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1502. False Dichotomy: Stability Versus Reform in the Arab World
- Author:
- Danya Greenfield and Faysal Itani
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- To cling to current short-sighted policies and to help sustain dysfunctional states in the Middle East for the sake of short-term security would condemn the region to poverty and further instability, which threaten to have negative consequences for US interests.
- Political Geography:
- United States and Middle East
1503. ISIS War Game II: The Escalation Challenge
- Author:
- Bilal Y. Saab and Michael S. Tyson
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- In September 2014, Bilal Y. Saab, Resident Senior Fellow for Middle East Security at the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft on International Security, and Michael S. Tyson, Marine Corps Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Center, predicted in a simulation exercise (for results, see "ISIS War Game: The Coming Stalemate") conducted at the Scowcroft Center's Middle East Peace and Security Initiative that the most likely scenario was a military stalemate. They also realized that such a stalemate was not stable. Since the conclusion of the first war game, ISIS's regional attacks have increased in scope, lethality, and level of sophistication, as evidenced by its military and terrorist operations in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Lebanon.
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Egypt
1504. Circumcision in America
- Author:
- Joseph England
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- Every year throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, between four and five million girls suffer gruesome genital mutilation at the hands of tribal “cutters” or circumcisers. Far from being regarded as barbaric criminals from whom children should be hidden, these wielders of sharpened rocks, broken glass, rusty metal, and (only sometimes) scalpels occupy a special position of power and influence in their communities. Parents voluntarily, sometimes enthusiastically, bring their young and infant daughters to be mutilated. Though methods vary in severity, in as many as 10 percent of cases, a cutter shears a girl's labia for “beauty,” excises her clitoris to deprive her of sexual pleasure later in life, and sews closed her vagina to ensure virginity until marriage.
- Political Geography:
- Africa, America, and Middle East
1505. TSG IntelBrief: The Competition for Iraq and Syria
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Soufan Group
- Abstract:
- Despite the vast resources of other states in the Middle East, the two powers that matter most are Iran and Turkey Iran is currently ascendant in the region and takes every opportunity to wield its influence Saudi Arabia is trying to build a Sunni alliance that might challenge Iran's dominance-even if it is not clear how Efforts to bring Turkey on board the Sunni alliance may founder on differing interests-not least Turkey's own ambitions.
- Political Geography:
- Turkey and Middle East
1506. From Wales to Warsaw: NATO's Readiness Action Plan
- Author:
- Douglas Lute
- Publication Date:
- 05-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Council of American Ambassadors
- Abstract:
- At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit in Wales on September 4-5, 2014, NATO leaders were clear about the security challenges on the Alliance's borders. In the East, Russia's actions threaten our vision of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace. On the Alliance's southeastern border, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's campaign of terror poses a threat to the stability of the Middle East and beyond. To the south, across the Mediterranean, Libya is becoming increasingly unstable.
- Topic:
- NATO
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Middle East, and Libya
1507. EU-Turkey Relations in the Context of the Middle East after the Arab Spring
- Author:
- Nilüfer Karacasulu and Irem Aşkar Karakır
- Publication Date:
- 05-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Insight Turkey
- Institution:
- SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
- Abstract:
- This paper discusses EU-Turkey relations with a specific reference to regional developments in the Middle East after the Arab Spring. In the last decade, the Turkish government has tried to intensify Turkey's influence in the region. However, increasing activism in Turkey's foreign policy toward the region was not accompanied by a parallel commitment in its relations with the EU. In the meantime, the EU was caught unprepared by the Arab Spring in the middle of the Euro-zone crisis, and now its strategic interests are being threatened by regional instability. Both sides have been faced with the task of adapting their policies to the political transitions in the region. After an analysis of their contemporary regional policies, this article argues that even though their strategies are not totally in line with each other, Turkey follows the same objectives that the EU neighborhood policy has pursued towards the Middle East.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy
- Political Geography:
- Turkey, Middle East, and Arabia
1508. The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East
- Author:
- Valerie Behiery
- Publication Date:
- 05-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Insight Turkey
- Institution:
- SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
- Abstract:
- he recent book edited by A.C.S. Peacock and Sara Nur Yıldız, The Seljuks of Anatolia: Court and Society in the Medieval Middle East, demonstrates how a cognizance of historiography affords the ability to reexamine a historical period. The book, which emerged out of a workshop held in Istanbul in 2009, reinvigorates the study of the Seljuk Empire. Its authors, in order to compensate for the paucity of Muslim sources on medieval Anatolia, draw from a number of “untapped” sources such as Greek and Armenian texts, epigraphy, poetry and letters sent to the court. More significantly, they employ innovative frameworks that test standard perceptions of the Sultanate of Rūm (c. 1081 -1308) and emphasize its religious, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Thus, while the cited aim of the book is to “explore how court and society interacted and shaped one [an]other,” moving “beyond the more purely political history that has dominated to date” (p. 4), its larger purpose of questioning entrenched views of the Seljuk dynasty and medieval Anatolia, and the methods that it uses to offer up new avenues of research make this book a benchmark in the field.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Armenia
1509. After the Arab Spring: How the Media Trashed the Transitions
- Author:
- Marc Lynch
- Publication Date:
- 10-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Democracy
- Institution:
- National Endowment for Democracy
- Abstract:
- The media played a key role in mobilizing the Arab uprisings of 2010-11, but played a far more negative role in the transitions which ensued. Rather than constituting new public spheres for the negotiation of new identities and institutions, or acting as watchdogs on the emergent regimes, the media in most Arab states contributed to social polarization, popular discontent, and the resurgence of old regimes. While the potentially destructive role of media can be found in all attempted democratic transitions, the Arab cases had several unique characteristics, including the prominent role of transnational broadcasting, the new social media environment, and divisive questions about Islamist movements. This article traces the role of the media in the Arab transitions across three distinct levels: transnational broadcasting, domestic public and private broadcasting, and social media. All three played destructive roles, with transnational television becoming a weapon for proxy wars by regional powers, national media being captured by old elites and private interests, and social media encouraging polarization and informational clustering. Very similar patterns emerge in Egypt and Tunisia, the two key potential democratic transitions following the Arab uprisings.
- Topic:
- Social Movement, Media, Arab Spring, Propaganda, and The Press
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Middle East, Tunisia, and Egypt
1510. Authoritarianism Goes Global (II): The Leninist Roots of Civil Society Repression
- Author:
- Anne Applebaum
- Publication Date:
- 10-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Democracy
- Institution:
- National Endowment for Democracy
- Abstract:
- In the early part of the twentieth century, the small group of revolutionaries who became the Russian Bolsheviks developed an alternative theory of civil society. Burke, Tocqueville, and even Russian intellectuals believed that civil society was fundamental to democracy; Lenin believed that the destruction of civil society was crucial to totalitarian dictatorship. But by attempting to control every aspect of society, totalitarian regimes would eventually turn every aspect of society into a potential source of dissent, as in the cases of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Yet in many other societies heavily influenced by Soviet ideology—those in Belarus, Central Asia, China, Cuba, parts of Africa, and much of the Arab world—those in power remain attached to the old Bolshevik idea that independent civic institutions are a threat to the state.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Authoritarianism, Media, Repression, and Dictatorship
- Political Geography:
- Africa, China, Europe, Central Asia, Middle East, Asia, Cuba, North America, and Belarus