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1. American Policy and Changing Alignments in the Middle East

Author:
Geoffrey Kemp
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
America’s Middle East policy must adapt to a changing region. The lack of an overarching theory of vital U.S. interests in the Middle East and of a strategy narrowly tailored to defending them has rendered U.S. policy reactive and largely incoherent. To the extent that it has coherence, it is driven by a strategy of primacy—by a complex of ideas in which active, armed American management of the region is essential for stability, in which states do not have a strong tendency to seek balance against threats, and in which increasing U.S. involvement will generally increase stability—and do so at costs acceptable to the United States. This strategy has undergirded costly choices like striking Libya, invading and occupying Iraq, putting American boots on the ground in Syria, and supporting unsavory partners against their internal opponents. This strategy faces building headwinds: public frustration, a growing national debt, and better-armed foes. Primacy comes at a growing opportunity cost: power tied up in the Middle East is unavailable to address a rising China or a more active Russia. And this strategy seems out of step with the region’s rapidly shifting strategic alignments. The time is ripe to go back to the basics, prioritizing the threats that require U.S. action in relation to the other international crises that affect vital U.S. interests, especially in East Asia and Europe
Topic:
International Cooperation and International Affairs
Political Geography:
Middle East

2. Rethinking U.S Strategy in the Middle East

Author:
Joe Barnes
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
President Barack Obama’s Middle East policies have come under increasingly sharp criticism since the emergence of ISIL as a threat to Iraq during the summer of 2014. Some of this criticism has come from predictable quarters: neoconservatives and liberal interventionists who have long been critical of the Obama administration’s relatively “soft touch” approach to the region, notably its hesitance to get the United States more deeply involved in the Syrian civil war. But a sense of drift in U.S. policy toward the Middle East has spread to the general public, as well.
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Middle East

3. China: Superpower or Superbust?

Author:
Ian Bremmer
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
AS IF a global financial-market meltdown, the deepest U.S. recession in seventy years, an existential crisis in the euro zone and upheaval in the Middle East hadn't already created enough trouble for one decade, now the unrest and anxiety have extended to some of the world's most attractive emerging markets. Just in the past few months, we've seen a rough ride for India's currency, furious nationwide protests in Turkey and Brazil, antigovernment demonstrations in Russia, strikes and violence in South Africa, and an ominous economic slowdown in all these countries.
Topic:
Emerging Markets
Political Geography:
China, Turkey, Middle East, South Africa, and Brazil

4. Misunderestimating Bush and Cheney

Author:
Christian Caryl
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
A SPECTER is haunting Washington-the specter of George W. Bush. President Obama may have spent almost five years in the White House by now, but it's still possible to detect the furtive presence of a certain restless shade lurking in the dimmer corners of the federal mansion. Needless to say, this is something of a first: usually U.S. presidents have to die before they can join the illustrious corps of Washington ghosts, and 43 is, of course, still very much alive in his tony Dallas neighborhood, by all accounts enthusiastically pursuing his new avocation as an amateur painter. Yet his spirit is proving remarkably hard to exorcise.
Topic:
Government and War
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, and Middle East

5. When Camelot Went to Japan

Author:
Jennifer Lind
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
THE UNITED States has security partnerships with numerous countries whose people detest America. The United States and Pakistan wrangled for seven months over a U.S. apology for the NATO air strikes that killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers in 2011. The accompanying protests that roiled Islamabad, Karachi and other cities are a staple of the two countries' fraught relationship. Similarly, American relations with Afghanistan repeatedly descended into turmoil last year as Afghans expressed outrage at Koran burnings by U.S. personnel through riots and killings. “Green on blue” attacks—Afghan killings of U.S. soldiers—plague the alliance. In many Islamic countries, polls reflect little warmth toward Americans. Washington's strategy of aligning with governments, rather than peoples, blew up in Egypt and could blow up in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen. America's alliances in the Middle East and Persian Gulf are fraught with distrust, dislike and frequent crisis. Is there any hope for them? Turns out, there is. Fifty years ago, a different alliance was rocked by crisis and heading toward demise. Like many contemporary U.S. alliances, it had been created as a marriage of convenience between Washington and a narrow segment of elites, and it was viewed with distrust by the peoples of both countries. Yet a half century later, that pairing is one of the strongest security partnerships in the world—the alliance between the United States and Japan.
Topic:
Security and Islam
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, Japan, America, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt

6. Samantha and Her Subjects

Author:
Jacob Heilbrunn
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
The prophet armed, Samantha Power, has now drafted Obama into her crusade against mass slaughter. Liberal hawks and neocons, reunited. Make way for a profound foreign-policy transformation.
Topic:
NATO, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Iraq, America, and Middle East

7. The Arab Wave

Author:
Eugene Rogan
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
Contrary to so much conventional wisdom, the struggle for democracy in the Middle East is not new. The events of 2011 have deep roots in the nineteenth century. Islamic culture and self-governance are not mutually exclusive.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arabia

8. Breaking the State

Author:
Rajan Menon
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
One fact is certain: foreign interventions end badly. Think the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan. Libya will be no different.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Middle East, Libya, and Balkans

9. Tithing at the Crude Altar

Author:
Michael T. Klare
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
PRESIDENT BARACK Obama has often stated that one of his highest priorities is to vanquish the "tyranny of oil" by developing alternative sources of energy and substantially reducing America's reliance on imported petroleum. But we will not be energy independent for the next thirty to forty years, even with a strong push to increase energy efficiency and spur the development of petroleum alternatives. During this time, America will remain dependent on oil derived from authoritarian regimes, weak states and nations in the midst of civil war.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Iraq, America, and Middle East

10. The Mountebanks The Apostates

Author:
Fawaz A. Gerges
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The National Interest
Institution:
Center for the National Interest
Abstract:
AMERICA'S BLOODY encounter with Islam is a failure. At heart there is an inability to understand the context and dynamics of Arab and Muslim politics; the conceptual differences and boundaries between moderate Islamists, nonviolent radical activists, local jihadists and global jihadists like al-Qaeda. For eight years, the dominant U.S. narrative blurred the lines between "Islamist," "radical," "militant," "extremist," "jihadist" and "terrorist." The United States equated Islamists' offensive speech with jihadists' violent action. But there are stark differences between locally and regionally based political groups like Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah and borderless, transnational and globalized jihadist groups like al-Qaeda that have been waging war against the United States and its close allies since the mid-1990s.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and Palestine