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.
CIA director Mike Pompeo made a secret trip to North Korea and met with the country's leader Kim Jong Un. He's also trying to get confirmed as Secretary of State, the nation's top diplomat.
s many of us spent the weekend celebrating Easter brunch or a Passover Seder, Mike Pompeo secretly slipped into North Korea to test the prospects for President Trump’s most daring diplomatic gambit. The C.I.A. director’s covert talks with North Korea’s mercurial young leader, Kim Jong Un, apparently went well.
The Afghan government has recently embarked on important reforms to the national budget, embodied in the 2018 budget approved by Parliament early this year. This budget sets in motion an envisaged two-year reform process to achieve greater overall transparency, better...
Earlier last week, before Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Syrian chemical weapons facilities, a senior Pentagon official looked down at his coffee and shook his head. “Do you remember that thing our parents used to get us?” he asked. “You know, it was a cylinder and you turned it and all of the colors at the end changed.” He thought for a moment. “Oh yeah, a kaleidoscope” he said. “That’s what it was called.” He smiled and continued: “Well, that’s Syria.”
A New York Times column about the Central African Republic (CAR), “Conflict is More Powerful Than Peace”, from two-time Pulitzer winner Nick Kristof, is a big deal. The African nation’s ongoing conflicts constitute one of the least-known political crises of our time. The only substantial coverage CAR received before...
The Trump administration made clear that attacks against Syria's chemical weapons program had one purpose: to deter Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from using such weapons again in future as he had done, the United States and others said, recently in the city of Douma. Friday night's strike came one year after the US hit the Assad regime in similar fashion after Damascus had allegedly carried out...
With support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the Assad regime has managed to consolidate power in most parts of Syria previously held by ISIS. Apart from Friday’s joint missile strikes, the U.S.’s role has been limited to diplomatic talks, which has yielded few results in sustaining ceasefires in the seven-year-long war. The New Yorker’s Robin Wright joins Hari Sreenivasan for more.
.S. President Donald Trump woke up on April 11 and once again bombarded Twitter with messages targeting his long-time buddy Vladimir Putin over his support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who the U.S. sees as responsible for last week’s chemical attack in Douma that killed at least 80 people. The aftermath has...
When President Barack Obama contemplated a military strike in Syria after its leader’s use of chemical weapons five years ago, the pugnacious former U.N. ambassador John Bolton argued against intervention.
President Donald Trump's order for U.S. missile strikes on Syria has once again called attention to the presence of American troops who have operated inside Syria since early 2016.