Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

Sanctions have become a favorite tool of U.S. policymakers. But they are often crafted too hastily to work or imposed too late to deter adversaries. It’s time for the U.S. government to modernize its favorite foreign policy tool.

As India looks for ways to play a larger role on the world stage, the United States should welcome it into global institutions and reimagine the relationship between Washington and New Delhi.

As tempting the idea of withdrawing from Iraq may be, it would prove a mistake. U.S. troops, civilians, and funds are still needed to fend off terrorist attacks, strengthen the Iraqi state, and maintain a regional balance of power.

The Brexit vote was the result of many things: deep historical forces, individual choices, and the strategies of the campaigns. But above all, it stemmed from the failures of David Cameron’s conservative government, failures with which the United Kingdom will have to live for decades to come.

For years, the United States has failed to devise a strategy to deter or respond to cyberattacks. In the future, it must communicate what behavior is acceptable and what is not—and what Washington will do about it.

Yemen’s civil war is not, despite popular belief, part of a broader Saudi-Iranian conflict, but rather the result of deep historical tensions within Yemen itself. Yet the United States and Saudi Arabia can still do much to improve the humanitarian situation.

Training and equipping militaries in weak states is not the panacea that the U.S. national security community imagines it to be. In many cases, the United States should look for other ways to achieve its goals.

Sticking with the current approach in Afghanistan, as Trump has done, is the only real option. All that’s left is for Washington to try to do it better.

North Korea no longer poses a nonproliferation problem; it poses a nuclear deterrence problem. The United States should repeat the basic strategy that worked against the Soviet Union: practice careful deterrence until the regime in Pyongyang collapses under its own weight.

The terrorist threat has changed. U.S. strategy should change with it. Washington must deny terrorists safe havens, in the real world or online, and work against broader sources of instability that are making much of the world more hospitable to would-be jihadists.

With ISIS’ defeat in Syria looming and Assad’s regime likely to regain the entire country before long, the United States should recognize the limits of its intervention and avoid getting dragged into an endless war. Instead, it should focus its efforts on helping refugees outside Syria.

Russia has embarked on a systemic challenge to the West. Washington must respond by preserving transatlantic unity and strengthening NATO. But it must also maintain dialogue with Moscow to prevent the situation from worsening.

ISIS is transforming from an insurgent organization with a fixed headquarters to a clandestine global terrorist network.

The United States is best off keeping a residual force in Afghanistan—but not escalating, as President Donald Trump plans to do.

In a famous essay from 1969, the Anglo-Jewish liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin distinguished between “two concepts of liberty.” The first concept, negative liberty, implies freedom from external coercion. “By being free in this sense, I mean not being interfered with by others,” Berlin wrote. The second concept, positive liberty, is more prescriptive. It asserts that freedom lies in self-direction and self-mastery.

Two days before the collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt, one man gathered the courage to tell the president the truth: he would be killed in his palace if he did not step down. What came next revealed the bitter power struggles atop the most populous country in the Middle East at its most vulnerable moment in six decades. This is the inside story of the final days of Egypt's modern day pharaoh, who ruled with near autocratic powers for three decades before being forced to resign on February 11, 2011.

Six months ago, Microsoft’s Bill Gates proposed a robot tax, on the grounds that if workers pay taxes, so too should the machines that take their jobs. Such a policy would, in Gates’s words, “slow down the speed” of automation, thereby allowing societies to “manage [the] displacement” of workers. The idea speaks to a widespread sense that the labor market isn’t working like it used to.

A well developed Salafist scene helps explain the disproportionately high levels of radicalization in Catalonia.

The widespread adoption of blockchain would benefit importers and exporters, granting them access to the financial backing that many now lack.

Al Qaeda’s past strength has never been linear, but has waxed and waned based on multiple factors.