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.
resident Trump and his next Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, are—for now—two peas in a policy pod. The outgoing Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who learned that he had been fired only after Trump announced his departure in a tweet...
After fourteen months of mixed signals (and confused policy) on Russia, the Trump Administration took twin actions on Thursday to address the increasingly aggressive moves by the government of Vladimir Putin. Washington slapped sanctions on nineteen prominent Russian individuals and five entities—including Russian...
In sweeping retaliation for Russia’s growing aggression in the West, the United States and nineteen other nations expelled more than a hundred and thirty Russian intelligence officers and diplomats on Monday. The coördinated rebuke—galvanized after Moscow’s alleged assassination attempt on a former double agent living in Britain—is unprecedented since the Cold War, which ended more than a quarter century ago.
For a quarter century, Uzi Arad was one of Mossad’s top spies. He rose to become the director of its intelligence division. He later gained fame as a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader who has campaigned longer and harder against the Iran nuclear deal than almost any other leader. Arad, who served as the national-security adviser from 2009 to 2011, broke with his former boss over the agreement. He travelled to Washington this week to lobby—primarily among Republicans in Congress—to save the controversial agreement at a pivotal juncture.
The dreamers won. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is still so green that, when the call came from the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the group initially thought it was a prank. But, in the middle of two brewing crises over nuclear weapons, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to a global coalition of young activists who defied the United States and the eight other nuclear powers this summer to win support at the United Nations for the first treaty to ban the world’s deadliest weapon.
The Shiite-led government in Baghdad has warned that Iraq is teetering on the brink of civil war over its autonomous Kurdistan region’s refusal to cancel the outcome of its independence referendum.
On Friday, President Trump came out swinging, rhetorically, on the Iran nuclear deal. Said he won’t certify Iran’s complying, even though everybody basically says they are. Said it’s terrible. Said Congress needs to fix it. Said he could still pull the US out. Now what? European allies are not buying what Trump’s selling. His own administration is divided. Critics say he’s risking war. This hour, On Point: Beyond North Korea. President Trump goes after Iran
Named by my parents after Christopher Robin, I’ve been a lifelong Pooh-ologist. I memorized A. A. Milne’s “Vespers”—an enchanting little poem about his son’s bedtime prayers—as a tot decades ago. I can recite it still.
Over the past few months, as the size of the Islamic State’s caliphate rapidly shrunk, the Pentagon began citing the number of enemy dead as an important barometer of longer-term success. “We have killed, in conservative estimates...
ISIS may have been defeated in Iraq and Syria, but the ideology that motivated the Islamic State isn't dead yet. We hear about ISIS "provinces" around the world… and about fighters who've returned to their home countries.