Overview Israel would regard any expansion of nuclear weapons capability within its region as an intolerable threat to its survival. As such, Iran's developing nuclear program has triggered seriou…

Overview In October 2015, the author wrote an update to this memo to reflect recent developments in Ukraine. Read the update. Ukraine continues to face internal political turmoil and tense rela…

Overview Egypt is now entering a period of political transition with the expectation that President Hosni Mubarak's almost twenty-eight-year tenure will shortly come to an end. The transition will…

The U.S. power grid has long been considered a logical target for a major cyberattack. Besides the intrinsic importance of the power grid to a functioning U.S. society, all sixteen sectors of the U.S. economy deemed to make up the nation’s critical infrastructure rely on electricity. Disabling or otherwise interfering with the power grid in a significant way could thus seriously harm the United States.

In early 2014, Russia began supporting armed separatist forces in the eastern—predominantly Russian-speaking—part of Ukraine. Subsequent fighting was halted in September 2015 by a cease-fire agreemen…