Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been talking to all the usual suspects as the United States rallies other countries to stare down a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Britains, Frances and Germanys of the world are, of course, on that list...
Russian President Vladimir Putin is apparently so confident his military will successfully invade and take over Ukraine that he’s already thinking about the pro-Russia puppets he could install in a new government in Kyiv. That’s the overly confident plot that the British government revealed to The Daily Beast this week—with Putin supposedly planning to push in a new regime in Ukraine more friendly to Russia, composed of a handful of former Ukrainian politicians...
As Russian troops mass on the Ukrainian border and worries of an invasion grow, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to push a familiar Russian line about the conflict: that Ukraine belongs to Russia and that the two are “one people — a single whole.” Specifically, much of Russia’s political positioning to launch an incursion into Ukrainian territory is based on Putin’s claim that Ukraine — like Russia, a former Soviet state — is an extension of Russia, the “little brother” that has been led astray by the West and must be reincorporated into the family...
Don Jensen with the United States Institute of Peace reacts to the day’s developments in Ukraine...
The Myanmar military’s recent placement of landmines around oil and gas pipelines connected to southwestern China suggests the junta is hypersensitive to possible attacks on the projects amid an escalating national rebellion, experts say...
The U.S. Institute of Peace mourns the passing of Phyllis Oakley, a distinguished diplomat who advanced the role of American women in international diplomacy and served as an ex officio member of the Institute’s Board of Directors in the late 1990s as an assistant secretary of state.
A year later, the Feb. 1, 2021, military coup in Myanmar against the popularly elected civilian government has turned into an unmitigated disaster. The increasingly brutal military response to unarmed civilian resistance has triggered mounting waves of violence, engulfing almost every township across the country in civil war. The expanding conflict has claimed thousands of lives and internally displaced over 320,000 civilians. The junta’s forces have burned entire villages, massacred aid workers, and taken the lives of nearly 1,500 civilians...
The U.S. imposed new sanctions on senior leaders of Myanmar’s military junta on Monday—the eve of the one-year anniversary of their overthrow of the country’s democratically elected government and imprisonment of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The U.S., joined by the U.K., and Canada, announced sanctions on officials who helped prosecute Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of the National League for Democracy. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was arrested in the Feb. 1, 2021 coup. Myanmar courts have sentenced her to a total of six years in prison as of Jan. 10—but she faces additional charges...