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311. Russia's Counter-Revolutionary Stance toward the Arab Spring

Author:
Pavel K. Baev
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The wave of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa has not only affected Russia's interests but also opens some new opportunities for strengthening Russian influence. Nevertheless, the prevalent attitude in Moscow towards these dissimilar but inter-connected crises is negative, which is caused primarily by the nature of its own corrupt quasi- democratic regime haunted by the specter of revolution. The stalled NATO intervention in Libya has re- focused the attention of the Russian leadership on the issue of sovereignty, which determines the decision to disallow any UN sanctions against Syria. Russia's position has evolved in synch with the course taken by China, and Moscow is interested in strengthening this counter- revolutionary proto-alliance by building up ties with conservative Arab regimes, including Saudi Arabia, and also by upgrading its strategic partnership with Turkey. Harvesting unexpected dividends from the turmoil in the Arab world,Russia cannot ignore the risks of a sudden explosion of a revolutionary energy – and neither can it effectively hedge against such a risk.
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Middle East, Arabia, Moscow, Saudi Arabia, and North Africa

312. "A Crude Threat: The Limits of an Iranian Missile Campaign against Saudi Arabian Oil"

Author:
Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson and Miranda Priebe
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The United States and its Persian Gulf allies have been increasingly concerned with the growing size and complexity of Iran's ballistic missile programs. At a time when the United States and its allies remain locked in a standoff with Iran over the latter's nuclear program, states around the Persian Gulf fear that Iran would retaliate for an attack on its nuclear program by launching missiles at regional oil installations and other strategic targets. An examination of the threat posed by Iran's missiles to Saudi Arabian oil installations, based on an assessment of Iran's missile capabilities, a detailed analysis of Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure, and a simulated missile campaign against the network using known Iranian weapons, finds no evidence of a significant Iranian missile threat to Saudi infrastructure. These findings cast doubt on one aspect of the Iranian threat to Persian Gulf oil while offering an analytic framework for understanding developments in the Iranian missile arsenal and the vulnerability of oil infrastructure to conventional attack.
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Persia

313. Will Oil Drown the Arab Spring?

Author:
Michael L. Ross
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Summary: No state with serious oil wealth has ever transformed into a democracy. Oil lets dictators buy off citizens, keep their finances secret, and spend wildly on arms. To prevent the “resource curse” from dashing the hopes of the Arab Spring, Washington should push for more transparent oil markets -- and curb its own oil addiction. MICHAEL L. ROSS is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of the forthcoming book The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations. Even before this year's Arab uprisings, the Middle East was not an undifferentiated block of authoritarianism. The citizens of countries with little or no oil, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia, generally had more freedom than those of countries with lots of it, such as Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. And once the tumult started, the oil-rich regimes were more effective at fending off attempts to unseat them. Indeed, the Arab Spring has seriously threatened just one oil-funded ruler -- Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi -- and only because NATO's intervention prevented the rebels' certain defeat. Worldwide, democracy has made impressive strides over the last three decades: just 30 percent of the world's governments were democratic in 1980; about 60 percent are today. Yet almost all the democratic governments that emerged during that period were in countries with little or no oil; in fact, countries that produced less than $100 per capita of oil per year (about what Ukraine and Vietnam produce) were three times as likely to democratize as countries that produced more than that. No country with more than a fraction of the per capita oil wealth of Bahrain, Iraq, or Libya has ever successfully gone from dictatorship to democracy. Scholars have called this the oil curse, arguing that oil wealth leads to authoritarianism, economic instability, corruption, and violent conflict. Skeptics claim that the correlation between oil and repression is a coincidence. As Dick Cheney, then the CEO of Haliburton, remarked at a 1996 energy conference, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments." But divine intervention did not cause repression in the Middle East: hydrocarbons did. There is no getting around the fact that countries in the region are less free because they produce and sell oil.
Topic:
NATO, Government, and Oil
Political Geography:
Iraq, Ukraine, Middle East, Kuwait, Libya, Vietnam, California, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, and Tunisia

314. Bush doctrine in the Middle East

Author:
Lukáš HODER and Petr Suchý
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The article is focused at the most important elements of the US foreign policy towards the Middle East during the administration of George W. Bush (2001 – 2009). The text has two parts. The first part shows three important influences on creation and formulation of the US foreign policy towards the region. At the first place it was an effort to preserve unipolar character of the international system, hegemonic possition of the USA and its dominance in all regions. The second source was specific decision-making process set up by president Bush and the third source of the Bush strategy was a partial transformation of the US longtime policy towards the Middle East. The second part of the article discuss results of the Bush doctrine in the region. The text is focused at five most important consequences of the US foreign policy, which are the fight against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the pursuit of the democratization throughout the region, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, regional “cold war” between Iran and Saudi Arabia and finally the struggle to stabilize the post-conflict Iraq.
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Saudi Arabia

315. A New Case for Wastewater Reuse in Saudi Arabia: Bringing Energy into the Water Equation

Author:
Arani Kajenthira, Laura Diaz Anadon, and Afreen Sidiqqi
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Industrial and urban water reuse should be considered along with desalination as options for water supply in Saudi Arabia. Although the Saudi Ministry for Water and Electricity (MoWE) has estimated that an investment of $53 billion will be required for water desalination projects over the next 15 years [1], the evolving necessity to conserve fossil resources and mitigate GHG emissions requires Saudi policy makers to weigh in much more heavily the energy and environmental costs of desalination. Increasing water tariffs for groundwater and desalinated water to more adequately represent the costs of water supply could encourage conservation, but also reuse, which may be more appropriate for many inland and high-altitude cities. The Saudi government should expand its support for water conservation and reuse within industry through financial incentives or through the implementation of cleaner production standards that encourage energy and water conservation and reuse. The case studies discussed in this work suggest that the implementation of water conservation, reuse and recovery measures in the natural gas [2] and crude oil [3] sectors alone have the potential to conserve up to 222 million m3 of water annually [2-4], or 29% of the total industrial water demand in 2009 [5]. In the municipal sector, increasing secondary wastewater treatment and reuse resulted in substantial cost and energy savings for six inland cities, while an estimated 26% of urban water needs could be met by treated wastewater. Therefore, industrial and domestic water reuse have the potential to appreciably reduce water withdrawals, conserve non-renewable aquifer water, and reduce reliance on desalination, which is primarily driven by non-renewable natural gas. Anticipated investments in desalination projects could also be deferred by prioritizing investment in sewage and water distribution networks that would ensure more effective water reclamation and reuse while simultaneously conserving non-renewable groundwater and natural gas resources and preventing the lock-in of potentially unnecessary desalination infrastructure that is likely to become more efficient in future.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
Middle East and Saudi Arabia

316. Saudi Arabia in the New Middle East

Author:
F. Gregory Gause III
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
There is arguably no more unlikely U.S. ally than Saudi Arabia: monarchical, deeply conservative socially, promoter of an austere and intolerant version of Islam, birthplace of Osama bin Laden and fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. Consequently, there is no U.S. ally less well understood. Many U.S. policymakers assume that the Saudi regime is fragile, despite its remarkable record of domestic stability in the turbulent Middle East. “It is an unstable country in an unstable region,” one congressional staffer said in July 2011. Yet it is the Arab country least affected in its domestic politics by the Arab upheavals of 2011. Many who think it is unstable domestically also paradoxically attribute enormous power to it, to the extent that they depict it as leading a “counterrevolution” against those upheavals throughout the region. 2 One wonders just how “counterrevolutionary” the Saudis are when they have supported the NATO campaign against Muammar al-Qaddafi, successfully negotiated the transfer of power from Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and condemned the crackdown on protestors by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and how powerful they are when they could do little to help their ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Islam, Oil, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Arabia, and Saudi Arabia

317. Calls for Reform: Challenges to Saudi Arabia's Education System

Author:
Karen Courington and Vanessa Zuabi
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
Education in Saudi Arabia faces a twofold challenge. The weak existing education system creates a serious mismatch between skills and demand for domestic workers. Moreover, the religious, clerical, and societal forces hinder educational advancement. These problems must be solved in the interest of reform if Saudi Arabia is to avoid the youth unrest and instability that has plagued its neighbors.
Topic:
Education
Political Geography:
Saudi Arabia

318. Role of International Aid and Open Trade Policies in Rebuilding the Somali State

Author:
Hussein Warsame
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Since its formation in 1960 from the union of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland, the Somali Republic was always dependent on foreign aid to balance its operations and development budgets. In each of the three years after independence, the Republic financed 31 percent of its budget with grants from its former colonizers: Britain and Italy.General Mohamed Siad Barre's socialist military regime of 1969–1991 heavily depended on financial and technical support from the U.S.S.R. until disagreement about the 1977–78 war between Somalia and Ethiopia disrupted the relationship. Due to Somalia's strategic location and the Cold War, Siad Barre was able to replace the financial loss caused by the departure of the U.S.S.R. with aid from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and countries in Western Europe.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Saudi Arabia, and Somalia

319. Islam and Technology: Evolution and Revolution

Author:
Aarti Ramachandran
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
In the heady days of the Arab Spring, as news came across the wire that longtime Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was about to step down, the Twitter universe abounded with jokes about the dictator and his relationship with technology: “He's trying to Google Map Saudi Arabia but forgot he shut down the internet.”
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Saudi Arabia and Egypt

320. The Perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2010

Author:
David Barchard, Gökçe Perçinoğlu, Jonathan Levack, Mensur Akgün, and Sabiha Senyücel Gündoğar
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Abstract:
This study contains the results of the second survey conducted by KA Research Limited between August 25th and September 27th 2010 with my contribution and that of TESEV’s researchers. Again, the 2010 survey was conducted in the same seven Arab countries but, unlike 2009, it was also conducted in Iran. In total, 2,267 people were surveyed by telephone or face-to-face. These results show a statistically significant increase in positive opinion of Turkey. Although they are dealt with more thoroughly in the report, there are a few social and thus political findings that are different from the previous year.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Regional Cooperation, and Public Opinion
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan