Showing results by publisher "Foreign Affairs" in Politics & Government

World politics is entering a new phase, in which the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of international conflict will be cultural.

Instead of trying to predict "Black Swan" events such as coups or crises, forecasters should look at how political systems handle disorder. The best indicator of a country's future trajectory is not a lengthy past stability, but recent moderate volatility.

Responding to Mearsheimer's controversial essay blaming the West for the Ukraine crisis, McFaul and Sestanovich put the blame back on Putin and his ideological extremism, denying that NATO expansion provoked him. Mearsheimer replies.

Europe’s political climate is more hostile to Jews now than at any time in recent memory. Rising anti-Semitism among Europe’s Muslims, especially in the wake of the war in Gaza, is one reason for this change. But to claim that the rise of Muslim anti-Semitism is the main culprit - as the German journalist Jochen Bittner did this week in The New York Times - is to overlook the role played by the European majority.

The Russian millennials who will inherit Vladimir Putin's political system won't upend it. Drawing on hours of conversations with Russia's future leaders, Ellen Mickewicz explains why they will uphold the status quo.

Conventional wisdom about the 1953 coup in Iran rests on the myth that the CIA toppled the country's democratically elected prime minister. In reality, the coup was primarily a domestic Iranian affair, and the CIA's impact was ultimately insignificant.

As Moscow assumes an aggressive new posture toward NATO, Blackwell argues, Washington must keep tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Blechman replies.

Recent surveys conducted in Syria reveal that Islamist fighters are surprisingly supportive of democracy. Here's why.

The past few weeks have seen a wave of Muslims from all around the world joining the ranks of ISIS. Although most of the attention has been on those coming from the United States and Europe, the bulk of foreign fighters has actually come from places like Turkey, from which the flow of jihadists is particularly puzzling.

By launching an e-residency program, Estonia is leading the way to a new market - one in which states compete for customers just as businesses do.

The Millennium Development Goals are due to expire at the end of 2015, and debate has turned to what should come next, with hundreds of new targets already proposed. Governments need to focus carefully and decide which goals offer the greatest returns on investment.

Revolts against authoritarian regimes don’t always succeed - but they're more likely to if they embrace civil resistance rather than violence. Over the last century, nonviolent campaigns have been twice as likely to succeed as violent ones and they increase the chances that toppling a dictatorship will lead to peace and democracy.

A successful right-wing campaign in India to suppress the work of Wendi Doniger, a prominent scholar of Hinduism, suggests that conservative voices are gaining the upper hand in the country’s long struggle between secular liberalism and religious nationalism.

Many have warned that even if a Iran accepts a nuclear deal, it will continue to develop nuclear weapons in secret. In reality, however, Iran simply doesn't have the capability to build the bomb without getting caught.

Two recent books about Soviet history help answer questions raised by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine: What is wrong with Russia and why, despite two decades of optimistic predictions that it was on track to become a "normal" country, has it never become one?

Xi Jinping’s reforms are designed to produce a corruption-free, politically cohesive, and economically powerful one-party state with global reach: a Singapore on steroids. But there is no guarantee the reforms will be as transformative as the Chinese leader hopes.

U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe had little military value during the Cold War and they have even less today. Instead of giving these aging weapons a costly upgrade, Washington should begin phasing them out.

A century on, discussions about the Ottoman massacre of Armenians are still dominated by questions surrounding the use of one fraught and divisive word: "Genocide". Washington should use the term, but also recognize its many limitations.

Korb argues that Iraqi politicians and American generals, rather than the Obama administration, are to blame for the bungled withdrawal from Iraq. Brennan Replies.

A hundred years after World War I, new accounts of the drama help listeners navigate the intricacies of European politics and the political and diplomatic maneuverings that kicked off the war. Yet there is still no consensus on its origins or lessons.