Recent Posts

Wagner Group in Africa: Russia’s presence on the continent increasingly relies on mercenaries

Mercenaries have been a fixture in Africa since the second half of the 20th century. They have been used to protect incumbent leaders or install new ones in conflict zones. Their offering – guns for hire – has remained essentially the same for decades. However, they’ve recently undergone an evolution …

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Oil on the Jihadi Fire: The Repercussions of a Wagner Group Deployment to Burkina Faso

Abstract: On January 18, 2023, the military regime in Burkina Faso demanded that France withdraw its troops from the country within a month, stoking fears that another African country is set to hire the Kremlin’s favorite mercenaries, the Wagner Group, to help contain Burkina Faso’s worsening jihadi insurgency. There seems …

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What the Neocons Got Wrong

And How the Iraq War Taught Me About the Limits of American Power Shortly after September 11, 2001, I became known as a “neoconservative.” The term was a bit puzzling, because I wasn’t new to conservatism; I had been on the right ever since I could remember. But the “neocon” …

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