Hamdi Malik, Foreign Affairs
A New Prime Minister Looks to Bring Shiite Militias Under Baghdad’s Control.
Galen Jackson, War on the Rocks
After holding three elections in less than a year, Israelis appear to be finally getting a break from having to go to the polls. On April 20, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party agreed to form a unity government with the leader of the opposition Blue and White Party, Benny Gantz. As part of the deal that the two sides negotiated, Netanyahu will be allowed to let the Knesset — Israel’s parliament — hold a vote on whether Israel should unilaterally... Читать дальше...
H. Al-Hashimi, Center for Global Policy
After the loss of its caliphate last year, ISIS overhauled its structures. A clearer picture of its post-caliphate leadership has emerged from details gathered by Iraqi intelligence agencies. Below is an exclusive analysis on the group’s efforts to revive itself institutionally under new management.
George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures
The drawdown of U.S. forces in the Middle East, about which we have written a few times now, is already empowering the countries that would replace it as a regional power. The evolution started with the U.K. and ends with Israel.
John Burtka, The American Conservative
We can win this great power competition without war, but decoupling is inevitable.
Robert Kaplan, National Interest
Republican internationalism helped bring America through the Cold War and was specifically responsible for its successful and peaceful conclusion under Reagan and the elder Bush. It has more miles to run, now that a second cold war might conceivably be in our midst. And if Biden wins the presidency, such foreign policy ideas could very well be back in vogue.
Holmes Chan, Lowy Interpreter
Beijing’s proposed new national security law raises the stakes of pro-democracy protests.
Bradley Babson, 38 North
While North Korea’s COVID-19 containment measures are already showing negative impacts on its economy, the pandemic is just the latest challenge to the country’s economic development plans. The North’s relatively promising economic outlook in 2016 was dealt a devastating blow in 2017, as its barrage of nuclear and missile testing brought about intensified sanctions and economic contraction. Despite robust diplomatic engagements with South Korea and the US over the next two years... Читать дальше...
Bonny Brooks, Arc
Has the coronavirus brought us together, or are the culture wars mutating?
M. Kirkpatrick, Bush Center
Doug Bandow, The Hill
Despite the COVID-19 crisis, Washington policymakers fixated on the status of Kim Jong-un, the 36-year-old leader of an isolated, impoverished state half a world away. Then came reports of North Korean construction of ICBMs and a new missile support facility.
Jason Brodsky, Newsweek
Planes and fuel tankers from Iran have been crossing the Atlantic en route to Venezuela. They undermine the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaigns against both ruling regimes—as well as the security of the Americas. It's time to stop ignoring the threat.
Noah Smith, Bloomberg
Restrictions on international finance threaten to join those being imposed on people and trade.
Russell Berman, RealClearWorld
Michael Rubin, National Interest
China may believe intimidation and the sort of ‘salami-slicing’ in which it engages in the South China Sea will enable it to act without consequence against India. That would be a tragic miscalculation.
Joshua Yaffa, New Yorker
From the moment Vladimir Putin first took office, more than twenty years ago, he has returned time and again to the idea of the “vertical of power,” or a top-down apparatus of state authority that has become a trademark of his rule. This “vertical” was pitched as an antidote to the supposed disarray and fecklessness of the Russian state in the nineties; by contrast, Putin’s Russia would be run as a coherent, hierarchical machine, with him at the very...
