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Present Scholars, Future Leaders For Select Group Chosen By Truman Foundation, A Path to Public Service [Washington Post]"I can easily see tomorrow's Cabinet members, elected representatives, nonprofit directors -- even presidents," the former secretary of state said. Madeleine K. Albright is talking about the 2006 Truman scholars -- a group of 75 young men and women she believes are destined for success.

Mark Leon Goldberg was drawn to YPFP the way we all were, through a friend or contact in DC who was suffering from the post-collegiate realization that outlets for informal discourse in the real world are few and far between. After attending a YPFP event with a coworker about a year ago, Mark was hooked. “I was totally impressed by Josh’s dedication to making this thing into a something,” he told me over email. With three years in the workforce under his belt, Goldberg has done much towards becoming a “something” in his own right. He has written dozens of articles for The American Prospect, worked for the New America Foundation, interned at Interpol, and spent three of his last six summers in Europe. Not bad for twenty-five.

If appearances dictated reality, then the apparent euphoria in both camps surrounding the US-India deal would lead one to believe that the agreement is unequivocally favourable politically and economically, to the two interested parties. Achieved on March 2nd, 2006 between US President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the US-India nuclear deal provides India with American nuclear technology and fuel. Under the agreement, India is not required to become a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but must open 14 of its 22 nuclear sites to international inspections.

Recently, Syrian Defense Minister Hassan Turkmani and his Iranian counterpart, General Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, signed a mutual defense pact and formalized the establishment of a joint Iranian-Syrian Supreme Defense Commission to institutionalize long-term military cooperation. Although there were no details about the pact, anxious Arab and Israeli defense experts were quick to exaggerate its significance. This played right into Syrian and Iranian hands, for it failed to reflect how much Tehran and Damascus, both under increasing international pressure, were trying to revive the glory days of their alliance during the 1980s.

Dear Colleagues,  Thank you for your interest in the 2006 Carnegie Foreign Policy Conference.  We would like to take this opportunity to inform you that all conference materials are now available on our event website where you will find a conference agenda, participant list, speaker and moderator biographies, breakout discussion descriptions and summaries, and a photo gallery. We hope these materials will be useful for you.  This year's conference was a great success and based on the feedback we have received, we expect next year's conference to be truly outstanding.  Click here to access conference material.

Touted as the biggest official event in Turkey’s history, the July 13 launch of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline marks the long-awaited completion of a project that is as much about geopolitics as energy. But amid the celebrations, questions persist about pipeline security. The stakes are sizeable. Stretching 1,760 kilometers, with eight pumping stations and 101 block valves, BTC is the second longest pipeline in the world. The $4-billion project, completed a year later than originally expected, is projected to have a daily capacity of 1 million barrels. The BTC runs through difficult and dangerous territory. Not only does the route pass through forbidding mountains and remote locales, including over 14 seismic faults, but it runs dangerously close to the region’s frozen conflicts and hotspots: Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, the North Caucasus, Abkhazia, Armenian enclaves in southern Georgia, and the restive Kurdish regions of southeastern Turkey. The region has experienced an episode of sabotage as recently as January, when suspicious explosions in North Ossetia cut off gas and electricity supplies to Georgia. The pipeline also faces threats on the local level. Despite reimbursement and reinstatement of the land from the British Petroleum-led BTC consortium, locals staged frequent blockages during construction, and illegal tapping attempts were found even before oil began to flow in May 2005.

At Saturday's G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are certain to celebrate their recent successes in the global war on terrorism: the June 7 killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and the July 10 liquidation of Chechen separatist Shamil Basayev.At first blush, the similarities between Zarqawi and Basayev appear significant. Both used Islam to inspire followers and legitimize violent force. Both led dynamic insurgencies embracing comparable military tactics. Both appear to have been betrayed by inside sources. Yet critical distinctions between Chechnya's indigenous rebels and Iraq's foreign jihadis remain. Bush and Putin face dissimilar adversaries animated by distinct values and dramatically different agendas.

Rational choice theory holds that actors should never choose to fight so long as war is costly, a bargain can be reached short of war, and information is available about who would win a potential armed conflict (Fearon 1995).  Of course, these conditions do not always hold.  In Colombia and Sierra Leone, for instance, rebel groups have found war quite profitable; [1] in Israel and Kashmir, territory is seen to be indivisible; [2] and in the case of the American and Korean civil wars, parties legitimately disagreed over putative military outcomes. [3]   But even when all three ‘causes of peace’ exist, some groups still choose to fight.  The Russo-Chechen civil war is one such example. [4]   This conflict is clearly costly to both sides, there is no reason to believe that an independent Chechen state would be intolerable for the Russians per se, and it has become apparent that neither the administration in Moscow nor the guerillas in Chechnya have the ability to end the conflict in the foreseeable future.  Orthodox rational choice theory thus fails to explain the prolonged violence of the Chechen Civil War.  So why do the Russians keep fighting it?

This article by YPFP member Christopher Swift appeared in the publication Terrorism Focus published by the Jamestown Foundation.Terrorism FocusVolume 3, Issue 27 (July 11, 2006)A bomb detonated outside the Afghan Justice Ministry on July 4, injuring several civilians and shattering windows in nearby buildings. Three additional devices exploded across Kabul on July 5, targeting buses carrying Afghan government personnel, as well as an Afghan National Army (ANA) convoy in Pul-i-Charkhi. By the end of the day, confirmed casualties totaled one dead and more than 50 wounded (Pajhwok Afghan News, July 5). As foreign embassies implemented enhanced security protocols, purported Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif claimed responsibility for the violence. "These attacks in Kabul are part of the overall plan to launch organized attacks across Afghanistan," he declared. "We will have more intensified attacks in the north in the near future" (Gulf Times, July 6).

Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently pursuing a two track policy towards the Middle East, allowing Russia to develop friendly ties with Israel while simultaneously nurturing alternative, sometimes competing, interests with Arab countries. This non-ideological policy has allowed Russia to reclaim a part of the economic and strategic leverage it lost following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus far, Russia has successfully signed diplomatic, military, and energy deals and developed ties with both Israel and its Arab neighbors without significantly alienating one or the other. Whether Putin's embrace of Hamas in March 2006 or his continued armament of Iran will damage Russia's relations with Israel is still an open question.