Middle East & North Africa

NPR's Ari Shapiro speak with political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who studies civil resistance movements, about the protests China and Iran.

Rather than revolutionizing war, drones demonstrate its evolution. The principle of air warfare remains avoiding exposure to the enemy. Drones are unlikely to shift the offense-defense balance toward the offense because they are vulnerable to attacks from the ground and air.

President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to create a new cabinet-level position for climate-related issues — and to choose so prominent a figure as former Secretary of State John Kerry to fill it — demonstrates Biden’s sincerity over putting climate at the very center of U.S. foreign policy. It is easy to understate the importance of this appointment, given the flurry of czars created by most new administrations.

Nathaniel Moir writes that Revolutionary Warfare is not insurgency or guerrilla warfare: It is driven by ideology and commitment, not technology. Revolutionary Warfare's foundation is the perceived legitimacy of its political rationale among the population in which it is propagated. No matter how expertly or technologically advanced contemporary conflict is fought, it will not compensate for lack of political rationale.

If the history of the USSR is any guide, then IS will not refrain from trying to expand after being recognized. Even after Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, the Soviet government spent decades actively and quite successfully implementing his driving dictum: “Probe with a bayonet: If you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”