Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

Sykes-Picot

The Power of Broken Promises: Wilson’s Fourteen Points and U.S.-Arab Relations

The Power of Broken Promises: Wilson’s Fourteen Points and U.S.-Arab Relations

Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech is popularly understood to have improved the United States’ standing among Arab nations. His words offered hope for a better political future in the new world order. Wilson’s rhetoric, however, ultimately proved detrimental to the Arab view of the United States. By raising Arab expectations for national sovereignty Wilson’s Fourteen Points invited a moral taint on the U.S. in the eyes of Arab nationalists. This taint exacerbated the strain on U.S.-Arab relations that would follow the creation of the Israeli state.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement at 100

The Sykes-Picot Agreement at 100

The violence occurring in the Middle East is the result of a revisionist movement, namely the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which seeks to conquer the greater region and expand its caliphate. A group that knows no geographical boundaries, its rapid rise is a symptom of what is widely regarded as the post-Westphalian trend the world has taken. Further, the volatility accompanying years of sectarian division has only been exacerbated by western involvement in the region, a century-old pattern of attempts to dictate the direction of governance dating back to World War I.