Middle East & North Africa

"The recent turns of events in the United States, in cities across our great country, have caused within me feelings of dismay and disappointment," writes Gen. (ret.) Vincent K. Brooks.

"As an African American man, the feelings of inadequate and unfulfilled justice that I have felt for too many years of my life come again to the fore. And, as a retired career military officer from the family of a retired career military officer, I see again the threat of the use of the active duty military force on the streets of America, and I see the manipulation of the image of the military by our President. Dismay and disappointment."

The Iraqi parliament’s approval last month of a new government under Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi was a welcome development for a country devastated by terrorism, decades of violence and corruption. Facing COVID-19 and an economy in recession, Mr. al-Kadhimi could not have inherited a more challenging job. 

This paper responds to a topic from the Army War College’s Key Strategic Issues List, 2018-2020: Evaluate the ramifications of China’s and/or Russia’s interests in Africa for U.S. land forces and suggest options, both to compete and to cooperate, to further U.S. interests.

While U.S. land forces may benefit from competition or cooperation with Chinese elements in Africa, I judge that they possess limited agency to compete or cooperate in the context of these definitions. Therefore, I will take a whole-of-government approach to furthering U.S. interests in Africa vis-à-vis China.

Juergen Braunstein and Sachin Silva argue that sovereign wealth funds may be central to governments' efforts to balance public responsibility with private interests in post-pandemic economies.

Grand strategy is hailed by some as a silver bullet for resolving policy drift, while others reject it as a hubristic term. The author argues that expectations of this concept need to be revised. The first half of this article addresses the study of grand strategy. The author identifies and critiques the prominent conceptual frameworks for evaluating grand strategy. He offers an alternative approach for measuring the quality of a state's grand strategy, based on the notion of proportionality. The second half is tailored towards policymakers, as the article assesses the ways in which grand-strategic thinking can be improved in government.

Horizontal nuclear proliferation presents what is sometimes referred to as the "Nth country problem," or identifying which state could be next to acquire nuclear weapons. Nuclear fuel cycle technologies can contribute to both nuclear power generation and weapons development. Consequently, observers often view civilian nuclear programs with suspicion even as research on nuclear latency and the technological inputs of proliferation has added nuance to these discussions. To contribute to this debate, the author puts forth a simple theoretical proposition: En route to developing a civilian nuclear infrastructure and mastering the fuel cycle, states pass through a proliferation "danger zone."

Stephen Walt offers what he considers to be the top five silver linings from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dan Snow is joined by Calder Walton to talk about whether there was a huge intelligence failure around the outbreak of the pandemic, but also whether our intelligence communities are properly organized to realistically evaluate the real nature of the threats to our societies. He also has a bold idea to help avoid a future recurrence.

The State Department inspector general fired by President Trump on Friday was in the final stages of an investigation into whether the administration had unlawfully declared an “emergency” last year to allow the resumption of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their air war in Yemen.

President Trump is playing a tense poker game with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The stakes are America’s oil industry and the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

The 34-year-old prince and the president have been fast friends since Mr. Trump chose Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip and received a lavish welcome. The president stood by the prince when he severed relations with Qatar, and again when he was accused of approving the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. But now the prince is threatening America’s oil industry, U.S. national security and Mr. Trump’s re-election prospects.