Category: Analysis

‘Three Steps Forward – Two Steps Back’: Ukraine needs assistance – and reform

     

It’s time for the US to come to the aid of Ukraine, says Antony J. Blinken (@ABlinken), a managing director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement,… Read more »

The Future Is History? How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

     

“This is what the Putin regime represents: an entire society psychologically damaged and unwilling to come to terms with its own past, leading to a widespread depression and belief that… Read more »

Venezuela’s boliburguesía ‘kleptolobby’ highlights perils of populism

     

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is in Moscow, where he is due to hold talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin said earlier that Maduro will meet with Putin… Read more »

A democratic antidote to Russia’s information warfare

     

Russia is employing information warfare to exploit social divisions and tragedies such as the Las Vegas mass shooting, Aaron Aupperlee writes for the Tribune-Review: The Alliance for Securing Democracy, an… Read more »

Non-state actors exporting kleptocratic norms, ‘Neo-Gulag values’ to the West

     

There persists among post-Soviet and other kleptocratic elites a profound disdain for democratic and ethical principles, reflected and reinforced by a pervasive culture of physical theft and intellectual dishonesty in… Read more »

Will Hamas’s ‘Hezbollah model’ scupper Palestinian reconciliation?

     

Hamas’ supreme leader says his group will not give up its weapons, a vow that is sure to complicate reconciliation talks with the rival Fatah movement, The Washington Post reports:… Read more »

Stepan, Turkey and Islam’s democratic compatibility

     

The emergence of an “upstart populist party” like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been facilitated in no small part by a widespread fear that Islam and democracy are incompatible,… Read more »

Is Tunisia’s democracy being derailed?

     

Over the course of just one week, the Tunisian government has made three concerning moves that, taken together, signal a major backsliding in its democratic development, Carnegie analyst Sarah Yerkes writes… Read more »