Category Security & Conflict

Africa, Governance & Law, Policy & Politics, Security & Conflict

Don’t Call It Farmer-Herder Conflict

February 9, 2024

As violent conflict rises across West Africa, the phrase “farmer-herder conflict” has taken hold from the local to international levels. Farmer-herder conflict is an umbrella term for a range of interactions, typically describing resource competition between pastoralist herders and sedentary…

Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Security & Conflict

WHAT IS ‘STRATEGIC COMPETITION’ AND ARE WE STILL IN IT?

February 2, 2024

The last two (Trump and Biden) US national security strategies have claimed that the United States is in ‘strategic competition’ (a.k.a., ‘Great Power Competition’) with the autocracies of Russia and the People’s Republic of China. What does the term mean?…

Africa, Civil Society, Security & Conflict

Limits to Inclusion: Explaining the Inclusion-Effectiveness Dilemma with the 2020 Libyan Political Dialogue Forum

January 26, 2024

In most conflict-afflicted countries, the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic aggravated civil war, political divisions, economic collapse, and humanitarian suffering. Most people predicted that Libya would suffer the same fate as conflict escalated in and around Tripoli in early 2020 and the…

Book Reviews, Regional, Security & Conflict

A Third Approach to the Contemporary Just War Tradition

December 26, 2023

In today’s increasingly polarized international community, the criteria defining a just war—that is a war deemed morally or theologically just—are subject to intense debate. In Limited Force and the Fight for the Just War Tradition, Christian Nikolaus Braun illustrates the…

Book Reviews, Regional, Security & Conflict

Beijing’s Global Media Offensive by Joshua Kurlantzick

November 30, 2023

Ahead of the 2023 BRICS Summit in South Africa, the front page of the Cape Times featured two different stories on China which highlighted Beijing’s multifaceted campaign to influence media and shape narratives around the world. The first was a…

Asia Pacific, Book Reviews, North America, Security & Conflict

Cold Rivals: The New Era of US-China Strategic Competition edited by Evan S. Medeiros

November 8, 2023

Evan S. Medeiros offers a useful collection of essays that examine US-China relations from the 1970s towards our more recent, turbulent days. The defining characterization of US-China relations throughout the book is one of “strategic competition” among rivals. This is…

Asia Pacific, Security & Conflict

Unveiling Purpose and Agency in Kashmiri Women’s Participation in Militancy

October 31, 2023

The Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan traces its origins back to the partition of British India in 1947, marking the beginning of a longstanding dispute that continues to ignite violence and unrest in the region.¹ However, a pivotal turning…

Europe, Security & Conflict

Post-Soviet no more – the transformative impact of war on Russia’s neighbors

September 18, 2023

This is a shortened, significantly revised article based on the authors’ chapter “Shifting balances – the war and Russia’s neighbours,” published in the report “Russia’s War Against Ukraine and the West: The First Year”, edited by Maria Engqvist and Emil…

Asia Pacific, Europe, Security & Conflict

A World Historical Perspective on the War in Ukraine and the China-Taiwan Standoff

September 10, 2023

As the world faces a protracted war in Ukraine with no clear end in sight and a tense standoff in the Taiwan Strait with potential for catastrophic escalation, the time is ripe for a world historical perspective on these conflicts,…

Asia Pacific, Civil Society, Regional, Security & Conflict, Topical

The Palestinianization of the Rohingya Crisis: No Money, No Love

September 4, 2023

Evidently, for quite a long time, the protracted Palestinian refugee crisis has not only condemned millions of Palestinians to a life of indescribable suffering but also kept the Middle East destabilized and much more volatile than any other region across…

Europe, Policy & Politics, Security & Conflict

Hamster on a Treadmill: Western Diplomacy and the Kosovo Status Dispute

July 10, 2023

Since 1878 the Balkan region has come under successive great power security caps, each of which has turned out to be less permanent than advertised. The war in Ukraine underscores the fact that stability in the area, and in Europe…

Africa, Policy & Politics, Security & Conflict

Sudan: A Tinderbox to All-Out War

June 19, 2023

Violent clashes between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the infamous paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have plunged Sudan into crisis and renewed instability. In mid-April of 2023, brief gun battles in the streets of Khartoum and other strategic areas…