MADRID – The Cold War may be over, but superpower rivalry is back. As a result, the international community’s capacity to unite in the face of major global challenges remains as deficient as ever. Nowhere is this more clearly reflected than in the case of Syria. What was supposed to be a coordinated effort to [...]

China’s and Russia’s recent decision to veto the United Nations Security Council resolution against Syria -has reignited debate over the relationship between ‘new’ powers like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa –  the BRICS – with ‘old’ powers like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in international interventions.

The Iranian-Turkish conflict about the future of the Assad regime in Syria has the potential to set back relations between Ankara and Tehran by decades. However, the conflict has not reached a tipping point and it is unlikely to do so as long as the Iranian-Turkish rivalry is limited only to tactical efforts by each [...]

PRINCETON – The conventional wisdom last week on whether Syria would comply with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s ceasefire plan was that it was up to Russia. We were reverting to Cold War politics, in which the West was unwilling to use force and Russia was willing to keep arming and supporting its client. [...]

Kofi Annan was in New York on 16 March to brief the Security Council on the mess that is Syria. But whatever (limited) hopes there might be of his ability to negotiate an end to the violence, the humanitarian mission also disguises a depressing reality: short of appeasement, the international community has no good strategy [...]