Category: Blogs

Why I’m Not Giving Up on Ukraine

By Diane Francis

It’s hard to keep the faith in Ukraine, given the attempts to claw back reforms and repeated attacks against anticorruption activists. But a successful Pakistani-born businessman, Mohammad Zahoor, isn’t giving up on Ukraine. He owns The Kyiv Post, a twenty-year-old English language newspaper that crusades for democracy, the rule of law, free markets, and western integration. […]

Frederic C. Hof’s remarks at the NATO Parliamentary Forum

By Frederic C. Hof

Below are remarks by Ambassador Frederic C. Hof at the NATO Parliamentary Forum at the National Defense University on Dec. 11, 2017 that touched upon the evolving US approach to Syria and Iraq. I’ve been asked to discuss the evolving US approach to Iraq and Syria. I will try to do so as accurately and as briefly as […]

Abrams Tanks and the Banner of Hussein: Syria’s Kurds Nervously Watch Ongoing Events

By Samah Rahbeh

In his book entitled Barzani and the History of the Kurdish Liberation Movement, Masoud Barzani President of Iraqi Kurdistan, wrote that his father Mullah Mustafa once said: “We are willing to become the fifty-first American state if that is what it takes for our cause to succeed.” However, once the 1975 Algiers Agreement between Iran […]

Old Ukraine Declares War on New Ukraine

By Vitaliy Sych

The masks have been torn off. Law enforcement officers and lawmakers have launched a frontal attack on the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) for the first time. On December 6, pro-government faction leaders Artur Gerasimov and Maxim Burbak registered a bill to remove the head of NABU, Artem Sytnyk. Wow, consider this: the bill’s […]

TRADE IN ACTION December 7

By Global Business & Economics Program

THIS WEEK IN TRADEThis week saw the much-touted PM May and President Juncker lunch which did not end the way many hoped when Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) objected to the wording of a text on the future operation of the border – read a review of the chaotic events by BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg here.

Reconstruction Funds Will Not Change Assad’s Behavior in Syria

The promise of foreign reconstruction aid will not induce cooperation from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which is why international efforts to rebuild the war-ravaged country should focus on local solutions, removed from the regime’s sphere of influence, according to an Atlantic Council analyst. “A regime that would rather have gone through what it had to […]

What on Earth Is Going on in Ukraine?

By Josh Cohen

On December 7, Ukraine’s parliament is likely to dismiss the head of Ukraine’s only independent anticorruption body, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). Established in 2015 to target high-level crimes committed by the country’s corrupt political class, NABU has demonstrated a high level of independence led by its director Artem Sytnyk. It has not hesitated to […]

Africa’s political fault-lines: As Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis trends toward intensifying rhetoric and violence, how long can the movement last?

By Alexandra Fairbend

Cameroon’s crisis, which pits a marginalized group of English-speakers against the Francophone majority, has taken a dangerous turn. The conflict has its roots in the colonial era, when British and French territories were awkwardly combined to form modern-day Cameroon. Anglophones have wanted autonomy for decades, but in the past year, they have mounted a full-throated […]

Freeze assets to halt the war in Libya

By Nedal M. Swehli

In yet another attempt to resolve Libya’s war, on September 20, the United Nations presented a new Action Plan for Libya, supposedly to form a legitimate, functioning, and unified government. But this Action Plan will also fall short of what is needed to end this crisis because it misses a key point: it focuses on […]