IRAQ
AP Photo
December 2008
"The Hidden Costs of Contracting: Private Law, Commercial Imperatives and the Privatized Military Industry"
Paper
By Rebecca Ulam Weiner, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2005-2007
"While PMCs sustained a strong rate of growth initially by contracting with governments in unstable states such as Angola or Sierra Leone, the market's expansion is due to the huge surge in demand for contracts from the United States and the United Kingdom. Over the past two decades, the U.S. government's policy on PMCs has evolved from apprehension to agnosticism to acknowledged dependency. As a result, PMCs are now far less likely to be operating behind their headquartering state's back than with its permission, at its behest, or alongside it."
AP Photo
December 1, 2008
"Law Over Gun"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
"Three separate developments now taking place in different parts of the Arab world might have real consequences for this region's future: the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment against the Sudanese president Omar Hassan Bashir, the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) approved by the Iraqi parliament to see the United States withdraw fully by the end of 2011, and the mixed Lebanese-international special tribunal that will try those to be accused of killing former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and a dozen other public figures."
November 18, 2008
Securing the Bomb 2008
Book
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom; Co-Principal Investigator, Energy Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment (ERD3) Policy Project
Associate Professor of Public Policy and Project on Managing the Atom Co-Principal Investigator Matthew Bunn provides a comprehensive assessment of efforts to secure and remove vulnerable nuclear stockpiles around the world, and a detailed action plan for reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism. Securing the Bomb 2008 was commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). The full report, with additional information on the threat of nuclear terrorism, is available on the NTI website.
AP Photo
November 17, 2008
"Real Conflicts and Imaginary Ideologies"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
"We must sort out the real causes of conflict from the manufactured stresses and imagined threats of the many ideological warriors on both sides who still plague and hamper us all."
AP Photo
November 11, 2008
"A Parting Word of Thanks"
Op-Ed, The Jerusalem Post
By Chuck Freilich, Senior Fellow, International Security Program
"Today we know that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD, but to those of us in the US and Israeli governments at the time, who were sincerely convinced that he retained a residual program, it was an analytical reality. We were very wrong, but we were not irresponsible, nor malevolent. Israel, in case you have forgotten, took the threat very seriously and distributed gas masks, deployed forces and asked the US for antimissile defenses."
AP Photo
November 6, 2008
"Syria Will Stick with Iran"
Op-Ed, PostGlobal, A Conversation on Global Issues with David Ignatius and Fareed Zakaria
By Kayhan Barzegar, Research Fellow, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program
"A possible deal between Syria and Israel will neither change Iran's current posture in the region, nor lead Syria to put aside easily its alliance with Iran. Beyond tackling the U.S. and Israel military threat in this particular time of insecurity, especially in post-invasion Iraq, the Iran-Syria alliance in post-invasion Iraq is aimed at achieving a more strategic goal: making a new coalition of friendly states and political factions, a way out of the current political-security status-quo in the Persian Gulf and the Levant in which the two states can secure their national interests. As long as this need exists, the Iran-Syria alliance will continue...."
AP
October 29, 2008
"Six for Six"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
"Somalia seems to offer more intriguing evidence about how governments often must come to terms with militias, insurgent forces and other such informal armed groups in countries around the Arab-Asian region -- and the roles these entities play where formal governments appears unable to deliver the basic requirements of statehood."
October 22, 2008
"Can Iraq End the Colonial Era?"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
"The wider issue at stake beyond American soldiers in Iraq is the effective end of the colonial era mentality that put Western troops and officials above the law, and kept indigenous Arab and Iranian national interests subservient to the greater colonial dictates of powers like England, France and, today, the United States."
AP Photo
October 8, 2008
"Rebuilding the Iraqi Oil Industry: Legal and Constitutional Strategies for Sustainable Post-Saddam Development"
Book Chapter
By Justin Dargin, Research Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
In Chapter 5 of Rebuilding Sustainable Communities in Iraq: Policies, Programs and International Perspectives, DI Fellow Justin Dargin argues that "without a viable legal framework, Iraq will find it difficult to attract the investment capital necessary for sustainable nationwide development and petroleum production."
Click here to access the full text.
AP Photo
October 6, 2008
"Demeaning Democracy"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, The Dubai Initiative
As the consequences and costs of the Iraq war, the global war on terror, and the economic mismanagement unfold, so does the 2008 US presidential election. Now, even the latter appears to disgrace the once admired ideal of America's democracy in the eyes of the world.
