A nation must think before it acts.
In 2014, ISIS racked up a series of stunning successes as it pushed through Iraq and Syria, gaining momentum and new recruits with each victory. But in recent weeks, Syrian government forces liberated the city of Palmyra from ISIS,...
Read more »It is easy to like the Kurds. In the first half of the 20th century, the international community slighted them, dividing historic Kurdistan among the newly formed states of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. Now, in the 21st century,...
Read more »Recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Istanbul and Brussels should not come as a surprise. The Islamic State’s rise in Europe has been more than four years in the making. By 2012, casual social media monitoring showed a large wave...
Read more »Over the last two decades, the United States has been the world’s pre-eminent user and supplier of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In 2013, the United States was estimated to have approximately 7,500 drones in operation, ranging from relatively small...
Read more »The ongoing internal conflict between the Assad-led government and the political and military opposition forces within Syria has increasingly become a regional conflict. This is the case not only because the violence within Syria has regional implications, but also...
Read more »Revolutionary periods have a way of compressing history. Events unfold so quickly, and the flow of information is so dense, that our ability to comprehend them is diminished. This condition pervades the present political situation in Syria, fostering numerous...
Read more »The failure of Presidents Obama and Putin to reach agreement over Syria at the G20 summit meeting in Mexico should not have come as a surprise. The Western world has been appalled by the Assad regime’s atrocities but this...
Read more »EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: With American clout in the Middle East on the decline, the historic power struggle between Turkey and Iran has intensified, each attempting to fill the vacuum in the region by expanding its influence. Syria and Iraq have...
Read more »With the failure of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to broker a ceasefire in Syria, Western policymakers and pundits are increasingly coming to acknowledge that the country’s descent into civil war is all but inevitable. But this begs...
Read more »In recent weeks, a contentious debate has arisen in Jordan over what should be done about the country’s troublesome northern neighbor, Syria. Though the Jordanians, like many others in the region, were mostly preoccupied with their own internal troubles...
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