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11. The Peace Process: Will the Taliban give up its Insurgency in Afghanistan?

Author:
Ifran Yar
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
In the wake of the incipient peace process in Afghanistan, new hopes have emerged and an aura of optimism has spread across the country. After the first successful meeting with the Taliban, US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met recently with the insurgents to discuss the peace talks in Qatar. This comes after Russia, reasserting its influence in the region, hosted a landmark international conference aimed at spurring the peace efforts in its restive neighborhood. The meeting was attended by the Taliban and its adversaries and concluded without any formal breakthrough. Since 2010, many efforts have been made to broker a peace deal with the Taliban but to no avail. Will this peace process convince the Taliban to give up its insurgency?
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

12. Inauspicious Incident: Erdoğan’s Evolving Relationship with Turkey’s Military

Author:
Ben Tannenbaum
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
Turkey’s military has historically played an outsized role in the country’s politics. Since assuming power in 2003, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have worked to limit the military’s political influence, a process that has damaged Turkish civil society. The military overthrew the previous AKP government in 1997, and Erdoğan sought to avoid a similar fate. However, after the first decade of Erdoğan’s rule, political loyalties shifted. His chief ally against the military, Fethullah Gülen, became Erdoğan’s principal rival. The drama escalated in 2016 when Gülen allegedly cultivated a cohort of military officers in an attempted coup against Erdoğan. Since thwarting the coup, Erdoğan has successfully re-escalated his quest to constrain the military’s domestic political role. Nevertheless, despite this political feuding, Erdoğan and the Turkish military do hold some common interests on foreign policy. Their overlapping goals have provided some basis for cooperation between Erdoğan and his military. Erdoğan has scored political gains from his relationship with the military, instituting policies that have harmed Turkey’s economy and threatened its democracy.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

13. Trump isn’t NATO’s Only Problem

Author:
Basel Ammane
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
During the last NATO Summit in Brussels in July, the first since the onset of the Trump presidency, observers were carefully watching in anticipation of any indicators about the state of commitment by the US to the alliance. Trump’s antics, such as the insults he levelled at Germany, the impudent demands he made, and the thinly-veiled threat he issued unsurprisingly dominated media coverage. This served as a reminder that the alliance and its members need to work vigorously to safeguard US commitment given that this president’s preoccupation with prodding allies into increasing military spending, though echoed by previous administrations, is much more forceful and borders on the nakedly belligerent. To make matters worse, a skeptical view of alliances that sees them through a transactional prism and portrays them as burdens seems to be a consistent view that President Trump has held for years. This further demonstrates that the risk of a declining US commitment to the alliance is real. But a shaky commitment by a US president is hardly the only source of problems for today’s NATO.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. Limited Justice for Syria on the Horizon

Author:
Basel Ammane
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
The recent attacks in Eastern Ghouta in which a swath of land housing a population of 400,000 was surrounded, shelled incessantly and later invaded have refocused the world’s attention on the events in Syria.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

15. Canada Should Reemphasize Its Place in NATO

Author:
Basel Ammane
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
While NATO skepticism is by no means a recent phenomenon, the whirlwind unleashed by US President Donald Trump’s blistering declarations and searing criticism of NATO has thrust the alliance into the spotlight in a way it has not been in recent memory.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16. Nicaragua and the Dynamics of a Revolution

Author:
Marcelo Lopez de Aragon
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
Since April 18, 2018, Nicaragua has been stricken by civil unrest initially triggered by the government’s lack of response to wildfires in an environmentally protected reserve. Compounding matters, the government introduced unilateral reforms, which were subsequently withdrawn, to the country’s social security system that would have increased contributions and lowered benefits. Unaccustomed to protests, the government, headed by authoritarian President Daniel Ortega, reacted violently. What began as a relatively small and peaceful protest by university students, was met with brutal force by the police and paramilitary groups using live ammunition fired at civilians. To date, the total body count numbers in the hundreds, with over a thousand injured and hundreds arbitrarily imprisoned. Undaunted, thousands of Nicaraguans have maintained daily protests, demanding the end of the government’s violent attacks. More importantly, their demands have now expanded to also include a complete overhaul of the country’s governmental institutions as they are widely seen as having been manipulated by President Ortega. Undemocratic reforms such as re-writing of the Constitution to allow for his third term in office, the elimination of term limits, and allowing his wife as his Vice-President are core to the protestors’ concerns, which escalated from modest protests around wildfires and changes to social security. These pent up grievances have the protesters demanding the resignation of Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, in power for over 11 years, to be followed by early elections.
Topic:
International Affairs and Popular Revolt
Political Geography:
Nicaragua and Global Focus

17. Policy Report: Rule of Law and Peace and Order in the South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea

Author:
Catherine S. Panaguiton
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
The judgment award rendered in the Republic of the Philippines vs. The People’s Republic of China was a significant development to the disputes in the South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea. Conflicting opinions from littoral and affected states on the legal issues abound the institution of the case and the conduct in these areas as a whole have been raised and a decision has been rendered on these issues. Provisions in the UNCLOS that were made to be deliberately vague because States at the UN Conference negotiating UNCLOS could not agree on more precise language have been clarified. The judgment not only has implications in the lawyering and judicial sphere. It also carries practical implications that are to be considered in lawmaking and formulation of government policies. All these implications will be discussed in this paper.
Topic:
Peace Studies and Law
Political Geography:
South China and West Philippines

18. Rule of Law and Peace and Order in the South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea

Author:
Catherine S. Panaguiton
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
Chinese incursions in disputed waters in the SCS and WPS started from as early as the 1950s. However, they were scant and far in between. As decades passed, Chinese surveillance and incursions and the incidents between PRC, RP and Vietnam have increased in these areas. Rapid reclamation activities by PRC and the construction of installations on them (many of which are of a military nature)7, amidst protests by its neighbors (including the Philippines) and claimant states, have likewise increased the tensions.
Topic:
International Law and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
China and Philippines

19. Make Japan Great Again? The Rise of Trump and Significance of the US-Japan Alliance

Author:
Fuad Olajuwon
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
Japan is in a unique position. With the rise of Trump and the changing of the American political landscape, the world faces a new challenge. That challenge is uncertainty. If you’re from a realist background, that raises concern. The shifting of the global narrative is one to look out for, as countries across Europe and the Western world are shifting away from the “liberal world order” and more into an ideologist that puts the concerns of the host over that of the guest. With Brexit and “#AmericaFirst” rhetoric gaining momentum, what is the fate of East Asia? One thing is sure: this is a unique time as ever for Japan to stand on its own two feet.
Topic:
International Cooperation and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Japan and America

20. The Plutonium Disposition Management Agreement: Russia’s Withdrawal and the Possible Consequences

Author:
Debalina Ghoshal
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Council on International Policy (CIP)
Abstract:
InOctober2016,RussianPresidentVladmirPutin suspendedthePlutoniumDispositionManagementAgreement (PDMA) that mandated both the United States and Russia to eliminate a sufficient quantity of weapons grade plutonium. The suspension of the PDMA represents a step away toward achieving nuclear disarmament, a crucial component of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) under Article VI.
Topic:
International Security and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Russia and Global Focus