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This past month has seen some well-written policy briefs being published on NOREF’s (the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre’s) website. As the name might suggest, a major theme running through the collection of articles is peace — and also how women can contribute. I’ve just chosen three to focus on in this post, however there are […]

According to a new Gallup survey, more than two-thirds of the U.S. public has a positive impression of India, a score that even edges out Israel’s traditionally high favorability rating.  This is the latest indicator of how decisively American perceptions about the country have changed.  Not too long ago, India was regarded as the very […]

Not so long ago, after twelve hours in the air, I found myself stranded at an international airport at 2 in the morning. The flight had been delayed—my pre-arranged pickup had abandoned his mission or just not shown up, and there was one taxi about to pull out and head home for the night. I was still 90 miles from my room for the night, and offered him twice the normal rate to take on one last fare, which he pointed out, wasn’t even close, direction-wise, to his own waiting bed. But for twice the money, and for Allah, he would do it.

Britain is suffering its worst winter in 50 years. Everyone is grumbling about their fuel bills and wondering what has happened to spring. Soccer and rugby matches and horse-racing fixtures have been canceled. The government has warned that if the weather persists like this for another couple of weeks, rationing may be necessary. While Prime […]

Tom Donilon, the U.S. national security advisor, was at the Asia Society in New York last week to talk (transcript here; video here) about the Obama administration’s effort to shift Washington’s strategic focus away from the military quagmires of the Greater Middle East to the dynamism of Asia – a region where, as the president […]

After nearly two decades of conflict, the Democratic Republic of the Congo makes a regular appearance in international news. The most recent chapter of the story is the conflict between the Congolese government and the M23 rebel group which started in April 2012. The back and forth fighting since then displaced more than 300,000 people […]

  “When force is necessary, we will continue to do so in a way that reflects our values and strengthens our legitimacy, and we will seek broad international support, working with such institutions as NATO and the U.N. Security Council.”  — President Obama (2010 National Security Strategy)  Is it time for the international community to […]

The irony, of course, is that the FSA is just an umbrella term for a loose aggregation of Sunni militias whose best units–and consequently the fighters awarded the most money and the most lethal weapons– are, according to its own reports, puritanical Islamic jihadists, shouting ‘death to the United States and the West’ even as these targets scramble to comply with strategies the Saudis clearly believe are in their own best and immediate interests.

  Almost immediately after Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis I, the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, questions regarding his human rights record were being asked. The niceties of his election to the papacy, that Francis is the first Pope to be Jesuit and to hail from the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere, were […]

By Sarwar Kashmeri “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role,” former Secretary of State Dean Acheson presciently observed in his 1962 speech at the U.S. Military Academy/West Point.  It is the epigram with which David Hannay, the former British diplomat, and one of Britain’s most distinguished foreign service veterans, introduces […]

Tomorrow, March 15th, will mark the final day of the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW57). As mentioned in my previous post, the theme running throughout the session is the issue of violence against women (VAW). If you’re unsure as to why this is a necessary focus, please remember that […]

Currently, remote warfare — namely, drone warfare and issues around cyber attacks — is occupying a large part of the national security debate in the United States. Developments like the Mandiant report, which implicated China’s military in cyber attacks on U.S. business and government, and Rand Paul’s Senate filibuster of now-CIA chief John Brennan’s nomination, […]