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, […]
The good news in nuclear arms control this last week was of course China’s rather surprising decision to join in international sanctions against North Korea. The single most important thing about sanctions, almost always, is not their material effect but, rather, when the sanctions are universal, the moral and political impact on the target country […]
From the time that Poland was selected as the host country for the next round of the United Nations climate change negotiations this upcoming November, there have been many skeptics. Poland is one of the nations most reliant on coal, the most carbon intensive of the fossil fuels, for its electricity – especially in […]
Nicholas Whapshott’s 2011 book Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, is a useful primer for those looking to understand the careers and philosophies of the two foundational economists. Perhaps its most striking insight is that neither seemed as absolute about the fact that his philosophy fit all times as the followers of both […]
Brief updates on some of the topics I covered last week: –In Kenya, results of last week’s presidential race point to Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Alliance Coalition party as the winner. With just a hair over 50% of the vote, Kenyatta would gain the presidency without a runoff election. However his opponent Raila Odinga […]
Up until recently, the debate over drone policy has largely been the territory of a small group of vocal critics — a persistent if not particularly high-profile media issue, but not one that particularly troubled the U.S. public. Polls indicated broad popular support for the use of drone strikes abroad, mainly out of a belief […]
Millions of women and young girls across the globe continue to be denied their rights to equal and fair access to education and healthcare and many are faced with gender-based violence such a female genital mutilation (FGM)/female circumcision, child marriage, child trafficking, honor killings, female infantcide, domestic violence and other gender inequality and sexually-based human rights abuses every day. […]
In what seems to be a response to the Corker/Inhofe op-ed in the Wall Street Journal of last week, elder statesmen George Shultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn reiterated their call for more urgent progress on reducing nuclear risks, particularly proliferation. This is their fifth article since their original joint op-ed published in […]
The fragility of democracy has been on full display this week. Distressingly, challenges to freedom and order have occurred literally around the globe. Here is an overview of situations to monitor; all of these stories broke today, Wed. March 6, 2013. Venezuela I would be remiss to not start with the March […]
The Department of State has released a 2000-page draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement regarding the XL Keystone Pipeline. In the words of the executive summary, the report “concludes that approval or denial of the proposed Project is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands, or on the […]
In the spring of 2008, I met with a group of Kenyan human rights activists to discuss what they saw as the most pressing issues in East Africa. At one point, the conversation turned to the post-election violence their country witnessed just a few months before. “I know,” one of them said, shaking her head. […]