The study of Tunisia and its politics has enjoyed renewed popularity since the Arab uprisings, partly because there is more information available. The opening up of once closed or highly controlled spaces provides researchers, journalists, and academics opportunities to explore issues critically and in depth.  In his latest paper for the London School of Economics (LSE) Middle East Center’s Working Paper Series, Professor Charles Tripp explores the political effects of this opening up of spaces. In his estimation, the redefinition of space, the struggle over what is “public,” and what constitutes public business (res publica) suggest a substantive change in the practice…

The Founders of the United States believed that it was essential for citizens to be well-informed in order to have a workable self-government. Being schooled in the classics, in which the socio-political views of Plato and Aristotle held sway, they believed that the popular governments of the ancient world had foundered because of the common people's lack of knowledge and the inevitable consequence of that, their tendency to be deceived by demagogues. As James Madison, known as the father of the U.S. Constitution, put it in Federalist No. 10: "... [D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention ... incompatible with…

The U.S. president talks through his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world. riday, august 30, 2013, the day the feckless Barack Obama brought to a premature end America’s reign as the world’s sole indispensable superpower—or, alternatively, the day the sagacious Barack Obama peered into the Middle Eastern abyss and stepped back from the consuming void—began with a thundering speech given on Obama’s behalf by his secretary of state, John Kerry, in Washington, D.C. The subject of Kerry’s uncharacteristically Churchillian remarks, delivered in the Treaty Room at the State Department, was the gassing of civilians by the president of Syria,…

Throughout the world, stockpiles of uranium and plutonium, as well as other radioactive materials, are stored in inadequate facilities  The recent terrorist attack in Brussels should remind the world that nuclear security has never been more important. Even with the disarmament of many Cold War era weapons, poorly secured stockpiles of weapons-usable uranium and plutonium remain across the globe, several of which have experienced security breaches in recent years. Without action to keep these materials from terrorist groups and other nonstate actors an act of nuclear terrorism becomes all the more likely. In 2010, the Obama administration convened the first Nuclear Security Summit…

January 15, 2014 PRESIDENTIAL POLICY DIRECTIVE/PPD-27 SUBJECT:United States Conventional Arms Transfer Policy Conventional weapons have continued to play a decisive role in armed conflict in the early 21st century and will remain legitimate instruments for the defense and security policy of responsible nations for the foreseeable future. In the hands of hostile or irresponsible state and non-state actors, however, these weapons can exacerbate international tensions, foster instability, inflict substantial damage, enable transnational organized crime, and be used to violate universal human rights. Therefore, global conventional arms transfer patterns have significant implications for U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, and…