Publications
Articles, publications, books, tools and multimedia features from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest news, analysis, research findings, practitioner guides and reports, all related to the conflict zones and issues that are at the center of the Institute’s work to prevent and reduce violent conflict.
Iraq Crisis Builds Bipartisan Support for Keeping U.S. Troops in Afghanistan, Senator Cotton Says
The revival by ISIS of a brutal Islamist offensive in Iraq makes it urgent to prevent a similar reversal in the Afghan war—and is increasing congressional support for President Obama to maintain U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) said today.
China Has Peaked as a Challenger to U.S. Power, Former Secretary of State Shultz Says
While China continues to grow as an economy and a military and political power, its overall influence relative to the United States has passed its peak, former Secretary of State George Shultz said at the U.S. Institute of Peace January 30. As China’s population ages, fewer working-age people must support a larger aged and dependent populace. “I think China, in relation to the U.S., has already reached its peak,” Shultz said in offering the Institute’s annual Dean Acheson Lecture.
To Prevent and Resolve Violent Conflict, “We Need a Ground Game”
In an increasingly globalized, super-connected world, violent conflict moves faster and less predictably than a generation ago, with less regard for national borders. It combines dangerously with cyber networks, social media, environmental degradation and disease.
Afghan President: Pakistan Is Why Peace with Taliban Is Possible
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has declared himself “cautiously optimistic” that he can get Pakistan’s help to negotiate a peaceful end to Afghanistan’s 13-year-old Taliban insurgency. Tonight he explained why.
The Biden-Putin Summit: A Chance to Agree—and Disagree
While Presidents Biden and Putin meet amid the strained U.S.-Russian relations in a generation, this week’s summit could yield moves to rebuild predictability in that relationship, especially new steps to address rising global risks to stability and security. Even as the United States confronts Putin over his wielding of selective chaos as a foreign policy crowbar, both sides share an interest in managing disparate international threats—from the weakening of the limits on nuclear weapons and the emergence of new high technology weapons, to climate change and COVID. The summit could reopen dialogue on such challenges.
This Global Resistance to Putin’s War Is Historic
In just 15 days of Russia’s massive, new assault on Ukraine, democracies worldwide have mounted a historic act of repudiation — diplomatically, economically, militarily and morally. Nations are painfully cutting off trade with Russia. Thousands of public protests across 93 countries, including Russia, are deepening Vladimir Putin’s isolation. This collective support for Ukraine and rejection of Putin’s war is arguably the most unified global response to any act of state violence since the world’s opposition to European fascism during World War II. Sustaining it is how we can defeat Putin’s threat to world peace.
In Ukraine, a War of Rare Clarity Demands Accountability
The world is witnessing a Russian assault so unprovoked, and Ukrainian agony so brutal, that these four weeks have forged a historically rare moment of moral clarity and global unity in affirming the criminality of a war. Nations must convert this clarity and unity into actions. We must sustain support for the Ukrainians who are courageously bearing their unsought role as frontline defenders of the democracy and rule of law on which a peaceful world depends. Second, we must begin now to ensure eventual accountability and justice for the authors of this war. Third, we must buttress our global institutions of that justice.
In Russia’s Hybrid War on Europe, Moldova’s Critical Next 15 Months
A rising risk in southeast Europe is Russia’s sharpening of conflicts to block Moldova’s effort to join the European Union. The Kremlin is escalating a hybrid campaign to manipulate three Moldovan elections over the next 15 months. Moscow last week hosted the formation of a political bloc around its primary Moldovan ally, a fugitive billionaire convicted of the country’s worst-ever bank fraud — and sent a startling flood of pre-election cash that police seized at Moldova’s main airport. This is a critical season for Moldova’s democratic allies to help it defeat Russian disinformation and election subversion.
On Ukraine, Africa Needs a Clearer U.S. Message
As democracies rally to defend an international rules-based system against Russia’s brutal attack on Ukrainians, the United States should forge an alliance with African partners by committing with them now to resolve the Ukraine crisis in a way that makes that system fairer and more inclusive. One early step is for U.S. and other policymakers to highlight the core of this conflict: The 44 million Ukrainians are fighting to govern themselves freely within their internationally recognized borders — a cause that is viscerally real to billions of people across Africa and the “global south.”