Huge oil and gas reserves, among other things, make the Arabian Gulf region (including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) one of the most strategically important places in the world.  The countries of the region contain two-thirds of the world’s proven reserves of oil and produce more than a quarter of all the oil, thus meeting one-third of the world market for petroleum.  With the growing demand for oil, the Gulf States are set to become even more important.  The same conditions and trends hold for natural gas as well. But as the re...

Armenia and Turkey have announced that they plan to sign agreements within the next six weeks to re-establish diplomatic relations and open their common border.  On the one hand, this announcement will certainly lead opponents of this development to step up their opposition to it and possibly derail or at least delay the signing of these accords.  But on the other hand, the declaration itself already points to a reordering of the geopolitics of the Caucasus region, a development that will affect not only all the countries within the region but also major outside powers who have...

The long-term displacement of internal populations is one of the most politically complex and intricate complications of protracted conflicts today.  Internally displaced persons (IDPs) share most of the same legal troubles and logistical difficulties as refugee populations but are overlooked in many aspects of aid.  IDPs suffer, particularly in longer-term situations, because it falls upon the already-troubled home state to care for a now almost entirely dependent sector of the public.  IDPs, even though they never cross any international borders, often live as outsiders ...