The Baines Report
This month marks the seven-year anniversary of the Syrian Civil War. The country, an arena of catastrophic destruction since March 2011, has witnessed a reign of terror from ISIS, proxy wars between major powers, and an incomprehensibly large-scale humanitarian crisis. Last fall, the international community celebrated the liberation of Raqqa, the self-designated capitol of the […]
Photo Credit: AFP / Baraa al-Halabi Refugee Ceilings and Admitted Refugees to the U.S., FY 2009-2014, American Immigration Council, 2014 The Syrian Civil War has created the largest refugee crisis of the twenty-first century. Some 40% of Syria’s population has been forced to leave their homes and seek safety elsewhere, either abroad or in Syria itself. […]
The emergence of sectarianism in the Middle East is a modern historical problem. That was the message of Dr. Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History from Rice University, in his October 2 lecture at the LBJ School. Only by evaluating sectarianism as a complex historical development, Makdisi argues, can we hope to move beyond repeated failed […]
Originally published by the U.S. News & World Report. As the Obama administration ramped up its war against the Islamic State group last week, I was visiting Israel with a bipartisan group of 12 leaders from Washington think tanks. During meetings with a variety of current and former Israeli government and military officials, as well […]
In this Baines Report exclusive, Kaitlin Sharkey interviews Sen. Lugar on the UN’s potential reaction to noncompliance in Syria, the impact of partisanship on US foreign policy, and his advice for future policymakers. Sen. Lugar gave a public lecture at the LBJ School on September 26. Photo credited to Sasha Haagensen [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/113255456″ params=”” width=” […]
The temperature had reached about 115 degrees that day in August 2007. I was a relatively young American soldier sitting in the backyard of a Sunni tribal leader, also known as a sheik, in a western Iraqi town called Ramadi. Since 2003 this sheik and his followers had been hard at work trying to kill […]
The economy is slow, domestic scandals grip the land, and the President wants action against WMD’s in the Middle East. What year is this, 2003? America finds itself debating the merits of military intervention again, this time in Syria. Great rifts in both parties have been opened, showing signs of weathered support for a continual […]