Grave violence plagues the North Caucasus, which should be a key humanitarian concern for Europe. But the economic crisis will largely determine how much will be done to help the region.
Obama's speech to the Muslim world focused on two of the main obstacles to making progress on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute: violence by Palestinians against Israelis and settlement acitvities by Israelis in the West Bank.
President Obama's recent address to the Muslim world dissapointed many democracy promotion supporters, who felt it did not strongly address the issue.
Efforts to move the Israeli–Palestinian peace process forward will fail if the United States continues to marginalize or ignore Hamas.
Darfur is being pushed perilously close to the edge by the Sudanese government. President Obama's biggest test in Africa will not be pirates, but Omar al-Bashir, the first sitting president with a warrant for his arrest.
If anything can unblock the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and save the threatened prospects for a two-state solution, it is the Arab initiative.
The advocacy group Save Darfur is the newest colonial power in a long history of colonial abuse, according to a new book about the Darfur conflict by Columbia Professor Mahmood Mamdani.
Trying to negotiate a two-state solution as if there were a viable Palestinian leadership, no Hamas, no Palestinian civil war, and no ongoing settlement activity has led us to where we are today.
The political system set up under Vladimir Putin's presidency is likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future, despite the impact of the global economic crisis and the aftershocks of the 2008 Georgia conflict.
New Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has issued a challenge to which the Obama administration must reply decisively: as an opening salvo on taking office, he has declared that “The Annapolis conference, it has no validity,” thus Israel is not bound to seek a two-state solution.