Africa

Whichever party controls the capital city in a civil war is recognized by the international community, but this can weaken the state in the long term.

National self-determination, the principle that US President Woodrow Wilson put on the international agenda in 1918, is generally defined as the right of a people to form its own state. The independence referendums in Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia are the latest examples showing why that principle is so often difficult to apply.

Marriage markets and inflationary brideprice are a powerful driver of participation in violence and drive recruitment into armed groups.

Terrorism experts have long known that poverty is a factor in tempting young men to join radical terrorist groups, but what about bride prices?

Rising brideprice—the mandatory transfer of assets from a man’s family to the family of his bride—is a significant yet little-recognized catalyst for conflict.

Brendan Rittenhouse Green and Austin Long; and Matthew Kroenig respond to Charles Glaser and Steve Fetter's summer 2016 article, "Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China."

A podcast from the Advanced Training Program on Humanitarian Action produced from a Middle East Initiative event on humanitarian negotiations with non-state armed groups featuring Professor Claude Bruderlein; Ashley Jackson; Stig Jarle Hansen; and Abdi Ismail Isse.

"Despite being on different sides of the Syrian civil war, Putin has managed to bring Riyadh into its diplomatic orbit through cooperation on oil policy, given how both Saudi-led OPEC states and Russia need substantially higher prices for government budgets to break even."