Publications

Last fall, in a speech before the Organization of American States, Secretary of State John Kerry announced with great fanfare that the "era of the Monroe Doctrine is over." Kerry's pronouncement was a distinctly political one, intended to reassure regional powers that the heavy-handed interventionism that at times had characterized America's approach to Latin America was a thing of the past. But it was also very much a sign of the times, because the United States is in strategic retreat in its own hemisphere.

On Tuesday, Russian president Vladimir Putin will meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, in Minsk, Belarus in an effort to bring an end to the crisis in Ukraine. The summit is shaping up to be a critical turning point in the six-month-old conflict over the soul of Ukraine.

Is America headed back to Iraq? On August 7, President Obama took the first step in that direction when he authorized the use of air strikes to prevent the further advance of the militant Islamic group once known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS) and now known as the Islamic State. Since then, the U.S. military has commenced a limited bombing campaign against Islamic State detachments in northern Iraq and added 130 military advisers to the 300 already stationed in the country.

It was a century ago this summer – on June 28, 1914 – that Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired the "shot heard round the world," assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, in Sarajevo. The killing served as a catalyst for conflict, bringing long-simmering tensions between various European nations to a boil. The result was a conflagration that was both global in scale and massive in its human toll. All told, more than 37 million souls perished in what became known as the "war to end all wars."

Earlier this summer, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani paid a very public two-day visit to a surprising locale: Ankara, Turkey. The June trip — the first of its kind in nearly 20 years — represented a significant evolution of the political ties between Iran and Turkey.