Military & Security

Lorenzo Kamel The Thirty Years’ War started in 1618 as a conflict between various Protestant and Catholic states in the Holy Roman Empire. It brought devastation and major population loss to the heart of Europe. Many observers of today’s Middle East have found similarities with that distant past. …

As the US presidential election fast approaches in November, the greatest political spectacle of the year is in full swing. Say what you want about the US, but there is no other country that knows how to put a show on in the same way as our American …

Amy Zalman We humans have a relentless desire to create narratives. We do so out of the random material of our daily lives. As the cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner noted many years ago, this storytelling impulse pervades our daily existence. And yet, most of the time we barely …

by James M. Dorsey We have been given the impossible task of telling you in the words of Hollywood director and actor Woody Allen everything about the Middle East that you want to know and never dared to ask and all of that in 15 minutes. So what …

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL/ISIS is a covert western army designed to carve out a Sunni mini-state in a chaotic Middle East, which is to be fractured along artificial sectarian and ethnic lines. Iraq has been plunged into a further state of chaos over …

The media and right-wing politicians were quick to latch on to last month’s Brussels bombing to support a narrative of nationalism and xenophobia that leads to more war and terrorism. By Catherine Shakdam The horrific terror attacks in Brussels on March 22 were a chilling reminder that radicalism, …

Why Muslims Are Rising Fastest and the Unaffiliated Are Shrinking as a Share of the World’s Population? The religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world’s major religions, as well as by …

Gareth Porter US Secretary of State John Kerry provoked widespread speculation when he referred in testimony before the Senate foreign relations committee last week to “significant discussions” within US President Barack Obama’s administration about a “Plan B” in Syria. The speculation was further stoked by a “senior official” …

The recent agreement between the USA and Russia really solves nothing, it does not even end the war, and both sides are expressing a great deal of caution about its future implementation. And yet, this is a huge victory for Russia. While it is too early to say …