Research & Commentary Results

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has destabilized and distressed the entire Black Sea neighborhood. Yet despite the war, or perhaps because of it, strategically important foreign direct investments into Black Sea littoral countries, including from the Gulf, have endured or even grown.

To analyze the crossroads Turkey faces in the 2023 elections, it could prove useful to “look back from the alternative futures” and explore how the possible outcomes might play out. What could it look like if we look back from 2030 to another victory by Erdoğan? And how might have the last seven years played out had the opposition won?

With AI development disproportionate attention is given to the world’s technological heavyweights, the U.S. and China, as they seek an innovative edge in their great power competition. But Gulf states like the UAE are also moving rapidly to invest in and adopt AI, with significant implications for bilateral relations. The momentum in both the U.S. and the UAE can be leveraged by anchoring further ideas for political, diplomatic, and military cooperation in the technical evolution of AI.

في السنوات القليلة الماضية، أصبح الدين العام الأردني مصدر قلق سياسي كبير للحكومة والمجتمع الدولي والمانحين الرئيسيين الذين يدعمون عمّان. فقد ارتفع الدين العام بشكل كبير خلال السنوات الخمس عشرة الماضية، مما أثار العديد من التساؤلات حول مستقبل الاستقرار الاقتصادي الكلي في الأردن، وقدرة الحكومة على تمويل مشاريع التنمية.

The blue economy can offer huge potential in climate change mitigation and resilience, given the fact that marine habitats, such as mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrass meadows, provide significant protection from erratic climate events. MENA countries would benefit from developing the blue economy to aid in reversing natural resource degradation, sustaining inclusive economic development, and building resilience to climate change.

Until recently, the EU has favored a piecemeal approach toward the Northwestern Indian Ocean, the Gulf, and the Red Sea, despite their close interdependence and inter-connectedness in the security, political, and economic realms. But the EU is now signaling a growing desire to steer its naval policy toward a more holistic and organic process, creating an opportunity for Brussels to become a more relevant security actor in the waters off the Arabian Peninsula.

As Turkey heads to the polls for presidential and parliamentary elections this month, the consequences for its troubled economy are likely to be significant and wide-ranging. Financial stability, business confidence, purchasing power, and asset prices all depend on whether President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s two-decade-long rule will continue; at the same time these factors will also determine his chances for re-election. There are a number of potential election outcomes that could lead to greater uncertainty and volatility rather than clarity and stability.

Lebanon is on the verge of complete collapse, and if Washington is serious about preventing not just another failed state but a growing normalization of unchecked authoritarianism in the Middle East, it must stop outsourcing leadership on Lebanon to France.

The Biden administration’s National Cybersecurity Strategy, released on March 2, 2023, revamped the U.S. approach to cyberspace and underlined the ways in which the government aims to build a more resilient, defensible, and values-aligned cyberspace. What does the strategy mean and what opportunities might it present for U.S. partners and allies in the Middle East?

تركزت جميع النزاعات التاريخية والحديثة في الشرق الأوسط حول الاعتبارات الإقليمية الكلاسيكية المتعلقة بفقدان الأراضي أو استعادتها. وللخروج من هذه الدوامة، كان من الضروري الابتعاد عن أحد الأسباب الجذرية الرئيسية للنزاع: الجغرافيا. وقد تكون التغيرات الحالية في المنطقة، التي تتميز بتوجه كبير نحو تخفيف حدة التوتر واستعداد متزايد للانفصال بشكل دوري عن الحلفاء التقليديين، مؤشرات على حدوث تحول جذري عميق نحو "السياسة الكمومية".

أثار تصريح الرئيس قيس سعيد خلال خطاب ألقاه في 6 أبريل/نيسان، والذي ادعى فيه رفضه للشروط، أو "الإنفاذ"، كما أسماها، المرتبطة بقرض محتمل من صندوق النقد الدولي، جدلاً واسعاً. ويبدو أن ردود الفعل على الخطاب وكذلك الإجراءات التي اتخذها المسؤولون التونسيون قبله وبعده تتعارض مع مقصده، مما تسبب في إرباك حول ما إذا كانت الصفقة لا تزال قائمة. وفي الوقت نفسه، اعتبر آخرون الخطاب علامة على أن تونس تدرس بجدية إمكانية وجود بدائل لتمويل صندوق النقد الدولي أو حتى إعادة توجيه جيوسياسي.

Over the coming decades, the worsening effects of climate change will increasingly displace many millions of vulnerable people in the Middle East and North Africa, and many of these refugees will attempt to relocate to the Global North. To avert such a monumental looming problem requires pragmatic solutions and their swift implementation.

On this week’s episode Alistair Taylor, MEI’s editor-in-chief, is joined by Mohammed Soliman, director of MEI’s Strategic Technologies and Cyber Security Program, to discuss the US-China tech Cold War and what it means for the Middle East. At the nexus of great power competition and rapid technological advances in areas like semiconductors and AI, the rivalry between Washington and Beijing is fuelling a longer-term process of economic and technological decoupling. Navigating this growing divide will be a key challenge for regional actors across MENA.

Egyptian fish farmers are facing mounting pressures: Year after year, their fish are getting smaller and less healthy, their production decreases, and they are forced to take out loans they are later unable to pay back. The Egyptian government’s recent efforts to invest heavily in aquaculture, though intended to address future food shortages, may only worsen the position of local fish farmers in the Nile Delta by exacerbating the effects of urbanization and climate change while undercutting prices.

When Saudi Arabia suddenly announced in early April that it would reduce its oil production by 500,000 bpd, followed shortly thereafter by several other OPEC+ members, bringing the total cut to 1.1 million bpd, Japan was greatly concerned. In spite of Japan’s serious efforts to work toward a carbon-neutral society, the country is still heavily dependent on oil, the overwhelming majority of which comes from the Persian Gulf.