The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) can trace its lineage back decades before the United Nations itself existed.  The idea of a small, elite council of major powers making security-related decisions on behalf of the greater world community is an idea based in the League of Nations, which was born out of the ashes of […]

The state of Turkey as we know it today emerged from the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, a region that encompassed the land we call the Middle East. However, having been the ruling center of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s role after World War I was much more influential over the other emerging nation states’ autonomy […]

  This is the first of a two-part article highlighting the influence of Syria’s wealthiest businessman on the power structure of the Syrian Arab Republic, as well as some of his contributions to the Syrian Conflict. Global media coverage of the Syrian conflict has a characteristic tendency to represent or depict the policies of the […]

This Syrian T-55 looks more ready to retake the Golan Heights circa 1967 than engage in modern mechanized combat. One of the reasons the Syrian civil war has been so destructive and violent is the utter amount of surplus military hardware that was kicking around the country. The last semi-accurate report by IISS stated that […]

Republic of Iraq   History Humans have settled in what is now Iraq for thousands of years. Modern-day Iraq, however, is a much more recent entity, formally declaring independence from Great Britain in 1932. Previously the country had been part of the Ottoman Empire, but with the collapse of the Ottomans in WWI the land […]

 All of us are painfully aware of the current situation in Syria, especially in and around Aleppo. For over 5 years a civil war has raged, a war which has claimed at least 470,000 lives. The real number is likely much, much higher, and will probably never fully be known. Millions of internally displaced persons […]