Section: Foreign Policy (USA)
The Problem With Kissinger’s World Order
I spent the last week immersed in geopolitical conflict, but not in eastern Ukraine or the South China Sea. No, I was at NYU Abu Dhabi, one of the least conflictual places on Earth, at a Brookings Institution conference titled “International Peace and Cooperation in an Age of Global Competition.” The 40 senior policymakers and thinkers from the...
U.S. Training for Syrian Rebels to Begin
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the U.S. training mission for Syrian rebels will begin this week in Turkey, training 300 rebels at a time and as many as 2,000 by the end of the year. The program is planned to expand to training sites in other participating countries soon, but there is disagreement within the international...
Out of Kiev’s Hands
The Russian-occupied Donbass enclave in eastern Ukraine is on the verge of economic and social collapse. That grave fact casts the Russo-Ukrainian war in a different light. Normally, wars are fought over prize territory: winners gain it, losers lose it. In this case, the implosion of the Donbass means that whoever controls the enclave is, in...
Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, May 4, 2015
To keep up with Democracy Lab in real time, follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Farah Samti reports from Tunisia on how the country’s new freedoms have enabled LGBTs to speak out — and conservative forces to strike back. Paramenda Bhagat shows how the Nepal earthquake has also laid bare the country’s intractable political dysfunction....
In Eastern Ukraine, Doctors Are ‘Terrorists’ and Antibiotics Are Herbs
DONETSK, Ukraine — The light illuminating the dilapidated halls of Hospital 21 filters through half-boarded-up windows. Electricity has been out in the hospital for more than six months. Hospital 21, in Donetsk’s Kievsky district, is only half a mile away from Donetsk’s airport — the scene of a four-month-long battle between fighters...
Situation Report: Syria op chief profiled; Yemen continues to fester; lots of defense biz news and so much more
By Paul McLeary and Ariel Robinson Our Way to Fall. The two-star U.S. Army general in charge of training and equipping moderate Syrian rebels has been working his way up in the shadowy world of special operations and intelligence for decades, writes FP’s Sean Naylor in what is without a doubt the most in-depth look at the career of Maj....
Putin’s Boy Scout Army
MOSCOW — In a crumbling residential courtyard in north Moscow, within earshot of the buzzing Yaroslavskoye highway that leads out of the city, a group of camouflage-clad teenagers watch an instructor as he talks them through the basics of knife throwing. “Hold the knife solidly in your hands; let it become part of you. Twist your torso, extend...
Situation Report: State and Afghan watchdog clash; first step for NDAA; more cash for French fight in Africa; and more to come
By Paul McLeary and Ariel Robinson Lost in translation. There’s a real fight brewing between the State Department and the outspoken Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko over the watchdog’s staffing levels at its office in Kabul. And the two sides have very different versions of a recent meeting, the...
Gazprom’s Ties to Putin Could Help It Try to Escape the EU’s Wrath
The European Union’s antitrust case against Russian energy giant Gazprom is a clear challenge to a company that has alternately succored and bedeviled the Old Continent for decades. But the landmark case, formally opened last week after more than three years of investigation by the EU’s army of gray suits, also raises a host of...
Why Ukraine’s Mini Sex Scandal Is a Sign of Progress
Andrei Miroshnik is having a bad week. Last Thursday, when he was still a member of the Ukrainian parliament, a sharp-eyed photographer caught him in the act of texting during a parliamentary session. That alone probably wouldn’t have amounted to much of a scandal in a national legislature known in the past for its fistfights. In this case,...
