Libya’s UN-brokered unity agreement is fragile at best and could fracture in the event of a stepped-up Western intervention against Islamic State forces, says expert Mary Fitzgerald.

The pope’s encyclical on the environment carries a profoundly religious message about care for the earth, wedded to a new call for activism, say religious scholars Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.

Post-Qaddafi Libya is riven along regional, economic, and religious lines, and may descend into civil war despite a recent flurry of international diplomacy, says journalist Mary Fitzgerald.

Can Washington and Islamabad build a new strategic relationship? CFR’s Daniel Markey says John Kerry and Nawaz Sharif are off to a friendly start, but big obstacles remain on counterterror cooperatio…

Protests in Pakistan led by politician Imran Khan show how U.S. drone strikes are being exploited in the run-up to the general election, says expert Joshua Foust.

A planned satellite launch by North Korea has suspended U.S. food aid. CFR’s Scott Snyder says that Pyongyang is grappling with whether to choose international legitimacy or domestic political consol…

Will Kim Jong-il’s twenty-seven-year-old son assume power in a smooth transition or is a destabilizing succession struggle ahead for reclusive North Korea? CFR’s Scott Snyder says the next few weeks …

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s sentencing to another prison term was a foregone conclusion, underscoring both the continued power of President Putin and Khodorkovsky’s arrogance in trying to thwart him, says…

As part of the Edward R. Murrow 60th Anniversary initiative current and former fellows discuss the stories that have had the most impact and present ideas for sustaining serious international journal…

Mary Anne Weaver, a veteran Middle East correspondent whose biographical article on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, says the killing of Zarqawi "is significant, …