... refugees.
Leaders like Angela Merkel of Germany, trying to show kindness and compassion to refugees, may be ousted sooner by politics rather than later for her troubles, and other governments balk at attempts to coordinate regional refugee and economic ... ... governments whose missions are resisting pressures of EU policy, as racial, ethnic, and religious tension, fears of Islamic terrorism, nativism, and demagogues become ever more commonplace, it is terrifying to envision its future, too. An autocratic ...
... to compromise with and accommodate Iraqis Sunnis and others that created the current crisis with ISIS. The sad truth is that if Maliki had treated the Sunnis and Kurds more fairly, the Iraqi government—Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds united against terrorism as they were back in 2007—would have been in a strong position to fend off any ISIS incursions coming into Iraq from Syria. If anything, the internal dynamics of Syria spilled over into Iraq, not the other way around, and hardly related ...
... particularly appropriate for Putin’s strategy because his methods of pursuing whatever gains he seeks pose risks that threaten to harm Russia’s interests more than those gains would help them: Russia is particularly vulnerable to Sunni extremist terrorism for a number of clear reasons and its moves in Syria, as I have written before, are only going to expose Russia to further attacks. If Russia is so concerned with 10% of its arms sales and access to a few military bases in Syria, I am certain ...
... stadium during a live match, at a restaurant, at a theater during a concert. For those who bring up drone attacks, as if they are some sort of moral equivalent. Drones involve precision weapons, and strikes target those are terrorists or involved in terrorism. There are civilian deaths in these attacks quite often, but with no evidence to the contrary we cannot legitimately make the claim that those civilians are the intended targets and that there is not a legitimate intended target, even if intelligence ...
... end of Bush’s first term and all of his second (this poisonous political atmosphere only got worse after Obama was elected). Furthermore, if Obama was able to muster Congressional support, it would empower him that much more in the public and politics senses. And yet, Obama’s putting so much power and influence in the hands of Congress on so crucial an action showed that he had learned almost nothing at all from his previous interactions with Congress, whether with insecure Democrats ...
... to avoid reaching out to Sunnis and Kurds.
So by the time the Obama Administration completed the withdrawal of U.S. troops in December 2011, I had come to agree that, having spent blood and treasure to give Iraqi politicians breathing room to make politics work—the explicit stated objective of the “Surge”—while having seen no serious effort at politics on the part of Iraq’s government, having seen that our leverage and influence (being eclipsed by Iran) was clearly ...
... encounter in Gaza in the summer of 2014. Their leadership decimated by a failed revolt against British rule in Palestine in the 1930s, the Palestinian Arabs were a mess when the British, exhausted emotionally and materially from WWII and facing Jewish terrorism in Palestine, announced their decision to leave and transfer responsibility to the fledgling United Nations. In the ensuing conflict, Israel established a state, but some 700,000 Arabs fled because of direct expulsion at the hands of Jewish ...
When It Comes to U.S. Relationships in the Middle East, Expect a Lot More Change in Coming Years and Decades.
By Brian E. Frydenborg, originally published January 5th, 2015
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2014 has certainly been a year of change. While an ostensible explanation for this would be the...
... Iraq—including 40,000 defenseless Yazidi civilians who could all perish or be killed in a matter of days—or the country of Iraq in the face of such a reckless and violent onslaught and possible formal disintegration?
The Solution: Local Politics First, or No Cavalry
Obama brilliantly approved and executed a plan that minimized the potential pitfalls and maximized the potential payoffs of both action and inaction. For one thing, he decided that in the process of helping Iraqis in this ...
