South Asia

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."

In the global revulsion at the recent terror attacks in four Muslim countries, the United States and its allies have a new opportunity to build a unified command against the Islamic State and other extremists. FDP Senior Fellow David Ignatius examines the diplomatic relationships needed to create an effective counterterrorism strategy.

The tensions unsettling the Saudi royal family became clear in September, when Joseph Westphal, the U.S. ambassador to Riyadh, flew to Jiddah to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, nominally the heir to the throne. But when he arrived, he was told that the deputy crown prince, a brash 30-year-old named Mohammed bin Salman, wanted to see him urgently. Senior Fellow, David Ignatius, discusses Mohammed bin Salman opportunity to transform Saudi Arabia.

The premise of the Shiite Crescent assumes that states sharing common sectarian ties tend to form alliances and choose cooperation partners. But do they?

What happened to the world's transition to secularism?

Western policy makers should consider the response of ethnic minorities when assessing regime stability in Iran. Policy toward Iran should include strategies to deal with the political demands of Iranian ethnic groups — demands that are only likely to grow.

"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."

"The terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon triggered the most rapid and dramatic change in the history of U.S. foreign policy."

The contributors to The Limits of Culture find that, contrary to the currently popular view, culture is rarely more important than other factors in shaping the foreign policies of countries in the Caspian region.

Read the Foreign Affairs review.

"This study examined the foreign policies of the states of the greater Caspian region throughout the first decade after the Soviet Union's demise and attempted to identify the role of culture in the foreign policy decisions of these states...."