South Asia

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.

Critics of ethnofederalism—a political system in which federal subunits reflect ethnic groups’ territorial distribution—argue that it facilitates secession and state collapse. An examination of post-1945 ethnofederal states, however, shows that ethnofederalism has succeeded more often than not.

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

"Globalization has the effect of incapacitating states as autonomous units."

"In How the Weak Win Wars, Arreguin-Toft means to convince the reader that when the very strong meet the weak in asymmetric armed conflict, strategy matters more than power. Despite minor excursions in his conclusions, he achieves this goal through expert scholarly analysis and a writing style that elucidates complex topics with facility. His work is extremely relevant in the current geopolitical context and serves as a warning to US policy makers to get military strategy right, regardless of relative power. Arreguin-Toft's argument makes perfectly clear the perilous consequences of neglecting the importance of strategic interaction."

— Edward Bradfield, Harvard International Review (Summer 2005)

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...."

"In recent decades, area studies and international relations specialists have conducted and published research with little dialogue between their respective fields, especially concerning the impact of culture on states...."