James Dorsey With the 2022 World Cup in Qatar only two years away, and a resolution of the three-year-old Gulf rift nowhere in sight, government officials, soccer governance executives, and pundits are playing with the notion that the tournament could serve as an icebreaker in the dispute between Qatar …

Zlatko Hadzidedic All proxy wars are, by definition, delusional. Usually, two client-states wage a war, one against another, while, actually, their war advances interests of some other states, commonly their sponsor-states.  The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh is not a simple proxy war: its proxiness and …

Ksenia Svetlova How will a Biden Administration change American policies on Iran, the Palestinians and Israel’s tightening relationships with Arab states? Some two years ago, Democrats harshly attacked Trump for withdrawing US troops from Syria and thereby undermining the alliance with the Kurds. However, Democratic leaders also favor …

Giancarlo Ella Valori With its 14th five-year plan, China sets its next strategic objectives. A forward-looking project that can also regard Italy. On October 26, the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China opened in Beijing, with the ambitious goal of …

Farzad Ramezani Bonesh Senior Researcher and Analyst of International Affairs Following several years of widespread conflict between Armenia and Republic of Azerbaijan, the ceasefire ended the conflicts in May 1994. At that time, Armenian forces took control of almost all of Nagorno-Karabakh and several areas around the region, …

Many observers have expressed surprise that in the new war that has broken out between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia is not in a hurry to help its official Collective Security Treaty Organization ally, Armenia. The issue clearly isn’t just that the fighting is not taking place inside Armenia …

Victor Gilinsky There is a risk of a nuclear cascade across the region. The United States can stop it by enforcing the gold standard of nonproliferation. If Washington is serious about blocking the further spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, it must apply a firm rule: …

Giancarlo Elia Valori From 1618 to 1648 Europe was shattered by the violent and relentless conflict between Protestants and Catholics. After the end of the crusades cycle that had seen the first conflict between Christians and Arabs breaking out, what historians later called the “Thirty Years’ War” was …

Brian Raymond If the U.S. government wants to win the information wars, Cold War-era tactics won’t cut it anymore. A “misinformation newsstand” aiming to educate voters about disinformation ahead of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as seen in Manhattan on Oct. 30, 2018.  ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images On …