検索キーワード： ナレーター "Kevin Stillwell" すべてのカテゴリー

Al Qaeda’s past strength has never been linear, but has waxed and waned based on multiple factors.

In February, Moscow and Washington issued a joint statement announcing the terms of a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria - a truce agreed to by major world powers, regional players, and most of the participants in the Syrian civil war. Given the fierce mutual recriminations that have become typical of US-Russian relations in re-cent years, the tone of the statement suggested a surprising degree of common cause.

In June 29, 2014, the Islamic State (also called ISIS) declared the “State of the Islamic Caliphate,” which adherents and supporters regard as nothing less than a restoration of the earliest model of the caliphate.

In recent weeks, a succession of US and European officials have warned that military operations to stop the creeping advance of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the shattered North African state of Libya are imminent. Since the summer of 2014, ISIS has exploited a governance vacuum and a factional civil war in Libya to expand what was once just a toehold into a foothold. It has clashed with, and in some areas displaced, older jihadist groups affiliated with al Qaeda.

Thirty years ago, many Europeans saw multiculturalism - the em-brace of an inclusive, diverse society - as an answer to Europe’s social problems. Today, a growing number consider it to be a cause of them.

Ó Gráda argues that some very poor economies are especially vulnerable to famines. In places where the level of food consumption is already low, even small shocks - a shortfall in food production, for example, or a disruption in the supply chain - can lead to a full-scale crisis.


Wardah Nur never imagined that she would become a soldier. And, until ten years ago, she couldn’t have. Nur belongs to a small, elite group - the 2013 "lady cadets", as they are called - the latest batch of women to train at the Pakistan Military Academy since it began accepting them in 2006 during General Pervez Musharraf’s presidency.

Since the early 1990s, a handful of oligarchs has dominated Greece’s economy and politics. So long as these elites have a vested interest in keeping things as they are, the country will never fully find its way out of crisis.

Ninety-five percent of intercontinental communications traffic travels not by air or through space, but by undersea cable. The United States, however, is failing to protect this critical infrastructure. Here's how Washington must change course.

At times this spring, the second analyst’s forecasts would have been on the money. Having followed the bitter election, he or she would have foretold the nature of the transition and the early weeks of the new administration as a logical continuation of the campaign. The starkly nationalist rhetoric of Trump’s inaugural address; the president’s unpredictable tweets; the departure of Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after only 25 days in office.

Training and equipping militaries in weak states is not the panacea that the U.S. national security community imagines it to be. In many cases, the United States should look for other ways to achieve its goals.

Last October, when the American destroyer USS Lassen sailed by Subi Reef, an artificial island built by China in the South China Sea, a number of Chinese merchant ships and fishing boats maneuvered around it, apparently having anticipated its approach. The Lassen was on a freedom of navigation operation, meant to demonstrate the United States’ commitment to maintaining open access to the area, much of which China claims as its own.

The May/June 2016 Issue of Foreign Affairs.

"What Really Happened in Iran", by Ray Takeyh: Conventional wisdom about the 1953 coup in Iran rests on the myth that the CIA toppled the country's democratically elected prime minister. In reality, the coup was primarily a domestic Iranian affair, and the CIA's impact was ultimately insignificant.

At a time when Russian relations with the United States and western European countries are growing cold, the relatively warm ties between China and Russia have attracted renewed interest. Scholars and journalists in the West find themselves debating the nature of the Chinese-Russian partnership and wondering whether it will evolve into an alliance.

It is a measure of how much the United States’ security has improved since the more dangerous moments of the Cold War that the most troublesome issues in the military field today concern not weapons of mass destruction but targeted killing. The power that comes with access to the nuclear codes, of course, remains foremost when considering a presidential candidate’s fitness for office. Yet no American leader has authorized the use of nuclear weapons since 1945.

Ancient Rome was a village that grew into a world empire. At the peak of its territorial reach, AD 117, it stretched from the British Isles to Mesopotamia and from the Rhine to the Sahara. Its history spans more than a millennium. Before the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century, Romans enjoyed a standard of living not seen again in the West until the mid-nineteenth century. They had flush toilets, granite countertops, indoor heating, and even cosmetic dentistry.

The United States has a variety of legal and illegal drug markets, and more than its share of the evils of addiction, illicit trafficking, and drug-related incarceration. But two of those markets—those for cannabis and opioids—will force themselves on the attention of the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

When Barack Obama was elected U.S. president in 2008, the news was greeted with enormous hope in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as among the small coterie of Americans who follow the region closely.

In 2016, as President Robert Mugabe celebrates his 92nd birthday and 36th year in power, Zimbabwe stands on the brink of another meltdown. The country’s current economic insecurity and political conflict are reminiscent of 2000-2008, when hyperinflation and electoral violence were rife. This time, however, the stakes are even higher as a floundering authoritarian regime faces a leadership succession with little clear guidance on how to navigate the transition.