In a classic psychological experiment performed in the late 1960s, animals in one group could stop administered shocks by pressing a lever, whereas those in another group could not stop the shocks despite pressing the lever. Later, when the powerless animals were eventually presented with a working lever, they didn’t bother to push it. The animals had learned to be helpless. Carol S. Dweck wond...

The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of UpheavalJames L. Gelvin, ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2021. $28.00. 368 pp.Revolutionary Life: Everyday the Arab SpringAsef Bayat. Cambridge, MA: Harvard £30.95/$35.00. 336 pp.The Unfinished History Iran–Iraq War: Faith, Firepower, and Iran’s Revolutionary GuardsAnnie Tracy Samuel. Cambridge: Cambridge £75.00. 302 pp.Escaping Conflict Tr...

With war in the Middle East and the prospect of terrorist attacks at sites ranging from major airports to the local shopping mall, it may be appropriate to remind ourselves that much of the world is experiencing an extended period of peace. Indeed, developed countries have not fought each other since the Second World War. This peace is unusual because powerful nations are historically the most ...

The Nonproliferation Review/Fall 1996 30 Dr. Bates Gill heads the Project on Security and Arms Control in East Asia at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Kensuke Ebata is a member of the Japanese Security Export Control Committee and a defense and military affairs consultant in Tokyo. Matthew Stephenson is a scholar in the East Asian Studies Department at Harvard University a...

Peace processes are complex, protracted, and contentious involving significant bargaining and compromising among various societal and political stakeholders. In civil war terminations, it is pertinent to measure the pulse of the nation to ensure that the peace process is responsive to citizens' concerns. Social media yields tremendous power as a tool for dialogue, debate, organization, and mobi...

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The tumultuous and frustrating escalation of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, particularly since 2000, the continuation of international sanctions against Iraq and its suffering population, the continuing violence in Algeria, and high levels of structural violence committed by authoritarian governments in virtually all states of the region – all these are constant reminders that the ...