Russia

Trabzon, Turkey (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – When former U.S. President Barack Obama referred to Russia as a “regional power” at the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, he minimized Moscow’s global influence while recognizing its ability to a have an impact on events within its immediate vicinity. Obama further downplayed the notion […]

Featured

Why Iran can’t Stand up for the al-Assad Government: Russia isn’t Offering Air Support

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The strategic situation in Syria is dire for the Baathist government of Bashar al-Assad. Typically in military history, if an invader takes the capital of the other country, it secures its victory. Damascus is the prize. Damascus has an Achilles heel. It is landlocked, deep in the south of the […]

Bashar al-Assad

Syria as Putin’s Afghanistan: How a Radical Fundamentalist take-over of Damascus could Change the Middle East

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The collapse of the Baathist government of Syria in the north of the country, as the al-Qaeda affiliate HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or the Levant Liberation Council) advanced into Aleppo and Hama, could reconfigure the Middle East. The rapidity of the advance and the Muslim fundamentalist leadership of the fighters […]

Israel/ Palestine

The West must end its Two-Tier Approach to Protection of Civilians in Gaza and Ukraine

Human Rights Watch

Published in: The New Arab Yasmine Ahmed Director, United Kingdom YasmineAhmed001 ( Human Rights Watch ) – Britain’s response to the attack, delivered by Ambassador Barbara Woodward at the UN Security Council meeting in Kyiv was unequivocal: the attack was a display of “cowardly depravity,” and Russia’s actions constituted “barbaric acts of violence.” Attacks directed at […]

Featured

NATO must rethink Expansion Plans, step back from Precipice of Nuclear Confrontation with Russia

Richard Penaskovic

Auburn, Alabama (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – There’s a history to the war between Russia and the West going back to the Cold War and the unification between East and West Germany. Thomas Friedman once asked George Kennan, (the architect of the US Cold War strategy on containment), what he thought about NATO expansion, […]

Israel/ Palestine

Israel, Russia and International Law

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Lawrence S. Wittner | ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – International law―the recognized rules of behavior among nations based on customary practices and treaties, among them the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights―has been agreed upon by large and small nations alike. To implement this law, the nations of […]

Israel/ Palestine

Gaza and Ukraine Wars Causing Massive Pollution, Environmental Damage

The Conversation

By Richard Marcantonio, University of Notre Dame and Josefina Echavarria Alvarez, University of Notre Dame | – (The Conversation) – As wars grind on in Ukraine and Gaza, another location ravaged by conflict is taking steps to implement a historic peace agreement. From the mid-1960s through 2016, Colombia was torn by conflict between the government, […]

Israel/ Palestine

Ukraine, Israel, and the Incoherence of U.S. Foreign Policy

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The process of crafting congressional legislation is often likened to sausage-making. Best not to look behind the scenes at the mechanics of the process, which is a bloody mess. But the analogy is not apt. Sure, sausage-making can be ugly. The end product, however, is presentable and usually […]

Israel/ Palestine

The Most Dangerous Wars: When Local Conflicts become Geopolitics

Foreign Policy in Focus

By Walden Bello ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The three major wars or conflicts that are ongoing today demonstrate the volatility of the intersection between the local and the global. In the Hamas-Israeli conflict, we see how the maintenance of the Israeli settler-colonial state is intertwined with the preservation of the global hegemony […]