In their pursuit of Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall, the powers that led the charge into Iraq face both military and political problems.
The Arab popular awakening is provoking serious concern among state and security elites across the west. But Israel’s stance is the most self-defeating of all.
How should the ferment in Tunisia, Egypt and across the Arab world affect al-Qaida's thinking? The movement requested advice from the reliable SWISH consultancy, whose report is here exclusively published.
The operational resemblance of aspects of the Afghan insurgency to the guerrilla campaigns against French and American forces in Vietnam is ominous for Washington.
The new age of insurgencies of which Egypt is an emblem has its deeper source not in the anger of the marginalised but in the system operated by the world's financial elites.
Beijing’s promotion of a new strike aircraft may be less a powerful addition to its military arsenal than a sophisticated part of a deeper strategy.
The uprising in Tunisia is at once a response to systemic inequity and injustice and an expression of the limits of elite control. But to the economic and political ingredients of the revolt must be added the potent if less evident one of global environmental crisis.
The events of a single day in three continents are a lesson in the interlocking crises that will define the decade.
A near-decade of global war since 9/11 highlights the urgent need for revision of Washington’s military-led global strategy. A fresh analysis offers the ingredients for change.
What is the condition of al-Qaida, and what are its prospects in 2011 and beyond? The movement commissions the well-regarded SWISH management agency to deliver a further independent evaluation, to which openDemocracy has exclusive access.
The casualties of 19th-century industrial disasters in northern England and tragedies in Bangladesh and Iraq today are connected by deep economic and political forces - and by an ethical understanding that stretches decades ahead.
A pattern of attacks in the United States and Europe by individual jihadists is deeply connected to both the effects and the perceptions of a decade's war across the greater middle east.