VIDEO: Drones, bombs, and guns won't eradicate COVID-19 | Responsible Statecraft

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Analysis | Global Crises

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Political leaders keep saying that the United States is on a war footing as it confronts COVID-19. But the military is the wrong tool to address it, even if war spending is — in part — what got the U.S. into this health crisis. As Costs of War Co-Director and Quincy Institute board member Catherine Lutz explains, we need to fundamentally rethink what national security means so it can focus civilian solutions toward very real societal risks many are currently experiencing — ill health and inequality. Watch:

This video is adapted from an op-ed by Lutz and Neta C. Crawford that originally appeared in the Hill.

Analysis | Global Crises

Israel’s push for Somaliland base raises fears of wider war

Top image credit: Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi participate in a joint press conference during Saar's visit to Somaliland on January 6, 2026. (Screengrab via X)

Israel’s push for Somaliland base raises fears of wider war

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Israel is in talks with Somaliland officials to form a strategic security partnership, which might include granting Israel access to a military base or other security installation along the Somaliland coast from which it can launch attacks against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

With war raging in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa is a particularly important geoeconomic and geopolitical puzzle piece. Its location near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which connects ships traveling through the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, makes it a strategic location from the perspective of global shipping, 10% to 12% of which travels through the strait annually.

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Most Iranian Americans want diplomacy with Iran: poll

Iranian-Americans in the age of Trump, the Travel Ban, and the Threat of War

Most Iranian Americans want diplomacy with Iran: poll

Recent data released by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) suggests that a strong majority of Iranian Americans support diplomacy to resolve tensions between the U.S. and Iran — a finding at odds with the dominant conversation online suggesting that most Iranian Americans are in favor of the Iran war.

The data was collected through a survey of 505 Iranian Americans conducted by Zogby Analytics between Feb. 27 and March 5. Among the most notable results were that a clear majority of Iranian Americans — 61.6% — support diplomacy to move toward de-escalation and a negotiated path forward.

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Are we on the precipice of World War III?

Top image credit: New Zealand reinforcements on their way to the front lines during World War I. (Archives New Zealand/ CC BY 2.0)

Are we on the precipice of World War III?

Shortly after U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles began falling in Tehran, Iranian missiles flew in all directions at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others. The people living in these countries were justifiably terrified, which was a likely objective of those Iranian leaders who survived the first assaults. Tehran’s strategy may be to persuade America’s regional allies to reconsider their security alliances.

In 2010, most people shook their heads when a now-infamous map of Afghanistan’s various societal, governmental, and tribal interests went public. The counterinsurgency (COIN) spaghetti chart was terribly complex – and intractable. One PowerPoint slide shows how challenging it can be to understand how a stimulant in one corner can produce a response in a seemingly tangential sector. And this is just a single country.

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