ISIS and other groups have appropriated an inherently nonpolitical ideology to suit their political ambitions. In the wake of the bombing of the Russian plane in Sinai and the attacks in Paris, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (also known as ISIS) seems bent on confrontation with the West. The …

On November 23, Gilles Kepel, Fabrice Balanche, and Olivier Decottignies addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Kepel is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies, Paris (Sciences Po), and coauthor of the forthcoming book “Terror in France: The Origin of the French Jihad,” to be …

Despite facing a series of military setbacks throughout Iraq and Syria, ISIS is consolidating its control over a key city in Libya less than 400 miles away from the Italian island of Sicily. Over the past year, ISIS has been deepening its presence in Sirte, a city along Libya’s northwestern Mediterranean …

Bryan Bender It is Syrian Quagmire 2.0. And in the view of American officials, it is anything but an upgrade. Four years into Syria’s civil war and more than a year into a U.S.-led bombing campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group, the U.S. military now faces a …

By Bin White The general election is still almost a year away. But much about the economic picture that will frame the 2016 presidential race will come into focus in the next two weeks as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates for the first time in …

NATO foreign ministers invited tiny Montenegro on Wednesday to join their military alliance in its first expansion since 2009, defying Russian warnings that enlargement of the US-led bloc further into the Balkans would be a provocation. In a scripted session at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, Montenegro’s foreign minister, …

Germany’s state intelligence agency says competition for influence inside the Saudi Arabian royal family is destabilising the wider Middle East, according to domestic media reports. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), one of Germany’s premier daily newspapers, carries the warning from the BND intelligence agency. According to FAZ, the BND …

Iran is entering the global economy, and some investment-bank analysts are starting to get pretty excited. Most outsiders see Iran as an anti-Semitic Islamic state run by extremists who tolerate terrorism (as long as it’s not in Iran). But Iran is also the last large, modern, educated economy …

Where is leadership in the European Union? Who dares to don its trappings, now that German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer seems to command the authority she did up until the end of the summer? After the attacks in Paris, and with refugees still knocking on the door …