All Policy Analysis by James Jeffrey

Three experts assess the past and future of American military involvement in the region and discuss whether it is possible to defend U.S. interests without creating open-ended quagmires.

The beginning of the end of ISIS's dominance over the Sunni Arab region of Iraq is at hand, following the Iraqi security forces' clearance of ISIS from most of Fallujah, the first Iraqi city to fall to the terrorist group. Only one major Iraqi city remains in ISIS' hands: Mosul

After years of foreign policy setbacks, Ankara is trying to mend fences with Israel, Egypt, Iran, and Russia, and the potential implications for the United States are mostly beneficial -- assuming the Turks can actually pull it off.

If Britain were to leave the EU, little would change in its core security and intelligence relationship with Washington, but it could take a serious hit on various economic and diplomatic issues.

Two Washington Institute experts share their findings from recent visits to Russia, where they discussed a wide range of regional issues with current and former officials, leading analysts, and other citizens.

Michael Mandelbaum's Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era is an impressive book. As a history of U.S. foreign policy in, as he terms it, its "fourth" or "post-cold war" era, from 1991 to 2014, it's a competent work. But as an analysis of the driving

Reflecting broad foreign policy themes dating to World War I, U.S. grand strategy in the Middle East since the Cold War has focused on establishing and managing a global security system to contain and deter outside threats. Given Eurasia's demographic and economic/technical strength, a dominant power or powers arising from

The prospect of warmer Iranian-Turkish ties is manageable so long as the United States maintains the intent and capability to promote regional security, and assuming Ankara continues to balance any such rapprochement with its ties to the West, Israel, and Arab states.

Of course it would be daunting to solve the conflicts the Islamic State feeds on, but that shouldn't be the mission in the first place.

While Washington and its coalition partners have begun to roll back some of the Islamic State's territorial gains, what more can be done to defeat the group and, until then, protect civilians?

If Washington continues to employ inadequate military pressure, Russia and its supposedly 'withdrawn' forces will have several paths to bolster their position in Syria while undermining U.S. credibility and influence.

From continuing the status quo to deploying limited ground brigades, the next administration will inherit a range of feasible options, but only some would serve U.S. interests, and all of them come with formidable postwar questions.

Read a summary or watch video of this energetic debate on how Washington should balance vitally important relationships with Turkey and the Syrian Kurds in the fight against the Islamic State.

By throwing up his hands in the face of challenges from Russia, Iran, and other actors, the president is yielding to the 'dangerous currents' he once warned could upend the international system.