Category: Blogs

Inside Assad’s Playbook: Time and Terror

By Bassam Barabandi and Tyler Jess Thompson

Early in my career as a Syrian diplomat, I learned to respect the strategic planning of the Assads. One clear memory is from 2007, during a visit from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. I remember sitting behind a two-way mirror in a room adjacent to the banquet hall at the Four Seasons Damascus.

EconSource: Tunisia’s Supplementary Budget Law

Follow the latest in economic news and developments about the Arab transition coutries. 

Is Iraq Backsliding Toward Another Civil War?

By Omar al-Dulimi

Iraqi politicians are gathering today to elect a new president, in their continuing struggle to take a small but vital step toward ending political deadlock and creating a power-sharing government.

Protecting Ukraine Means Supplementing the OSCE

By James Rupert

International Diplomacy on the Russia-Ukraine War Has Been Dominated by Moscow As the international community works both to calm the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in southeast Ukraine and to assure a credible investigation of the Malaysian Airlines disaster there, the main body in that effort is the Organization for Security and Cooperation and Europe. But the OSCE […]

Shouldn’t Europe Pay More for its Own Defense?

By Graham Allison, Los Angeles Times

Two decades after the end of the Cold War, the twin trends of overdependence on U.S. power and underinvestment in military might have left European defenses at risk of becoming dangerously irrelevant.

TTIP’s Sixth Round concludes in Brussels

Bridging the Pacific: The Americas’ New Economic Frontier? Please join us at the Atlantic Council in Washington tomorrow morning from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. for the launch of our new report examining opportunities to expand commerce between the United States, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific via an ambitious and robust Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Speakers will […]

Top News: Yemen’s Al-Qaeda Wing Seeks To Set Up Emirate in Hadhramawt

By MENASource

Yemen’s al-Qaeda wing has ordered men and women in Hadhramawt to obey its strict interpretation of Islamic law, saying it aimed to set up an emirate in the remote area. Al-Qaeda has been shifting its operations to Yemen’s eastern Hadhramawt province after the army, backed by US drones, helped drive it out of the south […]

Salvaging What Remains of the Nation State: The Missing Example of Egyptian Democracy

By Amr Hamzawy

Contrary to regimes in other Arab states in the Levant and the Gulf, the Egyptian government has never undermined Arab identity by spreading ideas of a dichotomy between Sunni and Shiite, of a conflict between Sunni-dominated areas and those living in the Shiite crescent, or of a conflict between Arabs and non-Arabs living in the […]

Top News: UN’s Ban and Kerry in Cairo to Discuss Egypt’s Gaza Initiative

By EgyptSource

The US and Egypt sought Tuesday to find an end to two weeks of bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, and officials raised the possibility of restarting stalled peace talks between Israel and Palestinian authorities as a necessary step to avoid sustained violence.

YemenSource | Ceasefire reached in Jawf

By YemenSource

On July 20, the committee tasked with ending the violence between Houthi rebels and the Yemeni army in Jawf reached a ceasefire agreement just days after Houthi rebels took over two military bases in the area.