Category: Analysis

Has Arab Spring mutated into sectarian strife?

     

After Saudi Arabia’s execution of leading Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr sparked a violent protest at the Saudi Embassy in Iran’s capital, Tehran, Saudi Arabia quickly severed ties with its longtime regional… Read more »

Democratization a ‘key focus for Obama’s final year’

     

President Obama will seek to consolidate his ­foreign-policy legacy this year by traveling widely and working with allies to combat extremism and foster the rise of emerging democracies, said deputy… Read more »

Lessons for Syria, learned in Libya

     

Critics are frustrated by the Obama administration’s Syria policy, attacking him for indecisiveness or lack of will to defeat Assad, but President Barack Obama seems to have learned from the… Read more »

Look out for Africa in 2016

     

Dwindling resources for democracy efforts from the United States government could not have come at a worse time, notes J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, especially… Read more »

‘Doubling down’ on democracy in face of new authoritarians?

     

Western liberal democracy now faces a competitor Frances Fukuyama did not anticipate when he wrote “The End of History?,” says Harvard’s Michael Ignatieff: states that are capitalist in economics, authoritarian… Read more »