President Joe Biden took office vowing to negotiate an end to a bloody war in Yemen and to remove US troops from harm's way. He enters his reelection year by launching strikes on the country instead, but his administration hopes calm can return. Experts say the Biden administration and Yemen's Huthi insurgents, as well as the group's backers in Iran, have tacitly entered a delicate and dangerous...

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

On Friday, a day after the U.S.-led attacks on dozens of Houthi military sites in Yemen, President Biden took a few shouted questions during a campaign stop at the Nowhere café, in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. “Do you have a message for Iran?” a reporter called out, as Biden waited for a smoothie. “I’ve already delivered the message to Iran,” he replied. “They know not to do anything.” Tehran, he added, did not want a war with...

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

Last fall, a coalition of rebel groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched a rapid-fire offensive across Myanmar’s northern Shan state, quickly overrunning more than 100 military outposts and seizing several key towns along the country’s border with China. This in itself was not unusual. Myanmar’s military government has faced insurgencies from ethnic and political militias for decades...

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

Pakistan launched strikes on separatist militants inside Iran on Thursday, in a retaliatory attack two days after Tehran said it struck the bases of another group within Pakistani territory. Iranian media said several missiles hit a village in the Sistan-Baluchestan province that borders Pakistan, killing at least nine people, including four children. The tit-for-tat strikes are the...

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

As Ecuadorians wage war against almost two dozen gangs that are brazenly turning their once peaceful country into one of the region’s most violent, experts warn that the South American nation’s drug-financed criminal organizations pose one of the gravest security threats Latin America in years. The cure for the violence, some security and political analysts say, may have to come at the expense of democratic rule and human rights. In the last month, Ecuador has seen an escalation in...

Democracy & Governance

With both the presidential and legislative election results now in, the 2024 Taiwan election cycles clearly presage major potential tensions for American security concerns in the Pacific for the rest of the year. The combination of a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) victory in the Taiwan presidential election and uncertainty about how the Taiwanese legislature will be...

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

In Myanmar, a brief ceasefire between a powerful alliance of ethnic armed groups and the ruling military junta appears to have been broken just hours after it was negotiated at China’s urging. The Three Brotherhood Alliance, one of the factions fighting in a coordinated armed struggle against the Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military junta), agreed to the...

Conflict Analysis & Prevention;  Fragility & Resilience

Taiwan’s election results are in, and in a three-way race, voters chose Lai Ching-te as the candidate who best represented what they’re looking for in a leader — the status quo. Lai, the current vice president and head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), declared victory Saturday with just over...

Conflict Analysis & Prevention;  Global Elections & Conflict