On the domestic front, Joe Biden is flirting with transformational policies around energy, environment, and infrastructure. It’s not a revolution, but it’s considerably less timid than what Barack Obama offered in that pre-Trump, pre-pandemic era. When it comes to foreign policy, however,...
Just as President Joe Biden’s administration waited till the very last minute to define its position of vaccine patent waivers, imperiling the effective impact on a pandemic of whatever agreement is finally reached, it has played for time with the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan...
On April 14, a Turkish military base in Bashiqa, some 20 kilometers northeast of Mosul in northern Iraq, was a target of a missile strike that killed a Turkish soldier. The attack happened on the same day that an explosives-laden drone targeted Erbil International Airport in the Kurdistan Region...
International military cooperation can take many forms. When pushed to the extreme, it can even turn into its opposite. What was meant to protect from danger can sometimes become the fact that precipitates an unwanted conflict. For that reason, most nations now seek to avoid the once popular idea...
At the beginning of February, the Biden administration made two relevant decisions on Yemen with far-reaching consequences for the country and US policy in the Arabian Peninsula. The first announcement concerned the end of US support for "offensive operations" conducted by the Saudi-led coalition...
An endgame, traditionally, brings both bad and good news. An endgame is always tense because those involved know things are coming to a head. We can see this in the battle theaters in Yemen over the past weeks. What we don’t see is the reality of how those battles are actually progressing...
When the Ottoman Empire was dismantled in 1922, it created a vacuum which a series of powers have attempted to fill ever since. None has succeeded, and the result has been a century of wars, coups and instability. Iran ruled all these lands before the Arab and Ottoman conquests. It could do so...
As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on the new US president and his foreign policy after successive administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international...
Nothing in recent memory could have possibly done more damage to America’s relations with the Yemeni people and to its image in the region than Washington’s support for the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The conflict produced the worst manmade catastrophe — one that never had to...
The Associated Press offers an update on the standoff between the US and Iran over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran deal, from which Donald Trump as president spectacularly withdrew the US in 2018. Trump committed an act of pure will, with no serious legal...
On February 4, US President Joe Biden visited the US State Department, located down the street from the White House. He went to deliver a foreign policy message much needed by the men and women of that department and the nation. His audience was a receptive one, not surprising given that nearly...
