In The News

Jurist: The US Abandons Legal Obligations in Syria

Louis René Beres July 18, 2018
Donald Trump undermined numerous US commitments, institutions, policies and values in his summit with Vladimir Putin. The rest of the world has long depended on the United States to uphold human rights, justice and other values. Syrians – under attack by extremists and Russian intervention – are vulnerable. Millions of Syrians have been displaced and thousands killed, some with chemical weapons....

The New York Times: Global Increase in Armed Groups

Kenneth R. Rosen June 29, 2018
The increasing number of localized armed groups worldwide poses a challenge for humanitarian workers. The groups, characterized as “looser, with less top-down control,” are generally informed on international humanitarian law, writes Kenneth Rosen. Humanitarian workers struggle to communicate with non-state fighters, and this adds to the challenges of treating wounded soldiers and civilians....

Reuters: Why Yemen Is at War

Angus McDowall June 18, 2018
The civil war in Yemen has raged for three years, and the country has struggled with internal divisions since North Yemen and South Yemen united in 1990. Extremists as well as neighboring powers, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, have taken advantage of the divisions. The 2011 Arab Spring protests led to more divisions and the president stepped down. The deputy president took over in 2012,...

Los Angeles Times: US Tested by Sadr’s Victory in Iraqi

Tracy Wilkinson and David S. Cloud May 16, 2018
Democracy ensures that one nation may not appreciate election results of another nation, and a longtime opponent of the United States took the lead in Iraq’s parliamentary elections. “For years during the long U.S. occupation of Iraq, Muqtada Sadr was an intractable foe, blamed by the Pentagon for hundreds of deaths of American service members, as well as atrocities against Iraqi civilians,”...

Haaretz: Netanyahu Says Iran Nuclear Deal Is Based on Lies

Noa Landau May 1, 2018
With a document release, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that Iran has deceived the world about its ambitions for nuclear weapons. “Netanyahu referred to a secret Iranian nuclear project, codenamed ‘Amad, which he said had been shelved in 2003, though he said work in the field had continued,” reports Noa Landau for Haaretz. In a news conference, he claimed Iran lied about...

New Statesman: No Serious Strategy for Syria

John Bew April 23, 2018
After seven years of civil war, Syria is in peril. UN peace efforts have flailed, and leaders of Iran, Turkey and Russia have met just before a chemical attack on Ghouta. The three countries do not agree on a role for Syria’s leader Bashar al-Assad, but are “are increasingly alienated from the West, have a substantive military presence on the ground within Syria, want to keep the Saudis and...

Korea Times: Talks Underway to End the Korean War

Kim Rahn April 18, 2018
A formal peace treaty will be the topic for two summits, one between North and South Korea in April and a later one with the United States and North Korea. “The two Koreas remain technically at war as the Korean War ended only with the armistice agreement,” reports Kim Rahn for the Korea Times. North Korea, China and the United Nations Command signed the armistice agreement that suspended...