What is this culture that everyone in Java speaks of? In the nation’s most populous island, syncretism is locked into the DNA. It is bizarre for the Javanese to think of their religion and their cultural history as incompatible; Hindu stories are part of their legacy, even though their religious affiliation might lie elsewhere. Read […]
There is much to be said for what is commonly called a “zero-based review”—a fresh look at a problem or project unencumbered by existing assumptions and practices. Just about any organization or mission could benefit periodically from such an assessment, to make possible the removal of accumulated historical impedimenta. This is true of U.S. foreign […]
Whether its central claim is an inscrutable dream of religiously legitimated sovereignty or a malleable delusion, the appeal of ISIS is easily abstracted from motives available to outsiders. It is, in the incisive words of the New York artist Molly Crabapple, a ‘cosplay Caliphate’, a dress-up festival of blood-soaked nostalgia whose very pretensions to antiquity […]
Today Nigeria, with a population of some 174 million people, is the world’s tenth-largest oil producer, pumping 2.4 million barrels a day, and has the highest gross national product in Africa. But the riches have brought neither stability nor prosperity. A series of military dictatorships siphoned off billions of dollars of oil revenue over Nigeria’s […]
Since its announcement in early April 2015, the interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear program has yielded some $7 billion in sanctions relief for Iran, even though core U.S. and EU sanctions blocking Iranian imports remain in place. Although U.S. President Barack Obama faces tough opposition on the deal from Congress, his EU partners are […]
The fall of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, was both the culmination of a blitzkrieg campaign IS had started in winter 2013 in Iraq and in Syria, seizing the city of Raqqa in May of that year, and the prelude to a wider strategic phase to deepen and expand the group’s dominance. Over the […]
Given the scale of the threat posed by the Islamic State to Iraq and the Middle East, focusing on the implications of US policy is understandable. But whether the current crisis will have a happy ending – or even a tolerable one – depends far more on what the region’s players decide to do. Read […]
For the past eighteen months as representatives from Iran and the P5+1 have negotiated a potentially historic nuclear agreement, a debate has raged on the contents of the deal. While the document itself is critical, what will be more decisive for the success or failure of the agreement is the set of regional, global, and […]
According to theannual Global Peace Index report, released on Wednesday, there are more than 50 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) around the globe right now. Put another way, that’s one in every 133 people worldwide and 0.75 percent of the world population. Put yet another way, that’s roughly the equivalent of the entire […]
Saudi Arabia’s aggressive, interventionist foreign policy has so far led it to wage two external wars in addition to an ongoing battle on the domestic front. The government does not appear to be fighting the three campaigns with the same degree of commitment and dedication, but more important, none of its battles is yet to result in victory. Read […]
looking beyond borders 