Initiatives

The U.S. lately has focused on the Indo-Pacific basins to counter China at sea, but Beijing is a long way from being a maritime power, and its investments in the Belt and Road Initiative show its growing influence over land. Beijing is eyeing the waning influence of Russia as an opportunity to expand its influence in Eurasia, particularly Central Asia. This project seeks to give the U.S. tools to position itself to counter China’s westward march in Eurasia and offer concrete recommendations on how Washington can help build resilience of Central Asian states so they can resist the Chinese ingress.

The New Lines Institute seeks to re-energize international efforts to address this crisis in a more holistic and effective way through the Global Rohingya Initiative (GRI), crafted in cooperation with and centered on the Rohingya community. GRI is facilitated by the New Lines Institute in support of the Rohingya community. Background For decades, the Rohingya people have been persecuted by their own country and sought uneasy refuge in neighboring countries. Successive Burmese governments have violated their rights to identity, nationality, security, and other fundamental human rights. The Burmese military, which again seized power from a nominally civilian government in a February 2021 coup, has committed atrocities against the Rohingya as part of its systematic denial of their right to live in peace and dignity as full citizens of Myanmar. While the international community, including the recent U.S. determination of genocide, has loudly condemned the violence against the Rohingya and provided substantial humanitarian assistance, long-term, sustainable solutions to the crisis remain elusive. 

Having emerged as the world's fifth-largest economy India is well on its way to projecting influence around the world – though there are considerable domestic political and economic indicators that serve as significant arrestors in the path of New Delhi. The South Asian power seeks to be a key ally of the United States while simultaneously maintaining geopolitical distance from Washington. On the domestic front, India is moving toward an illiberal, majoritarian democracy. The policy space is filled with skewed assessments on the extent to which the right-wing religious nationalism of India’s ruling party will impact the state. This project provides nuanced analysis and forecasts and offers recommendations on for the U.S. to optimize this critical relationship.

The evolutionary regime-change process that has been underway in Iran for the past several years is intensifying under the weight of internal and external pressures. It is highly likely that the IRGC-led military/security establishment will supplant the clergy as the dominant power center once current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leaves power, with serious implications for stability in the country and in its strategic environs. This project examines how Iran will behave in the fast-approaching post-Khamenei era and how the United States can manage the country and the region.

A Special Initiative of New Lines Institute, the Rohingya Legal Forum (RLF) brings together a global group of prominent jurists with a specialization on what has been described as a “slow-burning genocide” of the minority community in Myanmar. The RLF was formed to map out strategies, develop applications of international law, and offer advice on how to address the situation of the Rohingya people. The Forum coordinates and collaborates, where necessary, with international organizations such as the United Nations, International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and governments. The Rohingya Legal Forum is Chaired by New Lines Institute’s Dr. Azeem Ibrahim and is convened by Professor John Packer, Director of the Human Rights Resource and Education Center at the University of Ottawa. The forum is expected to convene as much as possible and exist for as long as it is useful. The group anticipates collaborating with international bodies like the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the International Criminal Court, and relevant governments and NGOs. In addition, the forum anticipates producing periodic research that will be published as memos, special reports, essays, op-eds and journal articles. Publications will discuss research and develop innovative mechanisms for legal recourse for the Rohingya genocide.

In recent years, a spike in the production, trade, and consumption of the amphetamine-type stimulant captagon has introduced a new challenge to public health, stability, and human security in the Mediterranean-Gulf zone. The drug’s evolving formula, combined with participation from malign actors aligned with the former Assad regime in Syria, plus Hezbollah, Iran-sponsored proxies, and criminal syndicates, exacerbates insecurity and ultimately raises the risk of conflict in the region. Syria’s decade-long civil war enabled armed actors, including violent and organized crime groups, to profiteer from various illicit markets – a dynamic similar to those in Afghanistan, Brazil, and Colombia. The forecast for the impacts of the captagon trade is serious; in the wake of a supply shortage created by the fall of the Assad regime, the spillover of captagon production and trafficking into new transit hubs creates a more complicated, challenging road ahead for governments. The captagon trade has emerged as a major transnational challenge in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. Millions of pills continue to flood overland and maritime ports across the Middle East, southern Europe, and even as far as East Asia, pointing to growing production capacity, sophisticated smuggling tactics, and emerging demand.  This has given rise to new concerns and questions about the captagon trade’s implications for regional law enforcement, health care, security, and geopolitics. The Captagon Trade Project is one of the leading research efforts generating new, cutting-edge qualitative and quantitative analyses about all aspects of the captagon trade. The project uses open-source intelligence to maintain a comprehensive database recording all reported captagon-related arrests, seizures, laboratory raids, and other developments—data that can help reveal trade patterns and emerging challenges. The project also maintains a live interactive map tracing the trade’s evolution and geographic scope. Through intelligence reports, articles, podcasts, hosted Track II dialogues, and public events, the project serves to encourage innovative, effective policy solutions to address the captagon trade’s security, geopolitical, and health implications. The Captagon Trade Project was created and is led by Caroline Rose and is part of the Crime-Conflict Nexus Portfolio.

The Captagon Trade Interactive Map

The Captagon Trade Interactive Map is the most comprehensive open-source data resource for all interdictions related to illicit flows of the amphetamine-type stimulant, captagon. Launched in October 2024, the Captagon Interactive Map pulls from open-source data compiled by the New Lines Institute Captagon Trade Project and Observatory for Political and Economic Networks that catalogue drug seizures, arrests, violent clashes, laboratory busts, and other captagon-related interventions. This tool can help researchers identify how the captagon trade has grown in the Mediterranean-Gulf zone, in addition to capturing new patterns in production, trafficking, and consumption.

Africa is the second-largest continent in the world, with an estimated 1.26 billion people residing in 54 countries. Africa is home to vast resources such as oil, liquefied natural gas, rare earth minerals, and a diverse population that should have set the continent up for success; however, with a past filled with exploitation, colonialism, government corruption, tribal warfare, and terrorism, Africa has struggled to reach its full potential. Though the United States has historically remained minimally engaged in Africa compared to other parts of the world, such as the Middle East or Latin America, with the rise of Chinese and Russian influence in the region,, it is essential that the United States enhance its engagements on the continent. Guided by the values and principles of the New Lines Institute, the Transnational Fragility program looks at varying indicators of fragility that contribute to regional instability. This initiative is designed to craft policy options to address the drivers of fragility that will enable the United States to advance its strategic goals in the region and combat malign influences. The Transnational Fragility Initiative seeks to accomplish this endeavor by providing an in-depth analysis of how factors of state fragility lead to regional instability and, affect the United States and its partners. The Initiative is focused on three lines of effort.

The world has in recent years seen a distinct rise in the number of authoritarian regimes willing and able to reach beyond their borders and target dissidents regardless of where they reside. Dissidents have suffered in numerous and increasingly complex ways. From digital harassment, bogus criminal warrants, threats against family and friends, and even assassinations. These acts of Transnational Repression constitute attacks on the human rights of the individuals they target. As well as undermining the sovereignty and security of the countries hosting them. The Transnational Repression Working Group at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy aims to bring together the foremost experts in the field to provide rigorous, high-quality research and policy recommendations on how to counter Transnational Repression. By releasing policy reports, hosting conferences, and building connections the Working Group looks to inform on-going policy debates to better defend the rights of dissidents and the countries where they live.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, the conflict has destabilized other regions of Eurasia that have recently experienced civil war and ethnic cleansing, including the Western Balkans. This is a region where Russia remains an active player and where escalated conflict risks radicalizing violent elements among Europe’s Christian far right and Islamists. The institutions and established mechanisms to avert a bloody return to the conflicts of the dissolution of Yugoslavia are failing. Given these dynamics, a new initiative to analyze this changing landscape is necessary. The Balkans Observatory is an initiative by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy to provide rigorous, non-partisan analysis for policymakers on the Western Balkans. The Observatory is a hub for policymakers, legislators, and academics to discuss emerging challenges and crises in the region through essays, events, and roundtables. The Observatory seeks to fill the void in policy-oriented research on the Western Balkans amid broadening concern over the region’s deteriorating security dynamics. Please check this page regularly for new essays and events.