Articles

With no ambassador, few experts at State, and a team of West Wing advisers who only know “ ‘shoot’ or ‘don’t shoot,’ ” can Trump really change the game with North Korea?

Contrary to conventional wisdom, states with nuclear energy programs are not more likely than those without them to seek or acquire nuclear weapons.

The notion of "tribal culture" in the West often brings to mind images of backward, uneducated and unsophisticated societies. Perpetual chaos in states like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, for instance, is often attributed to tribal culture. It is a sweeping judgment as in many cases geopolitical, historical and even religious factors often play a more significant role than the impact of tribal ethos in defining what causes underdevelopment and violence. Pashtun tribal culture is generally portrayed as the root cause behind their support and sympathy for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. This analysis investigates these notions by studying the profiles of the Pashtun tribes that populate the seven tribal agencies that form Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

"The strategy has four main objectives: homeland defense, defeating terrorism, preventing WMD proliferation, and developing cooperative agendas with other "centers of global power," primarily China, Russia, and India."

"How has a state whose founding fathers were secular people who believed in rule of law and democracy drifted toward religious extremism and authoritarianism? Three primary factors—variations on the Triple A theory of influence (Allah, the Army, and America)—have led Pakistan down this path: a powerful independent military, the mushrooming of religious militant groups, and the hydra-headed monster that is the intelligence services."