Crossing the Line By Steve Coll The New Yorker President Obama’s response to the chemical weapons attacks on August 21, 2013, in a suburb of Damascus have been burdened not just by his comment about chemical warfare as the “red line” for U.S. action in Syria, but also by memories of Iraq. Yet even with […]
By Manuel Langendorf With a heightened sense of urgency to act on Syria, Washington is resorting to moral arguments. What appears to have been a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, has made a potential U.S.-led military strike against the Syrian government a very real possibility. Shocking videos of dozens of dead […]
As tension mounts after Syria’s alleged—though clearly evident—use of chemical weapons to systematically slaughter civilians, outreach against the regime emerged most vocally from the White House and State Department, as well as their counterparts across Europe. Some voices — namely those from China and Russia — are, as expected, silent or deflecting criticism from the […]
Need some reading for the long weekend? We’ve got you covered.
Dr. Reza Aslan is an internationally acclaimed American writer and scholar of religions and author, most recently, of the Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Dr. Aslan is also the founder of Aslan Media, an online journal for news and entertainment about the Middle East and the world, and co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of […]
By Sarwar Kashmeri It is time for the United States to stop spending its resources, goodwill and credibility in the futile quest of trying to influence the trajectory of events in Egypt, Syria and the surrounding Arab states. Leadership now requires that America recognize, no matter how much it may wish it to be otherwise, […]
When small rockets landed in the narrow streets and corridors, fired from government positions in Damascus, families in the neighborhoods of Jobar, Zamalka, Ein Tarma and Arbeen–who have become accustomed to the constant drone of warfare–believed that the thuds were merely part of distant fighting. Many went back to their homes, where alongside their […]
Need some reading for the weekend? We’ve got you covered.
The classic book The Guns of August is not exactly standard summertime beach reading material. It is, however, a book I like to turn to every once in a while to remind me of the role of folly in international affairs. In the book, author Barbara Tuchman studiously examines the role of misconception, misperception and […]
In the hours just before dawn neighborhoods outside Damascus got cloaked in a grey mist of chemical agents that delivered a deadly payload and killed scores of innocent Syrian people. We don’t yet know definitively who set off this inhumane attack, but we can surmise that whoever was behind it is able to strategically command a […]
A year ago, I presented a workshop at the Foreign Policy Association’s Global Careers Boot Camp in Boston. The workshop was about how to “Land a Job in International Development” for new entrants or individuals transitioning from other sectors into the international development sector. This made me reflect about the type of information that may be […]
Can we clear the air? Foreign policy — like domestic policy and, say, physics — has its own vocabulary that obscures meanings and is often in the eye of the beholder. As with the ultimate nebulo-phrase, “affirmative action,” language that appears neutral can either be deceptive or interpreted across a spectrum. A handful of these […]
Zero Degrees of al Qaeda By J.M. Berger Foreign Policy Twitter could be the most effective jihadist recruiter in online radicalization. With a powerful recommendation feature designed to find accounts that are relevant to your interests, a potential recruit can be introduced to a web of terrorist organizations in mere clicks. Could this ease of […]
Yesterday’s massacre in Egypt: the military, the long standing power there, struck back against the supporters of the democratically elected despot, Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood. 525 people were killed; no doubt the toll of the dead will soon rise. Thousands were injured, many of those thousands gravely so. A replay in one day of […]
I don’t know who deserves the attribution as far as the coining is concerned, I only know—like the terms Islamism, sharia, and jihad — so-called political Islam is a loaded term that stirs storms of controversy. Despite that baggage, it is the prevalent concept that defines all political parties and movements with Islamic references. This […]