Category: Blogs

Al-Azhar and Sisi’s Regime: Structural Roots of Disagreement

By Belal Abdallah

Tensions between Egypt’s religious leadership and its political leadership—represented by the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, and Egypt’s President respectively—have reached a point where they can no longer be concealed. The underlying disagreement has become public, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has raised this issue in his public speeches, the most recent of […]

Assad Must Be Held Accountable for All Types of Terror

By Ashish Kumar Sen

US missile strikes cannot be a one-off response, said the Atlantic Council’s Frederic C. Hof US missile strikes on a Syrian air base from where a deadly chemical weapons attack is believed to have been launched send a clear message that the United States is now “directly engaged” in addressing the mass homicide perpetrated by […]

Al-Bab Residents Slowly Return after the City Is Liberated from ISIS

By Hasan Arfeh

On February 23, Turkish and rebel forces seized al-Bab in northern Syria from the Islamic State group (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) after three years under the terrorist group’s control. Like many Syrian cities, since 2011 it was treated unfairly by the media, which stereotyped it as one of ISIS’s strongest bases of support in Syria and […]

Frederic C. Hof’s Statement on US Military Strikes in Syria: This May Signal That the Free Ride for Mass Murder Is Over

By Frederic C. Hof

The American strike on Shayrat air base in Syria is an appropriate response to mass homicide by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. It was from Shayrat that aircrafts were launched on April 4, 2017 to deliver chemical munitions on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing several dozen defenseless civilians, including children. This American strike, which […]

Russia’s New Intermediate Range Missiles – Back to the 1970s

By Stefan Forss

It may be too late to save the INF Treaty, Brookings Senior Fellow, Ambassador Steven Pifer stated recently. “From bases in western Russia, nuclear-armed Russian SSC-8 GLCMs could target Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Rome, Athens, Ankara, and even Paris and London,”

France Investing A Billion More Euros in Cyber Defense Forces

By Marine Pennetier, Reuters

Huddled around their computers, two dozen French 20-somethings have been typing away feverishly for seven hours. Their objective is clear. Eliminate a virus crippling the systems of a government environmental agency.

Innovation Key to Maintaining US Defense Leadership

The United States’ role as a global leader in defense is not “automatic,” it must be maintained and improved by building bridges between the technology and security sectors to encourage innovation in military operations, former US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said at the Atlantic Council on April 4. While the US military “is the finest […]

TRADE in ACTION – April 6, 2017

By Global Business & Economics Program

This week in TradeinAction: President Trump signs two executive orders on trade with the intention of cracking down on trade abuses and minimizing the US trade deficit. The European Union and Mexico are currently meeting in Brussels ahead of a possible EU-Mexico free trade agreement. President Trump meets with President Xi Jinping of China at Mar-a-Lago […]

Brexit Bargain Should Not Include Defense

By Lisa Aronsson

One might have hoped that the United Kingdom’s security relationship with Europe could be kept out of the Brexit negotiations, which will be difficult enough without an added layer of political complexity. Alas, just a week after the UK fired the starting gun on its departure from the European Union, it is already clear that […]

Egyptian Media Hails New Era in US-Egypt Relations

By Dalia Rabie

After years of condemning and rejecting what it considered an intrusive relationship, Egypt’s state media finally hailed a new era of bilateral relations between the US and Egypt ushered in by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s first meeting with his US counterpart Donald Trump on Monday.