Recent Posts

Iraq: Stabilising the Contested District of Sinjar

What’s new? In October 2020, Baghdad and Erbil signed an agreement intended to build stability in Iraq’s Sinjar district through a new administration and security structure that would let displaced people return. The deal is only partly fulfilled, however. Turkey is intensifying bombardment of the PKK and its affiliates in the …

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Tesla’s China Game

It has not been a great spring for Tesla. As the American electric vehicle manufacturer’s stock led the recent market nosedive and its provocative CEO Elon Musk obsessed over his bid to buy Twitter, his beefs with the Biden administration and an allegation of misconduct by a private jet flight …

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As Ukraine loses troops, how long can it keep up the fight?

As soon as they had finished burying a veteran colonel killed by Russian shelling, the cemetery workers readied the next hole. Inevitably, given how quickly death is felling Ukrainian troops on the front lines, the empty grave won’t stay that way for long. Col. Oleksandr Makhachek left behind a widow, …

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On Iran, Biden should reverse Trump’s imaginary statecraft

After countless ups, downs and near-death scrapes, the negotiations to restart the Iran nuclear deal appear to be hung up on one final disagreement: an end-of-game demand by Tehran to have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps removed from the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. On this question likely hangs …

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Lebanon just had an election. Its result? Curb the optimism.

There’s little to celebrate about the outcome of Lebanon’s parliamentary elections on May 15. While the results demonstrate that an active minority are angry, the low voter turnout—41 percent—in an election billed as “decisive” for Lebanon’s future reveals that the country’s citizens are largely apathetic or disillusioned about the prospects …

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