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2. The Peace Process: Will the Taliban give up its Insurgency in Afghanistan?
- Author:
- Ifran Yar
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- In the wake of the incipient peace process in Afghanistan, new hopes have emerged and an aura of optimism has spread across the country. After the first successful meeting with the Taliban, US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met recently with the insurgents to discuss the peace talks in Qatar. This comes after Russia, reasserting its influence in the region, hosted a landmark international conference aimed at spurring the peace efforts in its restive neighborhood. The meeting was attended by the Taliban and its adversaries and concluded without any formal breakthrough. Since 2010, many efforts have been made to broker a peace deal with the Taliban but to no avail. Will this peace process convince the Taliban to give up its insurgency?
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. Inauspicious Incident: Erdoğan’s Evolving Relationship with Turkey’s Military
- Author:
- Ben Tannenbaum
- Publication Date:
- 10-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- Turkey’s military has historically played an outsized role in the country’s politics. Since assuming power in 2003, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have worked to limit the military’s political influence, a process that has damaged Turkish civil society. The military overthrew the previous AKP government in 1997, and Erdoğan sought to avoid a similar fate. However, after the first decade of Erdoğan’s rule, political loyalties shifted. His chief ally against the military, Fethullah Gülen, became Erdoğan’s principal rival. The drama escalated in 2016 when Gülen allegedly cultivated a cohort of military officers in an attempted coup against Erdoğan. Since thwarting the coup, Erdoğan has successfully re-escalated his quest to constrain the military’s domestic political role. Nevertheless, despite this political feuding, Erdoğan and the Turkish military do hold some common interests on foreign policy. Their overlapping goals have provided some basis for cooperation between Erdoğan and his military. Erdoğan has scored political gains from his relationship with the military, instituting policies that have harmed Turkey’s economy and threatened its democracy.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. Trump isn’t NATO’s Only Problem
- Author:
- Basel Ammane
- Publication Date:
- 10-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- During the last NATO Summit in Brussels in July, the first since the onset of the Trump presidency, observers were carefully watching in anticipation of any indicators about the state of commitment by the US to the alliance. Trump’s antics, such as the insults he levelled at Germany, the impudent demands he made, and the thinly-veiled threat he issued unsurprisingly dominated media coverage. This served as a reminder that the alliance and its members need to work vigorously to safeguard US commitment given that this president’s preoccupation with prodding allies into increasing military spending, though echoed by previous administrations, is much more forceful and borders on the nakedly belligerent. To make matters worse, a skeptical view of alliances that sees them through a transactional prism and portrays them as burdens seems to be a consistent view that President Trump has held for years. This further demonstrates that the risk of a declining US commitment to the alliance is real. But a shaky commitment by a US president is hardly the only source of problems for today’s NATO.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. Limited Justice for Syria on the Horizon
- Author:
- Basel Ammane
- Publication Date:
- 08-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- The recent attacks in Eastern Ghouta in which a swath of land housing a population of 400,000 was surrounded, shelled incessantly and later invaded have refocused the world’s attention on the events in Syria.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
6. Canada Should Reemphasize Its Place in NATO
- Author:
- Basel Ammane
- Publication Date:
- 10-2018
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- While NATO skepticism is by no means a recent phenomenon, the whirlwind unleashed by US President Donald Trump’s blistering declarations and searing criticism of NATO has thrust the alliance into the spotlight in a way it has not been in recent memory.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
7. Nicaragua and the Dynamics of a Revolution
- Author:
- Marcelo Lopez de Aragon
- Publication Date:
- 07-2018
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- Since April 18, 2018, Nicaragua has been stricken by civil unrest initially triggered by the government’s lack of response to wildfires in an environmentally protected reserve. Compounding matters, the government introduced unilateral reforms, which were subsequently withdrawn, to the country’s social security system that would have increased contributions and lowered benefits. Unaccustomed to protests, the government, headed by authoritarian President Daniel Ortega, reacted violently. What began as a relatively small and peaceful protest by university students, was met with brutal force by the police and paramilitary groups using live ammunition fired at civilians. To date, the total body count numbers in the hundreds, with over a thousand injured and hundreds arbitrarily imprisoned. Undaunted, thousands of Nicaraguans have maintained daily protests, demanding the end of the government’s violent attacks. More importantly, their demands have now expanded to also include a complete overhaul of the country’s governmental institutions as they are widely seen as having been manipulated by President Ortega. Undemocratic reforms such as re-writing of the Constitution to allow for his third term in office, the elimination of term limits, and allowing his wife as his Vice-President are core to the protestors’ concerns, which escalated from modest protests around wildfires and changes to social security. These pent up grievances have the protesters demanding the resignation of Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, in power for over 11 years, to be followed by early elections.
- Topic:
- International Affairs and Popular Revolt
- Political Geography:
- Nicaragua and Global Focus
8. Momentous Change in the Nile Basin
- Author:
- Basel Ammane
- Publication Date:
- 01-2017
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- The Nile Basin is among numerous areas around the world that experience water scarcity. Many of the countries that are in it fail to meet the minimum of 2,740 litres per person per day needed to avoid being listed as a country with chronic water scarcity. 1 To make matters worse, the collective population of these countries is expected to rise to around 647 million by 2030, a 52 percent increase from what it was in 2010 according to the UN Population Division
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
9. Brazil: President Temer’s Attempt to Revive the Former Latin American Powerhouse
- Author:
- Marcelo Lopez de Aragon
- Publication Date:
- 08-2017
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- Thanks to the ruling majority in the Brazilian Parliament, President Michel Temer, a self-styled political centrist, was barely saved on August 2, 2017, from undergoing a corruption trial that could have led to his dismissal and potential imprisonment. The Brazilian president is accused of accepting bribes in exchange for granting political favours to various Brazilian companies and politicians since 2010. According to secret telephone recordings taken of the president, these illegal practices reportedly continued after Temer took the presidential reigns. Regardless of the judicial fate of the Brazilian president, the fact that his mandate is peppered with scandals reflects how corruption has spread throughout the Brazilian political system like a cancer metastasized across the halls of power.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
10. The Organization of American States: The Forum of Despair and Economic Interests
- Author:
- Marcelo Lopez de Aragon
- Publication Date:
- 06-2017
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- Founded in 1948, the Organization of American States (OAS) is billed as the premier political multilateral forum of the western hemisphere with 34 member states. At its core, the raison d’être of the OAS rests on the promotion and safeguarding of four pillars: democracy, human rights, security and development.
- Topic:
- International Relations and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus