Review of African Immigrant Religions in America
By Dr. J. Peter Pham African Immigrant Religions in America. Edited by Jacob K. Olupona and Regina Gemignani. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2007. viii 1 352...
J. Peter Pham
Peripheral Vision: A Model Solution for Somalia
By Dr. J. Peter Pham Somalia is once again in turmoil. In the last issue of the Journal, Ken Menkhaus explored the prevailing dynamics, concluding that the government's stu...
Op-eds
Review of “Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change”
By Dr. J. Peter Pham In this volume, Dr. Vlahos gives a book-length treatment to the theses he raised in his much-debated essay for Military Review two years ago in whi...
Op-eds
Climate Change and Security in Africa
By Dr. J. Peter Pham For much of Africa's post-independence history, "African unity" was more an aspiration than a reality. Consequently, even when, as I...
Op-eds
The New U.S. Sudan Policy: A Preliminary Review
By Dr. J. Peter Pham After a weekend marked by leaks to the Washi...
Op-eds
The Strategic Challenge of Somalia’s Al-Shabaab
Since emerging from an era of colonialism under Italy and Britain, Somalia has passed through military dictatorship, famine, and civil war to regional fragmentation. In the modern period, America...
Op-eds
Can Obama Accept the Prize?
By Dr. J Peter Pham and Ronald D. Rotunda People can, and undoubtedly will, argue for some time about whether President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile, though,...
Op-eds
Eritrea: Spoiler Exacerbates Crisis in the Horn of Africa and Beyond
By Dr. J. Peter Pham One of the frustrations with which Africa's friends have had to repeatedly cope over the years has been the seemingly utter incapacity of the African l...
Op-eds
Guinea: At the Edge of the Precipice
By Dr. Walid Phares When Captain Moussa Dadis Camara seized power the day before Christmas Eve last year following the death of longtime ruler General Lansana Conté, I wa...
Op-eds
Putting Puntland’s Potential into Play
By Dr. J. Peter Pham In last week's column, I noted that the United States military and intelligence communitie...
Op-eds
Somali Instability Still Poses Threat Even After Successful Strike on Nabhan
By Dr. J. Walid Phares The United States struck an important blow against Islamist terrorism in the Horn of Africa earlier this week when, in the middle of the day on Monday, Sp...
Op-eds
Fiddling While Somalia Burns
Difficult as it may be to conceive, the already-bad security situation in Somalia deteriorated further over the weekend. Yet as Islamist militants brought their offensive to the edge of Mogadishu...
Op-eds
Bin Laden’s Somali Gambit
Last week, al-Qaeda chieftain Usama bin Laden interjected himself yet once again into the ongoing conflict in the territory of the former Somali Democratic Republic. On closer examination, the mo...
Op-eds
Guinea Avoids the Deluge — At Least for Now
More than two years ago, I devoted a column in this series to the relatively obscure West African nation of Guinea which holds more than half of the world's reserves of bauxite (bauxite ore...
Op-eds
Strait Talk About the Arms Sale
By Dr. J. Last Friday, the United States government gave the go-ahead to a long-delayed arms sale to Taiwan. The $6.5 billion defense package announced by the Defense Security Cooperatio...
Op-eds
The Challenge of Somali Piracy
By Dr. J. Peter Pham In a metaphor that the traditionally nomadic Somalis would undoubtedly appreciate, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Last Thursday, Somali pirates...
Op-eds
Al Qaeda’s Surge in Algeria
Over the course of the last few weeks, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has undertaken a surge operation of its own, so to spea...
Op-eds
Al-Qaeda Sahara Network Spurs U.S. to Train Chad, Mali Forces
Analyzing the veritable "surge" last summer in attacks launched by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), I suggested in this column space that both the rhetoric of the group and the threat it a...
Op-eds
Will divisions undermine Somali rebellion?
By mid-2007, when the fighting in Somalia was routinely described as an "Iraq-style insurgency," victory seemed likely for the extremist Islamic Courts Union. But rifts within the insurgency that were simmering last year may now have reached a boiling point, providing a strategic opportunity for Somalia's transitional federal government (TFG) and its Ethiopian allies.
Op-eds
UN-Real Assembly
As the contributors to The National Interest symposium in the current issue note, there is an emergent consensus among foreign policy analysts of all political persuasions that “going it alone” interventionism is no longer a viable option for the United States, if it ever was before. Two general solutions are now frequently bandied about in Washington policy circles and both are flawed. The first is the creation, advocated Ivo Daalder, Robert Kagan, G. John Ikenberry and others of a “concert of democracies” to “legitimately” bypass gridlock in the United Nations Security Council. The second is the opening à la Baker-Hamilton of diplomatic dialogue with the rulers of regional spoilers like Iran and Syria. Both address some of the weaknesses with the current modus operandi, but they fail to grapple with the fundamental defect of the contemporary international system: its dogmatic adherence to a post-Westphalia formal equality of states and consequent lack of a forum reflecting the realities of global power.