Every week, a selection of leading experts answer a new question from Judy Dempsey on the foreign and security policy challenges shaping Europe’s role in the world.
Following the U.S. announcement of a strategy against the Islamic State, the Carnegie Middle East Center held a talk to analyze the direction of American foreign policy and the creation of an international coalition to tackle the Syrian-Iraqi crisis.
The contribution of Gulf Arab countries in the fight against the Islamic State should not be overstated and should be caveated with an awareness of the risks and costs—for both the Gulf regimes at home and U.S. interests in the region.
While the Islamic State can be defeated militarily, the United States and regional countries will need to prevent the creation of more groups like it in the future.
The “Khorasan Group,” a network affiliated with al-Qaeda, has been a target of recent U.S. bombing in Syria. The sudden flurry of revelations about the group in the past two weeks smacks of strategic leaks and political spin.
For a successful U.S. strategy, military action must be tailored to support diplomatic efforts and goals. The United States needs to understand and reduce the motivations for people to join the Islamic State.
In the struggle against the Islamic State, Egypt needs sound political and economic policies that will quench the spread of violence and extremism within the country itself.
Chaos has descended along Turkey’s frontier with Syria. That raises a number of questions about Ankara’s efforts to combat the Islamic State militants.
As an international coalition gears up to confront the Islamic State, there is a rare opportunity to try to get the Syrian regime and rebels to stop fighting each other.
Ever since the Islamic State captured vast territories in northern Iraq in mid-June, no group has been more deeply affected by this jihadi civil war than the Nusra Front, which broke off from the Islamic State in April 2013 and has since emerged as Syria’s only official al-Qaeda franchise.












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