Category: Article

Beijing and Washington can swerve off collision course

By Robert A. Manning

Only weeks after the recent Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing suggested a US-China relationship moving forward, there are growing fears among US experts and, if a recent Pew poll of Asian opinion is accurate, among many in Asia, that the US and China may be on a collision course. It is the topic of […]

Column: If Maliki Can Go, Why Not Assad?

By Barbara Slavin

The impressive results of U.S. air strikes in Iraq this month are prompting new calls from some quarters for similar U.S. intervention in Syria. Abdulrahman Dadam, president of the Free Aleppo Governorate Council, wrote an impassioned plea for a U.S./NATO no fly zone to protect his historic city from both the Islamic State (IS) and […]

Column: Above All Else, Save the Kurds

By Barbara Slavin

President Barack Obama is clearly not happy about ordering U.S. military intervention in Iraq again. But with Islamic State militants (ISIS) terrifyingly close to the Kurdish capital, Irbil, and 40,000 members of a religious minority facing death on a mountaintop, Obama decided to deploy a limited amount of U.S. airpower in a country where U.S. […]

Column: Epitaph for Gaza: Just Another Cease-fire?

By Barbara Slavin

Among the casualties of the latest Gaza war were nine relatives of a journalist colleague of mine, Asmaa al-Ghoul. They died Sunday, just a day before Israel and Hamas finally accepted a three-day truce. Two missiles fired by a U.S.-supplied Israeli F-16 collapsed their one-story house in the Rafah refugee camp, killing Asmaa’s uncle, Ismail, […]

Stronger Sanctions are Needed to Stop Putin

By Nicholas Burns

VLADIMIR PUTIN has broken all the rules of geopolitics in Ukraine over the last five months. He finally had to pay for his actions this week. The coordinated list of tougher financial, military, and energy sanctions announced by the United States and European Union is a potential turning point. But is it enough to convince […]

Beware the Great Clash in Asia: China vs. America Is Getting Dangerous

By Robert A. Manning

Washington has pursued a policy cooperating with Beijing where interests overlapped—but the dynamics in the Asia-Pacific are changing. A little bit of honesty in U.S. policy toward Asia could go a long way in piercing the Chinese “victim narrative”, which entails China’s view that everything it dislikes in Asia is an outgrowth of a U.S. […]

Column: Free Jason Rezaian, Other Iranian American Detainees

By Barbara Slavin

All Iranian Americans who travel to Iran know they face a certain amount of risk. Obliged to use Iranian passports instead of obtaining visas like other Americans, Iranian Americans can easily be barred from leaving the country and become pawns in the three-decade-old U.S.-Iran confrontation as well as in Iran’s complicated domestic political battles. The […]

Column: A Summer of Innocent Deaths

By Barbara Slavin

Based on past experience, here is the likely outcome of the current Israeli-Palestinian fighting: A cease-fire will come in a few days – perhaps by Monday when the fasting month of Ramadan ends – and will last for a year or two. Another confrontation will follow, once Hamas has replenished its store of rockets and […]

Malaysia Airlines passenger jet shot down over Ukraine, 295 dead

A Malaysian Airlines passenger plane with 295 aboard was shot down by a surface-to-air missile in Ukraine near the Russian border a day after a Ukrainian military jet was downed, Fox News has confirmed.