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21. Connecting Countries to Stabilize the Middle East

Author:
Heidi Larbi
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
This Policy Paper is part of The Middle East Institute's Regional Cooperation Series. Throughout 2016, MEI will be releasing several policy papers by renowned scholars and experts exploring possibilities to foster regional cooperation across an array of sectors. The purpose is to highlight the myriad benefits and opportunities associated with regional cooperation, and the high costs of the continued business-as-usual model of competition and intense rivalry. Infrastructure serves as one of the key tools available to enhance regional cooperation and build toward an integrated Middle East. Under the reign of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East and North Africa was an integrated web of railways, arterial and trading routes, much of which has disappeared over the last century. A region unaccustomed to division has since fragmented, with each state erecting numerous barriers that hinder integration—from trade tariffs to poor customs services. The economic potential and benefits for the region as a whole lies within deeper integration. This paper explores feasible possibilities for short-term and long-term infrastructure integration across several key sectors: energy, I.C.T., transport and facilitation.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, Infrastructure, and Political stability
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, Yemen, and Syria

22. Toward a Regional Framework for the Middle East: Takeaways from other Regions

Author:
Ross Harrison
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
This Policy Paper is part of the Middle East Institute's Regional Cooperation Series. Throughout 2016, MEI will be releasing several policy papers by renowned scholars and experts exploring possibilities to foster regional cooperation across an array of sectors. The purpose is to highlight the myriad benefits and opportunities associated with regional cooperation, and the high costs of the continued business-as-usual model of competition and intense rivalry. While the prospects for creating a regional architecture in the Middle East may seem grim currently, it is a crucial time to begin thinking about regionalization as a long-term project. The ongoing conflicts in the Middle East are likely to continue over the course of the coming decades, but it is possible that game-changing events could occur that create the political will necessary for adversaries like Saudi Arabia and Iran to cooperate. By looking at steps taken in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, this paper analyzes the conditions conducive to creating a regional order and how they arise at critical moments in history. Getting regionalization right can help create a pathway toward a regional institutional architecture and will be fundamental to establishing stability in the region.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, Water, and State
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, Libya, Yemen, and Syria

23. Kurds in Iraq seek independence 100 years after Sykes-Picot

Author:
Janko Bekić
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO)
Abstract:
In February, Masoud Barzani, President of Iraqi Kurdistan, announced that a referendum on the independence of the autonomous region would be held by the end of 2016. He stressed that Kurdistan had the same grounds for demanding statehood as Scotland, Catalonia or Quebec. Equally, he opined, the right of the Kurdish people to decide their own fate was unnegotiable. During an earlier encounter with Western journalists, Barzani pointed to the upcoming centenary of the Sykes-Picot agreement (16 May 1916), which divided Ottoman assets in the Middle East into British and French zones of interest, laying the foundations for the creation of multi-ethnic and multi-religious Iraq and Syria. The President of the Kurdistan Region underlined that 2016 would be the year in which the Franco-British agreement of World War I would be annulled and the policy of “compulsory co-existence” in the Middle East �inally abandoned. The purpose of this brief is to succinctly discuss the case made for Kurdish independence, but also the many obstacles on the way towards it. Solid arguments in favour of secession Mr. Barzani’s central argument in favour of Kurdish statehood is the fact that international borders in the Middle East largely do not correspond to popular will; i.e. they have no legitimacy, only legality. Historically, they are by-products of foreign – Ottoman, and later Western European – rule. As such, they are open for revision, especially if the states in question have a track record of discriminating, forcibly assimilating, or – in the worst case – physically exterminating segments of the population. Another argument made by Mr. Barzani is one concerning “compulsory co-existence”. It's well-known that international power brokers are rather conservative when it comes to recognizing border changes or granting independence to secessionist entities. As a rule, these are considered only in instances of grave human rights violations, and only as a last resort. The Westphalian sovereignty of states has been greatly eroded by the concept of humanitarian intervention. However, international borders are still considered to be sacrosanct and – generally – untouchable. This often leads to the involuntary co-existence of ethnic, national and/or religious groups with no sense of shared identity or mutual interests. In such unfavourable conditions, democracies – if they exist – are little more than tyrannies of the majority.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Human Rights, and Autonomy
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, Syria, and Kurdistan

24. Iran’s Failed Foreign Policy: Dealing from a Position of Weakness

Author:
Thomas Juneau
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
In this MEI Policy Paper, Thomas Juneau examines Iran’s role in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and the Arab-Israeli conflict to explain why Iran is not a “rising regional hegemon” but rather a “mid-sized regional power frustrated at not reaching its ambitions.”
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Power Politics, Nuclear Power, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Israel, Yemen, Palestine, and Syria

25. A Comparative Analysis of Imperial Japan's Predicament in China and U.S. Quagmire in Post-Saddam Iraq: Similarities, Lessons and Implications

Author:
Matsahiro Matsumura
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
This study will first present a series of striking similarities between the imperial Japanese predicament in China and the contemporary U.S. quagmire in post-Saddam Iraq. Second, the study will provide a theoretical perspective on why the two cases share such commonalities. Third, the study will explore the implications of the perspective to international politics, with a focus on the future of the U.S. hegemony. The study is based on the basic understanding that the developing world across regions today has continued to suffer the ongoing single macro-historical process consequent upon the breakdowns of empires as the once-predominant organizational mode of human societies. The analysis argues for the central importance of a stable national identity for modernization and development as well as freedom and democracy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Imperialism, Nationalism, Military Intervention, and Modernization
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Iraq, Middle East, and Asia

26. The Bypass: Ahmad Chalabi, Dick Cheney and the Disbanding of the Iraqi Army

Author:
Michael Wackenreuter
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
On March 12, 2003, a week before the invasion of Iraq, a Principals Committee meeting of the National Security Council was held at the White House to formally decide the fate of the Iraqi Army.[1] The participants, having all received extensive briefings on the subject prior to meeting, voted unanimously and with little discussion that after disbanding the Republican Guard, the “regular soldiers” of the Iraqi Army would be called “back to duty.”[2] In spite of this decision, on May 23, 2003, L. Paul Bremer III—President Bush’s “special envoy” in Iraq—announced Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 2, “Dissolution of Entities.” Among the relevant entities to be dissolved by the decree was the Iraqi Army.[3] In an interview with the journalist Robert Draper at the end of his presidency, President Bush commented on this apparent dissonance when he remarked, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.” When asked further of his reaction when he found out about the decree, Bush replied, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’”[4] Having endured significant criticism over CPA Order No. 2, Mr. Bremer was quick to defend himself, providing letters to The New York Times to and from the president “in order to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bush’s comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House.”[5] Such a puzzling exchange over such an important topic serves to illustrate a larger point. That is, despite its centrality to America’s involvement in Iraq, from the emergence of the insurgency onward to its current conflict with ISIS, it still remains unclear how and why the decision to disband the Iraqi Army was made. In this paper, I demonstrate that the impetus for CPA Order No. 2 came from the prominent Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, and was carried out under the authority of Vice President Richard “Dick” Cheney by a small group of Chalabi’s supporters in the Office of the Vice President and the Pentagon. I do so first by establishing the lengths to which those in the vice president’s office, in concert with like-minded officials at the Defense Department, were willing to go in order to support Chalabi, who favored disbanding the army. Secondly, I identify the striking similarities between the events surrounding the order and other instances involving the vice president that involved a bypass of the normal interagency policy-making process...
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, History, Army, Baath Party, and Iraq War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

27. Anglo-Saxon Axis in 2003: Blair's Doctrine and Bush Invasion of Iraq

Author:
Seyed Vahid Karimi and Amir Hooshang Mirkooshesh
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Center for Strategic Research (CSR)
Abstract:
What is the relationship between the doctrine of Tony Blair and America's invasion of Iraq? This paper tries to answer this question. So, it looks at the American invasion of Iraq and the British response, and argues that Brain always prevails over brawn. United States was and still is a hard power. Britain plays a soft power role in international relations. Britain usually uses the American strength and resources for the benefit of Britain. When the British describe their relations with the United States as "special," they mean that they have the power to influence and direct US foreign policy. For an understanding of the international politics, we must concentrate on Anglo-Saxon "interdependency" through the "special relationship" which often exists between British Prime Ministers and US Presidents. Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister of the 1940s, Harold Macmillan in the 1960s, Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and Tony Blair in the 2000s, all had special relationships with their US counterparts. While not always the case, the relationship between Tony Blair, British Prime Minster, and George Bush, American President, was beneficial to British interest and Blair's doctrine of International Community declared in 1999. it is imperative not only to understand international politics, but also to react properly to international politics. As it has been proven in the Iraq case, Tony Blair manipulated US foreign policy during the George Bush presidency.
Topic:
International Relations and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, Iraq, and America

28. Plan Colombia: A Retrospective

Author:
Michael Shifter
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
At first glance, perhaps the most notable feature of Plan Colombia has been its longevity. Given the current divisiveness in Washington, the bipartisan support it has received across three administrations now seems remarkable. After 12 years, the plan is gradually winding down, but the U.S. allocated more than $300 million under the program in 2012 alone. Although the Plan has evolved considerably since it was approved by the U.S. Congress in July 2000, it has become shorthand for wide-ranging U.S. cooperation with Colombia to assist that country in combating drugs, guerrilla violence, and related institutional and social problems. All told, the U.S. has spent nearly $8 billion on the initiative—more than anywhere outside of the Middle East, and Iraq and Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War. Although the effort gave priority to counter-narcotics operations—and specifically the eradication of coca in southern Colombia—from the outset it also encompassed assistance for the judiciary and economic development.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Development, Government, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Washington, and Middle East

29. British Foreign Policy in an Unequal World

Author:
Edmund Cairns
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
The UK needs a safe world in which to trade and invest, and to be free from the security threats caused by conflicts or fragile states. Yet spiralling inequality and climate change, among many other factors, threaten to create a more dangerous, unequal world. As the continuing tragedy in Syria shows, the world's old and new powers have not yet found a way to unite to end conflicts. The age of interventions, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, is over. But a new rule-based world in which China, India, and others unite with Western powers to protect civilians and end conflicts has not yet come into being. Whoever wins the 2015 UK general election, the greatest test for UK foreign policy will be how much it can do to help build that world.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Climate Change, Poverty, Insurgency, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
Britain, China, Iraq, United Kingdom, Europe, India, and Syria

30. Theorizing the Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy

Author:
Kilic Bugra Kanat
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The transformation of Turkish foreign policy has become a closely followed subject, fueling important debates on the underlying reasons, resources, actors, outcomes, and nature of the policy progress. This change has also introduced new challenges to those who have adopted generic models to understand and explain Turkish foreign policy. This article will examine and discuss the main causes that have complicated the study of Turkish foreign policy during this period, such as simultaneous changes in the nature and conceptualization of the international system –the end of the unipolar world, the emergence of new power centers - and domestic transformations in Turkey, including active civilian control of military, the emergence of an attentive public opinion in foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Development
Political Geography:
Iraq and Turkey