Research Library

The deepening civil war in Yemen poses more challenges than solutions for Saudi Arabia, writes Middle East scholar Andrew Bowen.

After more than half a century of a highly restrictive policy toward Cuba that ranged from an economic embargo to prohibiting most travel by U.S. citizens to the island, President Obama announced on Dec. 17, 2014, that Washington and Havana hope to restore diplomatic relations in the near future. While President Obama's new Cuba policy falls short of lifting the embargo, which can only be done through congressional action, it nonetheless represents a historic shift in U.S. relations and leadership in Latin America.

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.

By Steve Nolin

Following the legalization of retail marijuana sales in Colorado and Washington, and medical marijuana in…

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.”

The past few months have seen extraordinary progress in financial sector reforms in India. Why now, near the end of the current government’s term?

The situation in Ukraine is the most serious foreign policy challenge ever faced by the Obama administration, writes Rice faculty scholar Richard Stoll.