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This article originally appeared in the March/April 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs. View it here. Over the last seven years, social upheavals and civil wars have torn apart the political order that had defined the Middle East ever since World War I. Once solid autocracies have fallen by the wayside, their state institutions battered and broken, and their national borders compromised. Syria and Yemen have descended into bloody civil wars worsened by foreign military interventions. A terrorist group, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), seized vast areas of Iraq and Syria before being pushed back by an international coalition led by the United States. In the eyes of the Trump administration,

Johns Hopkins SAIS was honored to host members of the Sikh-American community for a dialogue on diversity in the U.S. military, and the intersection of core values in Sikhism and military service. ​ To kick off the event, a documentary short film was shown detailing the struggles of Bhagat Singh Thind as one of the first Sikhs to serve in the U.S. Army. This was followed by a panel discussion on religious accommodation and the challenges to and opportunity for broader diversity in the U.S. Army. ​ The Honorable Ravi Bhalla spoke of his experiences with the British Air Force and how discipline takes a different, though no less effective, form for Sikhs in military service. Retired Lieutenant

Foreign policy begins at home, and in Europe and the United States the domestic drivers of foreign policy are shifting in important ways. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, the decision of British voters to leave the European Union, and popular pressures on governments of all stripes and colors to deal with the domestic consequences of global flows of people, money and terror all highlight the need for greater understanding of such domestic currents and their respective influence on U.S. and European foreign policies. In this volume, European and American scholars take a closer look at the domestic determinants of foreign policy in the European Union and the United States, with

This article was originally published by The Atlantic on April 25, 2018. View it here. "The Iran Regime-Change Crew Is Back. That probably spells doom for the nuclear deal." Among the most strident critics of the nuclear deal with Iran are those who believe it furthers the survival of its leadership. By throwing Iran’s rulers an economic lifeline, they believe, the deal is an abject failure. America’s goal, they say, should never have been “denuclearization,” but regime change. These days, those regime-change evangelists, having shrugged off the lessons of the Iraq War, are back at the helm of U.S. foreign policy. John Bolton, Donald Trump’s new national-security adviser, has long advocated

The Foreign Policy Institute, Asia Programs, Muse District, & Indus hosted Kaleidoscope Pakistan, an exhibition of works by Naureen Bokhari, curated by Muse District.The photography exhibit and reception were hosted in association with Pakistan Beyond Seventy: The Long View, a conference hosted by Johns Hopkins SAIS Asia Programs & Lahore University of Management Sciences. The event was on the record and open to the media. ​Decades of war on terror and militancy in Pakistan have dominated headlines about a complex culture and country that has shown tremendous resilience against rising militancy and fundamentalist narratives. Under the headlines that scar the image, there also lies a Pakistan

This piece originally appeared in 38 North on April 16, 2018. View it here. A Third Way? In a report published last January in 38 North, “Unpacking a US Decision to Use Force Against North Korea: Issues, Options, and Consequences,” Robert Jervis assesses the efficacy of using force against North Korea. Jervis cautions against assuming that superior US military and economic capabilities guarantee success in denuclearizing the North. He also underscores the uncertainties attendant to even the limited use of force: actors beyond the United States-North Korea binary will influence outcomes, and how North Korea itself will respond is unpredictable. It would be a mistake, Jervis observes, to “attr

Over the last seven years, social upheavals and civil wars have torn apart the political order that had defined the Middle East ever since World War I. Once solid autocracies have fallen by the wayside, their state institutions battered and broken, and their national borders compromised. Syria and Yemen have descended into bloody civil wars worsened by foreign military interventions. A terrorist group, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), seized vast areas of Iraq and Syria before being pushed back by an international coalition led by the United States. In the eyes of the Trump administration, and those of a range of other observers and officials in Washington and the region, there is one

This piece was originally published on September 28, 2017 and is republished with the permission of War on the Rocks. It was informed in part by the Johns Hopkins SAIS-Peking University (PKU) Dialogue, which was made possible by the Betty Lou Hummel Endowment Seed Grant for Collaborative Research on Foreign Policy, awarded to SAIS professors Daniel Markey and Joshua White. The seed grant was established to foster collaborative research involving two or more SAIS faculty from different programs on emerging international issues, to promote research that informs fresh thinking about international policy and to catalyze substantial research projects that may receive external funding. Why The Chi

A year ago yesterday, a chemical attack on sleeping families in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun killed 72 civilians and left 550 wounded. Today is the 26th anniversary of the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo—the longest and the most brutal conflict in European post-World War II history. Tomorrow, one year will have passed since the United States carried out one-off airstrikes on the Shayrat air base in Syria, from which the chemical attack had been launched two days earlier. This time last year, I was reading the reports of the horrifying chemical attack on Idlib while reminiscing about the beginning of the siege on my hometown of Sarajevo. Instinctively, I folded the newspaper page to hi

“Witness: Aleppo Sights, Sounds & Stories from Pre-War Syria,” was a panel discussion and exhibition of Syrian music and photography, hosted at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The program included a panel discussion about pre-war Syria, featuring a performance of Syrian music, and was followed by a reception and exhibition of 56 photographs by Jason Hamacher of Lost Origin Productions. Hamacher gained unprecedented access to the city of Aleppo from 2005 to 2010. His photography captures the ancient religious musical traditions of the Sufi, Armenian, Chaldean, and Syrian communities in Aleppo, as well as scenes of everyday life in Syria before the