Category: Timely Commentary & Analysis

“Why do some hostages die, and some are released?”

By Nicholas Burns

THIS LAST week’s deeply contrasting stories of two New Englanders caught in the Middle East’s maelstrom of violence — the savage murder of James Foley and the joyous release from captivity of Peter Theo Curtis — point to a central question: Why do some hostages die while others are released?

The Disintegration of Libya

By Ricardo René Larémont

Bottom Line Up Front: Opposing militias are battling for the control of Libya among the worst violence since the fall of the Qadhafi regime in 2011; a civil war which may continue for years has begun The Libyan government’s mistakes early during the transition process after the fall of Qadhafi included delegation of policing authority […]

Jason Healey Speaks at Two Hackers Conferences

Imagine that twenty years after Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type, the Pope and the petty princes – in fact, anyone who tried hard enough – had the ability to determine exactly who was printing exactly what. Worrying about intellectual property theft, privacy or civil rights violations, had those concepts existed, would be missing the […]

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. […]