Foreign Aid

Case Raises Questions About U.N.'s Role in Zimbabwe

A former U.N. official claims his warnings of a coming calamity were stifled by a U.N. bureaucracy intent on keeping good relations with Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe.

BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON | FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Planet War

From the bloody civil wars in Africa to the rag-tag insurgiences in Southeast Asia, 33 conflicts are raging around the world today, and it’s often innocent civilians who suffer the most.

BY KAYVAN FARZANEH, ANDREW SWIFT, PETER WILLIAMS | FEBRUARY 22, 2010

How Not to Help Haiti

Sending your old, useless stuff to a disaster zone is exactly that: useless -- and a disaster.

BY MATTHEW COLLIN | FEBRUARY 19, 2010

How to Fix Haiti’s Fixers

Aid groups in the earthquake-battered country are inefficient and unaccountable. Luckily, there’s a solution.

BY PAUL COLLIER | FEBRUARY 18, 2010

Only Haitians Can Save Haiti

The world has tried before to fix this troubled state -- and failed each time. Now will be no different, unless Haitians take the lead.

BY HOWARD W. FRENCH | FEBRUARY 11, 2010

This Is What Victory Looks Like

How Aaron David Miller romanticizes the past and underestimates the future.

BY ABRAHAM M. DENMARK | FEBRUARY 9, 2010

The End of Diplomacy?

Once up a time, Americans achieved great things abroad. No longer.

BY AARON DAVID MILLER | FEBRUARY 3, 2010

How to Read the QDR

What the Pentagon’s most highly anticipated planning document says about the gap between its aspirations and reality.

BY TRAVIS SHARP | FEBRUARY 2, 2010

Remarks on the Future of European Security

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at France's L'Ecole Militaire on Jan. 29, 2010.

FEBRUARY 1, 2010

Invite the Taliban to the Afghanistan Conference

Why excluding the insurgency won't work.

BY FABRICE POTHIER | JANUARY 27, 2010

Groundhog Day in Afghanistan

Day after day, political crisis after political crisis, Afghanistan persists in going nowhere.

BY WHITNEY HARING-SMITH | JANUARY 26, 2010

Kabuki in Kabul

Wait, did Hamid Karzai actually want the Afghan parliament to reject his cabinet?

BY JEAN MACKENZIE | JANUARY 22, 2010

The Ghosts of Port-au-Prince

Why is Haiti so haunted? 

BY DANIEL P. ERIKSON | JANUARY 14, 2010

Losing Cairo?

Since Barack Obama's speech six months ago, the Muslim world has begun to lose hope in the United States. But it's not too late ... yet.

BY ANDREW ALBERTSON | DECEMBER 24, 2009

The End of Influence

For as long as many can remember, the United States has been the country with money, influence, and power. But all that is changing, write Brad DeLong and Stephen Cohen in their new book, The End of Influence. FP excerpts exclusively here.

BY BRAD DELONG, STEPHEN COHEN | DECEMBER 23, 2009

Coal for Christmas

The World Bank is still subsidizing one of the world's dirtiest fuels.

BY PHIL RADFORD | DECEMBER 22, 2009

How to Whip the Afghan Army Into Shape

Much of President Barack Obama's strategy rests on the creation of a new, more competent Afghan military. Here's what he'll need to know to get the job done.

BY MARK MOYAR | DECEMBER 22, 2009

Lessons from America's Other Counterinsurgency

The United States and Colombia have been testing out COIN strategies for years. But the major lesson for Afghanistan is a tough one: there are no clean answers in messy wars.

BY ADAM ISACSON | DECEMBER 16, 2009

How We Invaded Afghanistan

Thirty years ago this month, Soviet airborne troops parachuted into Kabul and began a fateful occupation that became Mikhail Gorbachev’s Vietnam. Here’s the inside story of how it happened, as told by the KGB general who planned it.

BY OLEG KALUGIN | DECEMBER 11, 2009

Will There Always Be a Pakistan?

Fissures within the military could tear not just the army but the entire country apart. It's coming sooner than you think.

BY SETH CROPSEY | DECEMBER 11, 2009

Latin America's New Cold War?

Venezuela's and Colombia's ambassadors to the United States tell their sides of an increasingly tense story.

BY BERNARDO ALVAREZ HERRERA, CAROLINA BARCO | DECEMBER 8, 2009

Democracy Loses the Honduran Election

It's an abomination that Sunday's presidential vote came without consequence for the country's coup-makers.

BY KEVIN CASAS-ZAMORA | DECEMBER 1, 2009

Addicted to Contractors

The United States is hooked on privatized warfare in Afghanistan. And it's more costly than you think.

BY ALLISON STANGER | DECEMBER 1, 2009

The Big Thinkers of Giving

How philanthrocapitalists are reshaping the world of charity.

BY MATTHEW BISHOP, MICHAEL GREEN | DECEMBER 2009

Interview: Roy Bennett

The white archnemesis of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe speaks out about the terrorism charges against him, the country's flailing power-sharing government, Mugabe's misdeeds, and why he may well have to die for his cause.

BY LAURA WELLS | NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Al Qaeda Diaries

As the Pakistani soldiers moved into South Waziristan, they found something almost as valuable as al Qaeda itself: the diaries and books that explain how militant ideology binds the diffuse world of terrorism together.

BY IMTIAZ GUL | NOVEMBER 20, 2009

My Nights With Hamid

The world is hounding the Afghan president to crack down on corruption and kick out entrenched warlords. I don't think he's going to do it, and I should know: I’m the man who wrote his autobiography.

BY NICK B. MILLS | NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Think Again: Africom

U.S. Africa Command was launched to controversy and has been met with skepticism ever since. Behind two years of mixed messages, a coherent mission might finally be emerging. Here's what you need to know about the world's next U.S. military hub.

BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON | NOVEMBER 17, 2009

The Only Hope Left?

Why a unilaterally declared state might be the only one that Palestine can get.

BY DAOUD KUTTAB | NOVEMBER 17, 2009

Interview: U.N. Undersecretary-General John Holmes

The top humanitarian official for the United Nations tells FP how to do aid in a time of war. Here’s a hint: it’s not pretty.

BY ELIZABETH DICKINSON | NOVEMBER 5, 2009