“The Lausanne Framework: A Promising Foundation for a Nuclear Deal with Iran”
The talks produced a surprisingly complete and detailed framework for working out the details of a comprehensive agreement. But as President Obama and his negotiating team are the first to acknowledge, many critical issues remain unresolved, the hardest bargaining lies ahead, and success is far from guaranteed.
By Robert Einhorn, Brookings Blogs. Einhorn is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Arms Control and Nonproliferation Initiative and its Center for 21st Century Security. In his State Department career, Einhorn served as Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation during the Clinton Administration and as a special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control with the Obama Administration.
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/04/07-einhorn-iran-p5-obama-lausanne-framework-promising-foundation
“The Iran Deal and Its Consequences”
Mixing shrewd diplomacy with defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has turned the negotiation on its head.
By Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz, the Wall Street Journal. Kissinger and Schultz are former Secretaries of State.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iran-deal-and-its-consequences-1428447582
“Dissing the Deal: Iran’s Supreme Leader Throws the Nuclear Agreement into New Uncertainty”
Defenders of the administration’s diplomatic outreach to Iran argued that Khamenei’s kvetching reflects nothing more than domestic posturing. This is simply not accurate. But neither can it be said that the speech reflects a definitive shift in Iran’s negotiating positions.
By Suzanne Maloney, Brookings Blogs. Maloney is a senior fellow at Brookings’s Center for Middle East Policy. She’s a former State Department policy adviser and the author of a book titled Iran’s Long Reach: Iran as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World.
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/04/10-iran-khamenei-supreme-leader-nuclear-deal-lausanne
“How Ben Cardin and Bob Corker Clinched the Iran Deal”
The inside story on the agreement that would give Congress a month to review a final multilateral deal with Iran and allow lawmakers to block Obama from lifting legislative sanctions.
By Manu Raju and Burgess Everett, Politico. Raju and Burgess are congressional reporters with Politico magazine.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/ben-cardin-bob-corker-iran-deal-116979.html
“Obama’s Castro Handshake Returns U.S. Leadership to Latin America”
The president deftly navigated the treacherous waters at the Panama summit. But challenges remain.
By Leon Krauze, the Daily Beast. Krauze, a Mexican journalist, anchors Univision’s evening newscast in Los Angeles and also hosts “Open Source” on the new cable channel Fusion.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/13/obama-s-castro-handshake-returns-u-s-leadership-to-latin-america.html
“The Dangers of the Arab Intervention in Yemen”
The well-examined history of civil wars offers a clear warning that greater Saudi intervention in Yemen is unlikely to improve the situation and could easily undermine the Kingdom’s own security and stability. This is a situation where the United States needs to restrain its allies for their own good.
By Kenneth M. Pollack, Brookings Blogs. Pollack is a senior fellow with the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy.
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/03/26-pollack-saudi-air-strikes-yemen
“Can Ukraine Save Itself from Vladimir Putin and the Oligarchs?”
The keys to building a modern European nation in Ukraine are two heroic efforts now under way: de-shadowing (bringing the grey economy into the open to help with public finances) and de-oligarchization.
By Timothy Garton Ash, the Guardian. Ash is a professor of European Studies at Oxford University who writes a weekly column for the Guardian and frequently contributes to the New York Review of Books.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/03/ukraine-save-itself-vladimir-putin-oligarchs?CMP=share_btn_fb
“Iraq Is Finished”
Iraqi tribal leaders on the enemy destroying their country from within. A common view, propagated by Sunni and Shiite alike, is that ISIS is the creation of the United States.
By Emma Sky, The Atlantic. Sky is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and the author of The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/iraq-is-finished-isis-origin/389901/
“How ISIS Came to Power”
To defeat the Islamic State, the West must understand the grievances that fuel the movement. A review of Patrick Coburn’s The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the Sunni Uprising.
By Robert Ford, Journal of Democracy. Ford is as a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. He recently retired from the Foreign Service after serving as U.S. Ambassador to Syria from 2010 to 2014, and previously as Ambassador to Algeria.
http://www.democracyjournal.org/36/how-isis-came-to-power.php
“The Reign of Terror, Year XX”
Back in 1996 the wider world had never heard of Bin Laden. But consider the sundry Islamist insurgencies around the world now, each of them marked by local peculiarities, and all of them emitting the same medieval fragrance of paranoia, millenarianism, and superstition. A look at the state of jihad and counter-jihad in the middle of a long war.
By Paul Berman, Tablet. Berman is the author of A Tale of Two Utopias, Terrorism and Liberalism, and Power and Idealists.
http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/189654/the-reign-of-terror-year-xx?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=deb396f80a-Tuesday_March_17_20153_17_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-deb396f80a-207334713
“Bob Work Details the Future of War at Army Defense College”
In a recent speech Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work described a future “battlefield that is swept by precision-guided munitions but also one that is swept by persistent and effective cyber and electronic warfare attacks.” That fighting, he added, will include regular warfare, hybrid warfare, nonlinear warfare, state-sponsored proxy hybrid warfare, and high-end combined-arms warfare.
By Cheryl Pellerin, DoDNews. Pellerin is a senior staff reporter for DoDNews.
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=128550
Transcript of Work’s speech:
http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1930
“Elections in Turkey: No Way Out”
Eight weeks before general elections, it seems to have dawned on some in the AKP elite that President Erdogan is becoming a problem. But is there anyone who can check him?
By Steven A. Cook, the American Interest. Cook is the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/04/07/no-way-out/
“The Offending Art: Political Cartooning After the Charlie Hebdo Attacks”
Satirists around the world come to terms with the danger of “punching up” at those in power.
By Jonathan Guyer, Nieman Reports. Guyer is senior editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. He has written about Arabic media and satire for Foreign Policy, the Guardian, and other publications, and is a contributor to Public Radio International’s “The World.”
http://niemanreports.org/articles/the-offending-art-political-cartooning-after-the-charlie-hebdo-attacks/