Program Related Publication Feeds

Middle East Notes and Comment: A Self Defeating Strategy on Iran

Mon, 20 Jul 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Much of the debate over last week’s Iranian nuclear agreement is badly misplaced. Some—including the president—call it an historic victory akin to President Nixon’s approach to China. Others call it an historic surrender, akin to Neville Chamberlain’s concessions to Adolf Hitler.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Monsters, Inc.

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400

It’s not hard to find Americans who want a victory over the Islamic state. The hard part is finding any with a good sense of what victory would look like. The late Justice Potter Stewart’s famous description of hard-core pornography, “I know it when I see it,” isn’t very helpful.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Popular Authoritarians

Tue, 26 May 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Dictators often go to extraordinary means to project an image of popularity. Bussed-in mobs wave flags and sing songs praising the leadership, and when sham elections are held, something like 98.7 percent of voters dutifully vote for the president. No one doubts the consequences of genuine opposition—imprisonment, assault, or worse.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Al-Azhar’s Perilous Resurgence

rshirazi — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Egypt has played an outsized role in the Arab world for centuries, and that role continues. Its population of 90 million dwarfs that of all of its neighbors, and its legions of teachers, lawyers, and physicians scattered throughout the Arab world (and the prevalence of Egyptian singers, movie stars, and newscasters on Arab airwaves) give almost every Arab a personal tie to the country.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Yemen's Misery

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0400

Syria’s civil war hasn’t gone away, but to many, it has suddenly become less urgent. The chaos unfolding in Yemen has drawn international energy and attention away from the conflict in Syria, now in its fifth year. Compared to Syria, Yemen’s neighbors see fewer battle lines and much greater proximity, alongside the same Iranian hand.

Middle East Notes and Comment: To Fight Jihadi Violence, End the Wars

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500

The spread of jihadi violence in the Arab world is as obvious as it is painful. Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya all have groups that use the slogans and symbols of Islam to recruit, to radicalize, and to justify violent campaigns against the status quo.

Middle East Notes and Comment: The Other Side of Low Oil Prices

rshirazi — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500

American consumers have celebrated the sharp drop in oil prices. In recent weeks, gasoline prices in many American communities have brushed against $2 per gallon, promising to put more than $500 annually into the pockets of the average American family.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Radicalism Four Years into the "Arab Spring"

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

While many observers of the Arab world had believed for years that change was inevitable, the “Arab Spring” itself came as a complete surprise four years ago. The idea that a self-immolating fruit seller in Tunisia could shake the political foundations of the Arab world to their core would have been thought ludicrous even in early January 2011.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Unhappy Yemen

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Amidst the Middle East headlines of recent months is a quiet but steady drumbeat of trouble out of Yemen. The country, by many accounts the poorest in the Arab world, attracts little attention next to struggles in Syria, Iraq, Libya and beyond. These other conflicts provide more compelling pictures and more gripping stories, and Yemen appears to many to be dusty and remote.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Rethinking Strategy toward the Islamic State

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0400

After trying hard to downplay policy in Syria and Iraq, the Obama White House has dived in. The recorded beheadings of two Americans seem to have crystalized a whole new policy approach, creating an open-ended U.S. military commitment against the so-called “Islamic State.” While the new U.S. policy is more than merely a military strategy, it is much more military than it should be.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Hoping for Trouble in Iraq

Mon, 16 Jun 2014 00:00:00 -0400

Few in the United States take much pleasure in what has happened in Iraq in recent days. Many in the Middle East do. Until Western governments understand Middle Eastern governments’ motivations better, they won’t have much influence on the violence unfolding in Iraq.

Middle East Notes and Comment: A Partnership for Egypt

Wed, 21 May 2014 00:00:00 -0400

The night Hosni Mubarak fell from power, Egyptians of all shades, sizes, and beliefs came together to celebrate the end of a fading dictatorship and the beginning of a bright new future. Amidst singing and fireworks, flag-wrapped Egyptians wept with joy.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Enhancing Leverage

Fri, 21 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500

In October of last year, the White House made clear that three issues top President Obama’s Middle East agenda: Iran, Palestinian-Israeli peace, and containing the conflict in Syria. Common among all of these issues is that they are fundamentally about negotiations.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Enlisting "B" Students

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Intrastate turmoil and interstate tension have dominated Middle Eastern headlines for more than two years, but the underlying strategic challenges facing the region have not changed. The problem comes down to people.

Middle East Notes and Comment: The Age of Proxy Wars

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

As revolutions swept the Middle East in 2011, many saw it as the dawn of an age of democratization. More recently, many have begun to see it as an age of Islamicization. It is more accurate, however, to see the region entering an age of proxy wars, on a scale that is likely to dwarf the Arab Cold War that pitted Saudi Arabia against Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Brother, Can You Spare a Carrier?

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0500

An aircraft carrier is a scarce resource. The United States has eleven carriers in its entire fleet, and only about half can deploy at any given time. According to the website globalsecurity.org, five U.S. carriers are currently at sea, and two of them are currently off the coast of Iran. That’s a lot of firepower directed toward one target, especially when few expect U.S.

Middle East Notes and Comment: The Education Imperative

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Education is a two-way street. Governments invest in education because it contributes to national strength, and individuals invest in education because it contributes to individual strength. While the precise balance differs, one side principally provides resources, the other principally provides time, and each derives benefit.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Slippery Choices

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

The Gulf Arab States have a dilemma. One reason that they have been able to avoid upheaval over the last tumultuous year in the Middle East is because they have made their already generous public subsidies even more generous. But within the short-term fix is a set of longer-term problems that could profoundly affect regional stability.

Middle East Notes and Comment: The Turkey Connection

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Saudi Arabia has a problem. Its decades-long alliances with Iraq and Egypt have been sundered, and its faith in U.S. leadership is at its lowest point in memory. Its regional threats have grown, not only from Iranians directly across the Gulf, but from the actions of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East that endanger Saudi allies.

Middle East Notes and Comment: The Middle East Turns East

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

As the United States struggles to understand the paradigm shifts underway in the Middle East, one shift has received almost no attention, and it should. After more than two centuries of the United States viewing the Middle East from the perspective of an Atlantic power, the United States increasingly views the region from the perspective of a Pacific power as well. The shift has pro

Middle East Notes and Comment: The Real Threat

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

GCC countries can almost certainly survive physical threats, but unless they can create dynamic, hard working and creative populations over the long term, they will fail. The true threat that GCC societies face is not so much a conquering from without, but a crumbling from within.

Middle East Notes and Comment: A U.S. Role in Yemen

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

For the last month, Washington has been abuzz with talk about what the United States government should do about Yemen. Should the United States give Yemen more military aid? Should it begin a large-scale economic assistance program? Should it help Yemen establish a governmental reform program, help implement a deradicalization program, or boost special forces training?

Middle East Notes and Comment: The Beginning of the End?

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Last month, the U.S. intelligence community published an assessment of what the world might look like in the year 2025. Americans treated the report as an interesting exercise, if a somewhat esoteric one. For many leaders in the Middle East, however, and especially in the Gulf, the report was not esoteric at all. It was a glimpse at their personal futures.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Reconcilable Differences?

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

The Arab Gulf States and the United States are adopting increasingly contradictory positions on Iran. Each side seems bent on undermining the other, potentially leading to precisely the outcome that each side is trying to prevent.

Here’s how.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Iran's Soft Power Creates Hard Realities

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

While U.S. public diplomacy appears to be withering in the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran is on a tear. The country is exploiting an ever-widening array of instruments to build goodwill and strategic partnerships throughout the Muslim world and beyond.

Middle East Notes and Comment: Bursting Bubbles

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 00:00:00 -0500

For several years now, Middle Eastern stock markets have been on a gravity-defying tear. What happens when they come back to earth could have a more dramatic effect on the Middle East than the U.S.-led war on Iraq, or a decade’s worth of democracy promotion plans by the European Union.