Jun 5, 2012

The Houla massacre

The situation in Syria continues to worsen. While accurate information is difficult to acquire, all indications are that the country hovers on the brink of a civil war. The most recent atrocity is a massacre in the town of Houla that left at least ...

Mar 20, 2012

Mistaken presumptions about Assad's Syria

by Roger Owen

Syria’s uprising against President Bashar Assad, which began peacefully in Damascus a year ago, has become increasingly brutal and splintered. As the death toll nears 9,000, calls for international intervention have increased — but what worked in places like Libya won’t necessarily succeed in ...

Mar 19, 2012

Syrian crisis shadowed by outcome in Libya

by John J. Metzler

As the conflict in Syria churns out a ghastly human carnage, diplomatic efforts to halt the violence are shadowed by last year’s intervention in the Libyan conflict, which resulted in a six-month-long military operation to topple a tyrant. So, when the U.N. Security Council ...

Feb 20, 2012

How the Arab Spring was hijacked

by Brahma Chellaney

A year after the Arab Spring came to symbolize the ascent of people’s power, hope has given way to a bleak sequel. The democratic awakening has fallen prey to murky geopolitics that has cleaved the Arab Spring into two parts, with the oil monarchies ...

Jan 27, 2012

Conciliating the Armenians

by Gwynne Dyer

I go to France quite often, but after this article is published, I may be liable to arrest if I set foot in the country. The French parliament has just passed a bill, proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, that will make it a ...