Peace Channel

Argument

Does Winning a Nobel Peace Prize Make a Difference?

To close observers of the horrific conflict unfolding in Iraq and Syria, the story of Nadia Murad has come to exemplify the brutal treatment of ...

Shadow Government

The United States Has to Put Teeth into Its Warnings to Assad and Putin

While the world has been inundated with photos and reports about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal and unrelenting siege on Aleppo, reports over the last ...

Argument

Will FARC and Colombia Return to the Battlefield?

On Sunday, by a razor-thin margin, Colombians rejected the peace agreement between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ...

Voice

What the Hell Just Happened in Colombia?

Half of Colombia went to sleep still in shock Sunday night, after voters narrowly rejected a peace agreement many considered a done deal. Four years ...

Argument

Why Colombia’s Government Compromised for Peace

This was an important week in the history of peace. On Monday, in the charming colonial city of Cartagena, the Colombian government signed a peace ...

Argument

Talking Presidents, Politics, and Peace With Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres will be buried as a hero on Friday at a funeral in Jerusalem attended by representatives from more than 70 countries, including current and ...

Argument

Can Israel’s Peace Movement Survive the Loss of Shimon Peres?

TEL AVIV, Israel — In his twilight years, Shimon Peres became the ultimate symbol of the Israeli peace camp. The Zionist visionary, statesman, and legendary ...

Argument

Can Anyone Stop the Syrian War?

As the sun set in Syria on Monday, the country’s citizens — and the United States and Russia — all hoped the guns of war ...

Dispatch

Can Aung San Suu Kyi Bring an End to Civil War in Myanmar?

NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — The government and military held their first peace conference with ethnic rebel groups since Aung San Suu Kyi became Myanmar’s de facto ...

Podcast

Colombia’s War Just Ended. A New Wave of Violence Is Beginning.

ALTOS DE LA FLORIDA, Colombia — They killed him on this very road, Liney Maria recalls, pointing to the dusty, unpaved trail that passes her ...

Tea Leaf Nation

It’s Time for China Analysts to Stop Talking Past One Another

On August 12, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued its annual report card on China’s economy and gave the country mixed grades, finding that its ...

PHILIPPINES-CHINA-MILITARY-DIPLOMACY-MARITIME

Tea Leaf Nation

Here’s How the Philippines Can Win in the South China Sea

The Philippine Islands has a problem. It has international law on its side in its quarrel with China over maritime territory, but no policeman walking ...

Dispatch

Crisis of Governance: Local Edition

Ridha Abbassi, the mayor of the Tunisian city of Kasserine, presides over a roomy office amply endowed with comfortable leather chairs. An intricate map of ...

Dispatch

Politics Roils Colombia’s Tentative Peace Deal With the FARC

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — When Wilson Córdoba was growing up in rural Colombia, his 90-minute walk to school through the forest was a perilous one: He and ...

Voice

Why the World Humanitarian Summit Meeting in Turkey Really Does Matter

John Norris predicted a “train wreck” at last month’s World Humanitarian Summit in Turkey, citing bad atmospherics, an ill-chosen host, and a backdrop of escalating ...

Passport

Dalai Lama: Those Who Cause Bloodshed Are Not “Genuine” Practitioners of Islam

The days after a mass shooting in the United States have become a national ritual of helpless grief and anger. On Monday, the Dalai Lama ...

Voice

A History of Sustainable Violence

Shortly after becoming secretary of state in 2013, John Kerry spoke to the American Jewish Committee and made it clear that the status quo between ...

Dispatch

What Happens When You Replace a Just War With a Just Peace

In April, at the invitation of the Vatican, some 85 theologians, priests, bishops, religious sisters, and nonviolent activists (including representatives of the RECONCILE Peace Institute, ...

Shadow Government

For Middle East Peace, Look to Israel’s Arab Partners

Speculation is rife that President Barack Obama will make one final stab at putting his mark on the Middle East peace process before he leaves office. ...

Argument

Don’t Blame Sykes-Picot for the Middle East’s Mess

Sometime in the 100 years since the Sykes-Picot agreement was signed, invoking its “end” became a thing among commentators, journalists, and analysts of the Middle ...

Passport

NGOs Avert Russian-Inspired Restrictions in Central Asia’s Only Democracy

In a surprise move, the Kyrgyzstan Parliament rejected a controversial Russian-style bill Thursday that would have placed tough restrictions on groups that receive funding or ...

Iraqi Kurdish Forces Launch Offensive Against ISIS Near Kirkuk

The Cable

Oil Politics: Iraqi Kurdish Official Calls for Country’s Split

Just hours after the Islamic State hit multiple sites in Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad, killing over 90 civilians, the governor of Kirkuk province in the ...

The Cable

Saudi Arabia Vows to Retake Sanaa if Peace Talks Fail

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said the only way to resolve the year-long civil war in Yemen is through a negotiated political solution. But a Saudi ...

Argument

In the Event of the Islamic State’s Untimely Demise…

The power of the Islamic State is waning. With its loss of Ramadi and Palmyra over the past several months, and the steady advance of ...

Argument

How East Timor’s Democracy Is Making it an Outcast

Five years since submitting its formal membership application to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the small Pacific country of East Timor is more ...

Argument

America Will Regret Abandoning the Middle East

The surreal presidential campaign unfolding this year has highlighted the gap between the foreign policy elite and voters. It has upended the foreign policy establishments ...

Passport

One of Aleppo’s Last Pediatricians Killed in Airstrike on MSF-Supported Hospital

At least 17 people -- including three doctors -- were killed after an airstrike destroyed one of the last remaining hospitals in a rebel-held southern ...

Argument

Spare a Prayer for Staffan de Mistura

Staffan de Mistura, the U.N.’s indefatigable special envoy for Syria, is at it again. On Wednesday, he reconvened peace talks in Geneva between a “government” ...

Voice

The Realist Playbook Is Perfect, Except for One Thing. Reality.

Thanks to his series of interviews with the Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg, President Barack Obama is at last out and proud: He’s a realist -- or ...

Dispatch

The Syrian Revolution Against al Qaeda

ISKENDERUN, Turkey — The militia commander, a barrel-bodied man who hulks over his soldiers and playfully hurls epithets, was beaming. It was as if getting ...

Passport

This Is What Yemen Looks Like After a Year of Airstrikes

Hospitals and schools, decimated by airstrikes, lie in piles of rubble on the ground. Children who once played in Sanaa’s bustling streets now tread carefully ...

Dispatch

Saudi Arabia Is Committing War Crimes in Yemen

LONDON and SANAA — It was a hot, dry day in early July 2015. Salah Basrallah, a farmer in Yemen’s northern region of Saada, stood ...

Shadow Government

If You Like the Obama Doctrine, You’ll Love the Trump Doctrine

One of the enduring fascinations of American history is how a presidential candidate can campaign as a fierce critic of his predecessor, only then to ...

Argument

The Secret Ingredient for Peace

Once, back when pterodactyls still filled the skies, I interviewed for a job working for a man in New York City with too much money ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin Attends an Award Ceremony at the Kremlin

Argument

He Came, He Saw, He Withdrew From Syria

Vladimir Putin could hardly wait to drop the bombshell that he was withdrawing Russian forces from Syria’s civil war. In a meeting at the Kremlin ...

Passport

When a Serbian Warlord Celebrates His Escape from Justice, He Burns EU Flags

In 1991, the year the former Yugoslavia broke apart and descended into a decade of ethnic conflict, right-wing Serbian paramilitary commander Vojislav Seselj boasted that his troops ...

Voice

It’s Time to Seriously Consider Partitioning Syria

There may be a tentative cease-fire at present, but let’s not get carried away. The war in Syria is going nowhere fast. It staggers along, ...

Argument

The Syrian Revolution Is Not a Holy War

The church bells in Daraya, a Damascus suburb that has seen some of the worst fighting in the war, no longer ring. To understand the ...

Argument

The Islamist Behind Sudan’s Throne

LONDON — Hassan al-Turabi died last Saturday as he had lived: agitating in his native Sudan, and elsewhere in the Arab world, to put Islam ...

Voice

Donald Trump Is an Idiot Savant on Nuclear Policy

To me, Donald Trump evokes no fictional character better than Greg Stillson, the political demagogue in the Stephen King’s novel Dead Zone. Trump, as the ...

Dispatch

The Time for an Independent Kurdistan Is Now

It was a bitterly cold, overcast day in the winter of 1991. I was only 4, but I still recall how we struggled up 6,000-foot-high ...

Argument

Iran’s Zombie Democracy Comes Back to Life

Once again, elections in Iran have confounded the expectations of watchers of the Islamic Republic. President Hassan Rouhani’s allies seem set to control at least ...

The South Asia Channel

Reimagining Afghanistan’s Future, One Pupil at A Time

Now that NATO bases in Afghanistan have rolled up, the embeds are over, and journalists can no longer trade tales late into the night at ...

Voice

What the Presidential Candidates Get Wrong About the Middle East

John Kasich will likely never be the Republican nominee for president. There are many reasons for that, including the fact that he can’t get himself ...

Kosovo Prepares for Possible Political Independence

Dispatch

Ending the Shame of Kosovo’s Rape Victims

DRENAS, Kosovo -- For nearly 17 years, K.T. has been living with a secret. In 1999, during the conflict in Kosovo, she was gang raped ...

Voice

This is How the Liberal World Order Ends

In 1967, Britain unexpectedly announced the end of what, for decades, had been a genuinely global foreign policy. In response to the depreciation of the ...

Voice

Are You Scared About North Korea’s Thermonuclear ICBM?

North Korea launched yet another satellite last week and it went right over the Super Bowl. Talk about godless commies. Pyongyang watcher Martyn Williams calculated ...

Dispatch

Is the U.S. Military Propping Up Uganda’s ‘Elected’ Autocrat?

KAMPALA, Uganda — The chief of police warns anti-government demonstrators to prepare for “war.” A top official in the ruling party says the state will “kill ...

Voice

Are We Entering a New Cold War?

Every year, the security glitterati of the world gather in Germany for the annual Munich Security Conference. The forum has been around for decades, but ...

Dispatch

Can Your PlayStation Stop a War?

The question of whether violent video games cause violence in the real world has been around pretty much since they were introduced. It’s a controversial ...

Argument

The United States Botched the Syria Talks Before They Even Began

When the latest negotiations to end Syria's long, bloody conflict began on Friday, Jan. 29 -- the first round of U.N.-sponsored talks in two years ...

Shadow Government

Plan Colombia Shouldn’t Be the Price of Peace with the FARC

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama will host Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos for an “official working visit” in Washington. According to the White House, ...

Voice

There Is No Plan B if the Syria Peace Talks Fail

The Syrian peace talks that were to start last Monday, then Friday, just might get underway this week. But even if the Syrian regime accepts ...

Argument

The Great Civil Society Choke-out

Civil society is under more aggressive attack than at any time in recent memory. Facing independent civic groups that have further reach, and more outlets ...

About Peace Channel

A partnership between Foreign Policy and the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Peace Channel is FP’s home for cutting-edge analysis and reporting on international conflict prevention and resolution. The Peace Channel’s authors examine what’s driving the world’s most vexing challenges and explore new ways to resolve the conflicts that threaten lives, livelihoods, and human dignity.

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