Can conflicts unite a nation? (Daryna Grechyna)

Abstract: Despite the global commitment to fostering peace, the world suffers from violent conflicts. Related literature connects intrastate ethnic conflicts to polarization, but the relationship between the other types of conflicts and polarization is unclear. I build a simple model showing that conflicts initiated by an external aggressor can reduce the political polarization of a …

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Economic and social impacts of conflict: A cross-country analysis (Thai-Ha Le, Manh-Tien Bui, and Gazi Salah Uddin)

Abstract: It is important to understand how conflicts within or between countries impact national economic and social development pathways, requiring policymakers to design effective mechanisms to counter the regressive effects of conflict. We explored the relationships between conflict and different types of development outcomes: economic growth, life expectancy, and educational attainment. We applied a dynamic …

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Israel’s Hidden War: The Battle Between Ideologues and Generals That Will Define the Country’s Future (Mairav Zonszein)

In August, Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s general security service, the Shin Bet, wrote a remarkable letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli cabinet ministers. The letter didn’t get much attention in Israel or abroad, but it went to the heart of the crisis that has afflicted the country since the October 7, …

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Putin’s Hidden Vulnerability: To Break the Kremlin’s War Machine, the West Must Exploit the Grievances and Fears of Ordinary Russians (Peter Pomerantsev)

In early August, as Ukrainian forces burst across the Russian border on their way to capturing some 385 square miles of Russian territory in the Kursk region, the Kremlin maintained it had everything under control: state media reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin was competently organizing relief efforts for the region’s inhabitants and directing the …

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Iran’s Year of Living Dangerously: How the Failure of Tehran’s Strategy Is Raising Its Appetite for Risk (Ali Vaez)

Over four decades, in an effort to preserve itself, project regional influence, and deter adversaries, the Islamic Republic of Iran has invested in three projects: funding and arming a network of nonstate allies; developing ballistic missiles that can reach its rivals; and launching a nuclear program that can be either dialed down to deliver economic …

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When Class Trumps Race: A political misdiagnosis (New York Times)

The Democratic Party has spent years hoping that demography would equal destiny. As the country became more racially diverse, Democrats imagined that they would become the majority party thanks to support from Asian, Black and Hispanic voters. The politics of America, according to this vision, would start to resemble the liberal politics of California. It’s …

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The women who hate feminism (Sarah Manavis)

Since 2022, the year that Andrew Tate first went viral online, a spectre has haunted headlines, school playgrounds and children’s smartphones: the rise in anti-feminism among boys. This often-violent ideology, adopted by young men and boys in droves, promotes conservative gender roles, the idea that women are inferior to men and that progress on women’s …

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How America Can Regain Its Edge in Great-Power Competition: A Second Trump Term Would Require A New Strategy (Nadia Schadlow)

From the start of his term as U.S. president, Donald Trump rang the alarm about the return of great-power competition. His administration’s first National Security Strategy emphasized that adversaries of the United States were seeking to erode its position in the international order. This outlook was relatively novel at the time, but today, much of …

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