing and explaining the major areas of interaction between the two under three subcategories: Political, Military, and Economic. . All items glowing in gray are clickable and link to...

At a Glance As of this writing, sixteen candidates are formally running for the nomination of the Republican Party for the presidency of the United States. Our purpose here is modest: to report on the foreign policy views of...

Over a month and a half has passed since the March 17th Israeli parliamentary elections decisively granted Netanyahu’s Likud party more seats in the Knesset than the opposing Zionist Union. Yet Netanyahu was unable to form a working government...

It is expected that on January 22, when Israelis go to the polls, the merged Likud-Yisrael Beitenu party will secure a plurality of seats in the Knesset and, in coalition with other parties, a majority of seats, leaving Prime...