Category: Blogs

Turkey’s fighter pilot problems

By Aaron Stein

The failed coup-attempt on July 15, 2016 upended the Turkish Air Force and prompted the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to purge pilots and air crews from the military. The Air Force played a central part in the failed coup attempt. Although only some two-dozen F-16 pilots took part in the coup in eleven […]

Rescinding DACA Undermines Trump’s Central America Policy

By Juan Felipe Celia

US President Donald J. Trump’s September 4 decision to rescind a program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of young people who were illegally brought to the United States to remain in the country undermines his administration’s stance towards Central America. While Trump reportedly vacillated until the last hour about whether to end the program […]

An Atlantic Council Roadmap for State Department Reform

A new Atlantic Council report that seeks to enhance the US State Department’s effectiveness recommends, among other things, a more results-oriented budget and streamlined foreign aid.  A key recommendation is to use the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as “the platform to build a more robust, effective civilian assistance capacity, empowering it with an […]

The Local Movement Against Jabhat al-Nusra’s Civil Administration

By Abdullah Almousa

An assault by the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham coalition led by Jabhat al-Nusra against Ahrar al-Sham in July left HTS in charge of the border with Turkey as well as border crossings including Bab al-Hawa, Atma and Khirbet al-Joz, prompting Turkey to temporarily close them.

Scarred: How Famine Shaped Modern Ukraine and Russia

By Diane Francis

In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin committed crimes against humanity by purposely starving to death more than four million Ukrainians for resisting his Five-Year Plan to collectivize agriculture. Millions more fled and in 1937, Stalin executed or imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian leaders and influencers. For three more generations, Russia kept Stalin’s genocide hidden until […]

Pyongyang’s Ambitions Have Nothing to Do with Kyiv and Everything to Do with Moscow

By Lada Roslycky

The North Korean leadership, headed by 33-year-old Kim Jong-un, is openly threatening its neighbors, as well as the United States, with missile strikes. How has this little country, most of whose citizens live in poverty, managed to cause such a global security issue? A recent New York Times article accused Ukraine of illegally supplying rocket […]

Will Ukraine’s Parliament Accomplish Anything This Fall?

By Olena Prokopenko and Christina Parandii

On September 5, a new political season began in Ukraine. Parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy has already branded parliament’s new plenary session “the autumn of reforms” by promising to deliver results on some of the most hot-button issues, including healthcare, pension, education, and judicial reforms. Parliament is behind and needs to kick things into high gear; […]

Iran, Turkey Key to Turkmenistan Realizing its Energy Potential

By Masoud Mostajabi

Turkmenistan must invest in new infrastructure to export its vast energy resources if it is to become a substantial player in the global energy market. Achieving this objective would reduce Turkey and the European Union (EU)’s dependence on Russian gas. Turkmenistan boasts the sixth-largest natural gas reserves in the world, an estimated 617 trillion cubic […]

The United States’ ‘Horrible Options’ for Dealing with North Korea

By Ashish Kumar Sen

With Kim Jong-un ratcheting up tensions on the Korean Peninsula, US President Donald J. Trump is left with two “horrible” options to deal with the threat posed by the North Korean regime, according to Atlantic Council board member and a former acting and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Michael Morell. Acknowledging that […]

Germany’s compact with Africa

By Xaviera Gitau

Over the past three years, as thousands of refugees drowned off Europe’s coasts, Germany’s open-door policy towards asylum seekers propelled the country to a position of global humanitarian leadership, and turned its chancellor, Angela Merkel, into a global icon for human rights advocates. As of 2016, the nation of 82.5 million absorbed 890,000 refugees, and […]