Publications
Articles, publications, books, tools and multimedia features from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest news, analysis, research findings, practitioner guides and reports, all related to the conflict zones and issues that are at the center of the Institute’s work to prevent and reduce violent conflict.
Putin and Erdogan in Iran to Discuss Syria’s Future, Ukraine War
The leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran are gathering in Tehran, with Ankara’s threat of a new incursion into northern Syria likely to top the agenda. While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has both domestic and strategic reasons for the move, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi want to maintain the status quo in Syria, where both their countries have expended significant resources to prop up the Assad regime. Russia’s war on Ukraine will also feature prominently at the trilateral summit. Iran has offered to provide Moscow with drones and Putin and Erdogan are reportedly set to discuss restarting Ukrainian grain exports in the Black Sea.
Russia’s Ukraine War Has Narrowed — But Not its Goals
Russia’s Ukraine war, launched in February along the 350 miles from Belarus to the Black Sea, has largely narrowed these weeks to a 45-mile-wide assault on cities in the Donbas region. This and other signals may suggest that President Vladimir Putin is limiting his war aims and will settle for consolidation of control over four provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine. Yet this is probably just a short-term change. Putin’s goal is unchanged, and he is prepared to achieve it by degrees. This reality undermines well-meaning suggestions for peace negotiations that are based on beliefs the Kremlin will settle for what it has now.
A Democratic Ukraine Must Include All LGBTQ+ People
As Ukraine fights for survival, it has relaxed some barriers to the social inclusion of gay, lesbian and other gender and sexual minorities—for example, welcoming some gay people into its armed forces. Yet this change should be expanded and made permanent. Often countries recruit marginalized minorities during wartime emergencies only to revive old practices of exclusion in peacetime. The more inclusive democracy that Ukraine aspires to, and that its transatlantic allies support bringing into full membership of Europe, will require transformations in laws, institutions and social norms for the equal inclusion of Ukrainian gender and sexual minorities.
Five Things to Know about Sri Lanka’s Crisis
Following months of escalating protests, and the May resignation of his brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country on July 13. Sri Lanka’s economy has hit rock bottom as it defaulted on international loans and is facing rampant fuel and food shortages, and the government imposed a state of emergency. Gotabaya’s flight from the country leaves the government in further disarray. How did Sri Lanka get here and what does this political and economic crisis mean for the country and the region?
China Bets Strategic Projects, Regional Stability on Myanmar Coup Regime
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Myanmar last week was the first by a senior Beijing official since a military coup toppled Myanmar’s elected government in February 2021. Its ostensible purpose was to co-chair the foreign ministers meeting of a Chinese-led subregional framework known as the Lancang Mekong Cooperation Forum. Its deeper — though related — significance was to deliver a crystal-clear message on the conflict raging in Myanmar: China has chosen to bolster Myanmar’s military in its fight against a rapidly growing popular resistance movement and will support the junta’s position within key multilateral platforms.
How Documentation Is Critical to Exposing China’s Abuses of the Uyghurs
This month, U.S. companies are scrambling to comply with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) that went into effect three weeks ago, ensuring they have no goods in their supply chains made through the forced labor of China’s Muslim Uyghur minority. Here we see an important example of how far efforts have come to document abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Documentation efforts including journalistic reporting, investigative work by human rights researchers, and the collection and preservation of witness testimony by NGOs have each played an important role in exposing abuses and linking them to official responsibility in China, laying the foundation for countries like the United States to respond with concrete policy changes such as the UFLPA.
Could Syria Have Been Saved by a U.S. Effort to Bring It to Peace with Israel?
Over a decade into Syria’s civil war, it’s hard to fathom the country at peace and integrated with the international community. The Assad regime’s brutal oppression of protests in March 2011 sparked more than 10 years of violence, conflict and tragedy in the country. But in the weeks before, there was quiet hope that a clandestine U.S. effort could broker a land-for-peace deal between Israel and Syria. For Syria, such a peace agreement would have resulted in the lifting of U.S. sanctions and financial assistance, trade and investment from the international community, giving Syrians hope for a better future.
Event Extra: The Untold Story of a U.S. Attempt to Forge Israel-Syria Peace
In a new USIP book, Ambassador Frederic Hof tells the story of a secret U.S. effort to broker peace between Israel and Syria between 2009-2011. Just as that effort seemed to be making important progress, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime began to violently suppress Syrian protesters, scuttling the chance for peace. Hof discusses what the foundation of Israel-Syria peace would have looked like, the pre-2011 perceptions of Assad as a "reformer," President Biden's trip to the Middle East and how the international community should deal with the Syrian dictator today.
Ambassador Hesham Youssef on Biden’s Trip to the Middle East
Biden set to meet nine Middle East leaders, USIP’s Ambassador Hesham Youssef says the trip aims to untangle recent tensions rather than “result in all kinds of breakthroughs and deliverables … the question is whether we can set ourselves on a path that can lead to more constructive relations.”
Russia’s War on Ukraine: How to Get to Negotiations
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine will negotiate with Russia when Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian army back to their positions of February 24, the day President Vladimir Putin initiated its latest war of aggression against Ukraine. The decision on when and how to negotiate rests entirely with Ukraine. But the United States and other allies can provide the support Ukrainians need in that process. What would that support look like?