Europe

The plight of Armenians (in Nagorny Karabakh) is not of America's doing. A string of poor leaders in Yerevan, Armenia, are at least partially to blame. Russia's failure to live up to its formal and informal commitments to come to the rescue of Armenia and Artsakh played a significant role, too. But even though the current tragedy is not America's fault, Biden should act to defend America's values and interests by, at the very least, compelling Aliyev's government to immediately offer legally binding, verifiable guarantees of security and safety for Karabakh Armenians as well as of their right to preserve their identity and culture.

A new conceptual typology of participation in rebellion identifies four dimensions along which individuals are involved in noncombat labor: logistics, outreach, governance, and community management. These duties are gendered in ways that often make women’s experiences and opportunities uniquely advantageous for rebel organizations.

Stephen Walt writes: So if some political leader came to me for advice or wanted to know what I thought about some foreign-policy maneuver they were contemplating, I'd ask them if they took nationalism into account, and I'd remind them of what happens when major powers ignore it.

SWJ interview with Nathaniel L. Moir, Ph.D., an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Moir is completing a book manuscript on Bernard Fall for publication.

One of the deadliest sites of the Armenian genocide – Ras al-Ayn – has once again fallen under Turkish control because of a ceasefire agreement negotiated by the United States. The incursion of Turkish-backed rebels in the swath of land ceded to Turkey has forced Armenian families to flee – one century after their ancestors fled those who sought to exterminate them. When Turkish President Erdogan visited the White House on Wednesday, President Trump failed to mention the ethnic cleansing campaign and assault on the descendants of Armenian genocide survivors.

A new book edited by Erica Chenoweth, Deborah Avant, Marie Berry, Rachel Epstein, Cullen Hendrix, Oliver Kaplan, and Timothy Sisk, Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence, looks at recent conflicts in Syria, Peru, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Spain, and Colombia to explore the role that civil action played.

Stephen Walt writes that imagined communities will always be a powerful reality in international politics and acknowledging that is a good basis on which to construct a more realistic foreign policy.

Future of Diplomacy Senior Fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls for new frameworks of discussion in the immigration debate in Europe and the U.S.