International and Foreign
3,149 Articles

Yemeni Human Rights Activist Radhya Al-Mutawakel’s Speech to the UN Security Council
Yesterday, leading human rights defender Radhya Almutawakel, the Chairperson of the Yemeni NGO, Mwatana Organization for Human Rights, briefed the UN Security Council on the war…

The UAE’s Military and Naval Reliance on Eritrea Makes the War in Yemen Even Riskier for the U.S.
The Saudi-led coalition’s near three-year conflict in Yemen appears to be converging on the Houthi-controlled city of Hodeidah. Foreign diplomats, international humanitarian…

New Atrocities Prevention & Response Legislation Introduced
I posted earlier about a new bipartisan bill to advance accountability in Syria: the Syrian War Crimes Accountability Act of 2017 (current status is here). Two additional pieces…
Recap of Recent Posts on Just Security (May 20-26)
I. Foreign Policy Michael Posner, Tillerson’s Degradation of Human Rights Mustn’t–and Can’t Yet–be Executive Branch Policy (Monday, May 22) Sydney Blumenthal, What…

Norms Watch: Democracy, the Trump Administration, and Reactions to It (May 19-26)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of…

Q & A With Citizen Lab on “Tainted Leaks” and Russia’s Disinformation Campaign
On Thursday, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab published evidence of a dangerous new twist in the war against truth. Russia-linked hackers, dubbed CyberBerkut, have…

Russia and a Divided United States: What Comes After Trump?
While the United States, along with its Western allies, became preoccupied with post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, global counterterrorism operations, and the aftermath of…

A Proposal for Space, Not Time, to Negotiate Peace in the Middle East
President Donald Trump was in Israel this week to reboot peace talks between the Jewish state and the Palestinians. Many believe this is premature, pointing to the litany of past…

What Lincoln Thought of “America First”
Abraham Lincoln neither spoke nor read any language other than English and would never travel abroad, but he was an internationalist in sentiment, conviction and politics. His…

When is a Mercenary (Not) a Mercenary? The Case of Foreign Fighters in the UAE’s Military
When the going gets tough, politics tends to trump law, and words start to lose meaning. You can see it in the culture of sloppiness and misdirection that has developed around…

Don’t Be So Quick to Call Those Disclosures “Legal”
Following multiple reports that President Trump disclosed highly classified information to Russian officials at a private meeting, various legal experts have asserted that Trump…
National Security-Related Congressional Hearings, May 15-19
Tuesday, May 16 10:00am – Senate Committee on Foreign Relations – Business Meeting (here) 2:30pm – Senate Committee on Intelligence – Intelligence Matters (Closed) (here)…