Security/Stability

The funeral for Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s president since the country’s independence in 1991, took place over the weekend. With no apparent successor, The Cipher Brief’s […] More

Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators flooded Venezuela’s capital Caracas yesterday to protest President Nicolás Maduro after three years of recession, extreme inflation, and a […] More

Venezuelan opposition leaders and other anti-government protestors flooded to the capital Caracas yesterday to demand a recall referendum on President Nicolás Maduro sometime this year. […] More

As demonstrators spread through Venezuela’s capital Caracas yesterday demanding a recall referendum of President Nicolás Maduro, the military, notably, did not suppress the demonstrations. The […] More

A fresh wave of Turkish tanks rolled into Syria yesterday, in an effort to both fight the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) […] More

The Olympic Games have come to an end – without a major hitch – and now Brazil must once again face its internal issues: a […] More

Today, Tunisia’s Parliament meets to hold a vote of confidence in the new unity government of Prime Minister Youssef Chahed. In a moment that seems […] More

Five years after the Tunisian Revolution in January 2011, the country has become the only liberal democracy in the Arab World. This successful transition from […] More

As Tunisia nears the sixth year of its 2011 popular revolution, the most challenging question is whether these massive protests led to a real change […] More

A United Nations investigation for the first time has laid blame for using chemical weapons on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to a new […] More

Last week, the world learned of the unprecedented revelation that Russia was using Iran’s Hamadan military base to launch strikes into Syria. This week, that […] More

The Syrian regime’s bombing of Syrian Kurdish forces in the country’s far northeast is a notable change in strategy, illustrating just how concerned Damascus is […] More

In 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said that “the only matter which could take Egypt to war again is water.” That war may not have […] More

From 2007-2010, Syria suffered the worst drought since record-keeping. Amidst corruption and mismanagement, the drought caused crops to fail and over a million farmers abandoned […] More

In 2016, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has experienced record-setting high temperatures. This is seen by meteorologists as part of a steady […] More

Why has Russia under President Vladimir Putin remained fairly stable despite worsening economic conditions? Is Zimbabwe likely to become embroiled in conflict when its 92-year […] More

A few years ago, my colleagues and I published an article on forecasting instability in nations around the world.  Two things stood out in that […] More

For twelve years, the Fund for Peace has calculated and published the Fragile States Index (FSI), which measures state fragility around the world based on […] More