Category: Analysis

Is Poland a failing democracy?

     

Poland’s new right-wing government faces international demands to roll back radical changes to the country’s institutions, but the odds that it will suffer any serious punishment from Brussels are close to zero, analyst Jan Cienski… Read more »

Turkey: Erdogan’s ‘dangerous dance with radicalism’

     

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s flirtation with radical Islam in Syria and march from liberal democratic reformer to illiberal populist authoritarian have confused Americans trying to deal with Turkey, which… Read more »

Exporting the Chinese Model?

     

  As 2016 begins, an historic contest is underway, largely hidden from public view, over competing Chinese and Western strategies to promote economic growth, notes Francis Fukuyama, a senior fellow… Read more »

The authoritarian hijacking of soft power

     

A renewed struggle between democracy and authoritarianism has emerged, argues Christopher Walker, executive director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy. The decade-long democratic… Read more »

Requiem for the Arab Spring

     

  Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution shook the Middle East, setting off the hopeful uprisings that came to be known as the Arab Spring, AFP reports: But five years later, the countries… Read more »

What’s next for Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution?

     

  Tunisia’s main Islamist party, Ennahda, re-emerged as the dominant faction in Parliament on Monday as mass resignations from President Béji Caïd Essebsi’s secular party continued, largely to protest his… Read more »

Ukraine: the good, the bad, the irreversible

     

  Ordinary Ukrainians, Euromaidan activists and military veterans are despondent at the complete lack of progress in the fight against high-level corruption and the dominance of Ukraine’s oligarchs, says a… Read more »

Twilight of the Putin Era?

     

While the Kremlin’s new national security strategy is not devoid of foreign policy goals, it is actually heavily focused on Russia itself, notes Olga Oliker. In this context, it’s notable… Read more »

When rhetoric collided with reality in the Middle East

     

  President Obama came to office far more focused on showing the world that the Bush era was over than on any coherent strategy of his own for advancing human… Read more »