Earlier this week Stephen Walt drew the wrong lesson from the Arab uprisings: So let me get this straight: one former dictator ultimately decides not to unleash massive force against anti-government demonstrators, and eventually leaves power more-or-less peacefully, if not exactly voluntarily. His reward? He winds up in jail (maybe deservedly). Another dictator responds by […]
The UN Security Council should not have referred the Libya situation to the ICC, claim many on the Right, because now Qaddafi has no incentive to step down. If potential prosecution awaits after his ouster, they say, he has every incentive to hold his ground. The ICC referral, the argument goes, is a barrier to […]
Amman is a vast, sprawling metropolis, but not very exciting. A map of the city looks like the cross section of an enormous anthill, with curving roads criss-crossing each other and leading nowhere in particular. It was an epic hassle to get to our hotel – do no Jordanian taxi drivers know how to read […]
Once again I respond to a post by FPA Israel blogger Ben Moscovitch. Not to pick on him. But because we disagree on many things and it seems worthwhile to me to discuss them. Hopefully he agrees. Ben’s most recent post criticizes Obama for drawing a parallel between the Passover story and the protest movements […]
Business relationships are often directly linked to human rights violations. A UN report, “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect, and Remedy” Framework,” will be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council during the June 2011 session. The report has three pillars (page 4, item 6): The State has […]
I stand with the FPA Israel blog’s Zev Wexler, The New York Times’ Roger Cohen, and the three Goldstone Report co-authors who are not Richard Goldstone in thinking that Goldstone’s recent recantation is “bizarre,” as Cohen put it. Goldstone asserts that Israeli military investigations “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of […]
Pakistan has told the United States to halt drone strikes on Pakistani territory. Thus, the debate about the legality of the U.S. drones program has taken a new turn. (For background, see my analysis of the Wittes-O’Connell debate on this issue from last year.) How does one determine whether the United States can legally continue […]
I had planned to blog on the subject topic last month in honor of Women’s History Month but fell behind in my planned schedule because of travel and focus on other issues. In December I participated in a Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers Roundtable on the role of Female Engagement Teams in Afghanistan; and in […]
Guest blogger Jackie Miller looks back at the highlights from the Obama administration’s 2010 nuclear spring, including the Nuclear Security Summit and the singing of New START.
I’ve fallen a little behind in my Middle East series. Though now a little out-of-date, this is the Syria post. I was there in the middle of February, so this will give you an excellent idea of how quickly things have changed there. Then, things were quiet. Now, things are spiraling out of control. Assad […]
Before discussing globalization’s effect on India and how social entrepreneurs are making a difference, I would like to clarify a few terms. For the most part, when globalization is discussed, I mean economic globalization. To simplify a complex idea, it refers to the world becoming smaller – figuratively speaking – and more inter-connected. Some have […]
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