Every three weeks, a major political crisis begins somewhere in the world. The United States intervenes in less than a fifth of them. But that is still a new U.S. intervention about every two months. And almost all of them are civilian interventions; less than a third involve the military. CSIS has released a new dataset of "potential transitions" worldwide, covering responses to 758 political crises between 1989 and 2010, including 134 civilian and military interventions. The report describes the dataset and presents the results of the initial analysis. Its recommendations focus on the...

The CSIS Working Group on Private-Sector Development in Fragile, Conflict-Affected, and Violent States identifies tools available to the international business community and the U.S. government to assist these countries, as well as the gaps in needed resources. Participants examined cases from Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma, and Liberia to glean examples of successes and failures in private-sector development, with the goal of identifying potential roles for host governments and the international private sector. This report presents the results of those discussions.

Once the United States withdraws most or all of its forces from Afghanistan, what issues are likely to continue to be of concern to U.S. policymakers in South Asia? What regional dynamics are likely to affect their ability to achieve policy priorities there? While the United States and its coalition partners have focused primarily on Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past 12 years, the strategic dynamics most likely to be relevant over the next 12 years will probably be clustered around relationships linking Pakistan, India, and China. The authors of this report propose a framework for U.S....