In The News

Moderate Syrian Rebels Torn Between Giving Up, Joining Islamic Extremists

Sam Dagher May 6, 2016
The Syrian civil war has raged for more than five years, a long time in a nation where half the people are under the age of 24. Intervention from Russia in recent months has given the Assad regime the upper hand. Assad troops are closing in on moderate Syrian rebels who are forced to decide: surrender and hope to settle with a brutal and corrupt government, team up with extremists, or somehow...

The Myth of the Islamic State: The History of a Political Idea

Mohammed Ayoob May 4, 2016
The goal of a worldwide modern caliphate may be impossible for diverse Muslim nations that lack consensus over universal standards on governance. Phrases like “golden age” are tossed about, yet ignore the challenges, explains Mohammed Ayoob for Foreign Affairs. The Prophet Mohammed died in the year 632, when the world’s population was about 200 million, and Ayoob details the history of the early...

The $2 Trillion Project to Get Saudi Arabia’s Economy Off Oil

Peter Waldman April 26, 2016
Saudi Arabia possesses about 20 percent of the world’s proven petroleum reserves is among the world’s largest exporters, reports OPEC. The oil and gas sector accounts for about half the country’s gross domestic product and almost 90 percent of the state budget, but a slump in oil prices has spurred the kingdom to reduce dependence on oil and act on diversifying the economy. Deputy Crown Prince...

OPEC’s Control Over Global Oil Prices Slips Away

Chris Miller April 26, 2016
Member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries produce about 40 percent of the world's crude oil, with exports representing about 60 percent of petroleum traded internationally. But when OPEC failed to reach agreement on controlling oil production levels at its April meeting, prices surprisingly crept up higher. For now, the global market has concluded that no producer...

Islamic State Has Erased the Line Between Foreign and Domestic Policy

Nader Mousavizadeh April 25, 2016
The rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, both as security threat and driver of desperate refugees, has erased the line between foreign and domestic policy for the United States and Europe, explains author Nader Mousavizadeh for Reuters. He argues that a crisis of confidence challenges traditional politics with “a corrupting gulf between the professed values of democracy and civil rights...

Treating ISIS as Cancer

Bennett Ramberg April 21, 2016
US President Barack Obama and other members of his administration have long labeled the Islamic State as a “cancer” that must be eliminated. Destroying ideological fervor is not easy, and extending the president’s analogy can offer a useful way for determining strategies for defeating the Islamic State extremists once and for all, explains Bennett Ramberg, who served in the Bureau of Politico-...

Refugees and the “Globalization of Indifference”

Uri Friedman April 20, 2016
In 2013, Pope Francis met with immigrants in Lampedusa and warned about a “globalization of indifference.” Three years later, steady flows of refugees continue. “Francis has made the plight of migrants and refugees a core component of his pastoral work… by saying Christians should build bridges, not walls,” writes Uri Friedman for the Atlantic. “He’s argued that the wanderings of the dispossessed...