Research Library

"Islamic extremism is not an enemy that we will vanquish. It is a problem we will be forced to manage," writes Baker Institute fellow Joe Barnes in a commentary on the Islamist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

The United States and Cuba, it seems, are poised to resume diplomatic relations severed in 1961. Fellow Joe Barnes explains why normalization of relations between the two countries is simple "good sense." Read "Normalizing U.S.-Cuban relations: Long overdue" in the Dec. 18, 2014, Baker Institute Blog.

Whether out of strategic calculations or due to attitude towards women, the outcome is the same: female candidates often do not follow the party route to political office in Bahrain.

What is empowerment? How can women across the MENA region become empowered? Is it possible for Western-born concepts — such as female empowerment — to travel across complex contexts and patriarchal/male-dominated cultures? While agreeing on a definition for female empowerment has proved to be a challenging task among scholars and policy practitioners, working out a universal framework that is applicable to different settings has proven to be an even more daunting task.

Fellow Joe Barnes looks at the kerfuffle arising from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s critical — much-publicized — response to President Obama’s description of his foreign policy as “don’t do stupid stuff.”

One hundred years after the start of World War I, the legacies of decisions made by colonial powers during and after the period cast a long shadow over the Middle East.

President Obama’s commencement address at West Point on Wednesday was clearly aimed at deflecting rising criticism of his administration’s foreign policy. In particular, the speech was designed to address complaints that U.S. foreign policy under Obama has lacked strategic coherence and signaled a U.S. retreat from the international arena. The administration promoted the address as a platform for the president to describe his “vision” for U.S. foreign policy during the remainder of his term. To the extent that the speech did present a vision, it was not a particularly new one.

Talk of a “pivot to Asia” that supposedly would mark President Obama’s second term is “misplaced and even simplistic,” writes fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. In a globalized world, “key U.S. relationships with strategic and commercial partners … cannot be addressed in isolation from one another. The convergence of U.S. ties and Asian ties with the Middle East is a case in point highlights how regions and issues are interconnected as never before.”

As Israeli-Palestinian peace talks "stumble toward collapse," blogs fellow Joe Barnes, the U.S. "needs a thorough rethink" about its role in negotiations.

Joe Barnes, the institute's Bonner Means Baker Fellow, blogs on concern in Kyiv, Washington and European capitals — not too far-fetched, given Russia’s seizure of Crimea last month — that Moscow might invade Eastern Ukraine on the pretext of protecting Russian speakers.