War & Conflict Archive

For Ban Ki-moon, the past few weeks have arguably been the most dramatic he has encountered since becoming United Nations secretary-general nearly four years ago. In Côte d’Ivoire, U.N. peacekeepers are guarding the internationally recognized winner of this month’s presidential election while the country slides toward chaos. Meanwhile, in New York, the Security Council spent Sunday locked in fruitless debates on the simmering Korean crisis. Ban, as South Korea’s former foreign minister, can do little to shape the council’s discussions of his home country’s security. He has based his tenure on maintaining good relations with both Washington and Beijing, and […]

This report offers a closer look at the background and political career of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president and popular leader enjoyingsupportin Sudan’s north.

The publicly released overview document summarizing President Barack Obama’s review of U.S. strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan touts a number of successes over the last year but concludes that “the challenge remains to make our gains durable and sustainable.” In language very similar to the assessments made for Iraq after the “surge” had begun there in 2007, the report points to positive trends but warns that “these gains remain fragile and reversible.” Over the last few weeks, administration officials had already signaled that there will be no change to U.S. strategy in the immediate future. And while Obama remains committed […]

This United National Television report explores the expansion of political and other media in Iraq along with the challenges faced by journalists as overall levels of violence have fallen significantly during the past three years in the war-torn nation.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy Seventh Annual Forum in Washington, D.C., on December 10, 2010.

The world is undergoing a period of significant defense retrenchment. The U.K. has cut back dramatically on its defense budget and is making potentially transformative cuts to the storied Royal Navy. NATO’s members have gone back to the drawing board for a new Strategic Concept to guide the organization’s often-questioned mission. In Asia, the U.S. is assessing its relations with old allies and courting new ones, always with an eye to hedging China’s rise. And elsewhere, regional security organizations seek to define their role. This World Politics Review special report examines the global security picture through articles published from March […]

In the latest of a series of violent incidents involving Islamic militants in Tajikistan, police forces clashed with suspected extremists in the country’s northern Isfara district this fall. The government has taken measures to crack down on growing religious extremism, but some Tajiks fear those steps could backfire.