It is still on balance worth the United States hanging on in Afghanistan, for a variety of reasons. There is no chance of military victory over the Taliban. Nor, without a U.S. commitment to withdraw its troops and accept a major share of power for the Taliban, does there seem any serious chance of a...Read More

Trump’s Iran threats pull from the playbook he used for North Korea, but Iran is a different kind of adversary altogether. US President Donald Trump’s tweet in all capitals, warning Iranian President Hassan Rouhani of a catastrophic war and to “BE CAUTIOUS!”, was, some would say, typical Trumpian bluster, and not dissimilar to his first...Read More

It is increasingly clear that for powerful elements of the Trump administration backed by the Israel lobby, the demand for a renegotiation of the Iran nuclear deal is only a thin cover for a strategy of regime change in Iran. This has been explicitly stated by some of them. Mike Pompeo’s twelve demands to Iran...Read More

Atlanticists on both side of the pond have used the current standoff with Russia over Ukraine to reassert the centrality of NATO and of the transatlantic partnership. Continued interest in a united and purposeful West is a good thing, but the conceptual basis of the transatlantic relationship is outdated and in urgent need of overhaul....Read More

Today, as we approach the end of the second Bush administration, with a new administration in the offing next January, and as the ‘credit crunch’ further undermines what has been the world’s sole hyper-power for the past two decades, there is a general view that, somehow, the ‘War on Terror’ is also coming to an...Read More

The intention of this paper is to place the current security issues in the Middle East in a global context and to do so in terms of the next three decades. Over that time span there are likely to be four main determinants of global peace and conflict. DOWNLOAD THE FULL POLICY PAPER HERE.Read More