Research & Commentary Results

The Middle East Dialogue is a regional Track II forum that meets twice a year and brings together current and former officials and senior experts from the Middle East, the United States, Russia, China, and the EU to discuss emerging political & security trends in the region.  What follows is a report from the latest meeting of the Dialogue in Erbil, Iraq, on March 30-31, 2014, led by MEI’s Director of Track II Dialogues Randa Slim and VP for Policy and Research Paul Salem.

Read the full article at LobeLog.

It might be a mistake to jump to conclusions about the removal of Prince Bandar bin Sultan from his post as chief of Saudi Arabian intelligence. When it comes to senior jobs held by the royals, the Kingdom’s decision-making process is entirely opaque and there is no way to know at this point whether the flamboyant former ambassador to the United States was pushed out or bailed out.

Introduction

The political crisis in Ukraine and subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia have sent reverberations throughout the Middle East, where Western and Russian influences continue to weave a complex geopolitical web. MEI interviewed four of its scholars to produce this detailed account of the challenges the conflict poses to the region’s political, security, and economic conditions.

Osama bin Laden may be dead, but his ghost was in Riyadh the other day, hovering over Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah as he issued a decree making it a crime for any Saudi citizen to take part in a war outside the kingdom.

The obvious motivator was the civil war in Syria, where hundreds of young Saudis have been spotted in the ranks of the most radical jihadi groups battling both the government and other less extreme rebels. But the roots of the king’s action, and the problem it was designed to address, can be traced to the 1980s war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East, by Hugh Wilford, 2013

A tale of how the CIA set sail into the Middle East with the best intentions, ran aground on its own failings, and was overwhelmed by forces and events it could not control.

During the 1970s the Communist Party dominated almost all walks of life in Vietnam. This strict control, especially in regard to the economy, failed to achieve sustainable development. Vietnamese authorities then began to pursue a policy of openness to the outside world, and the Doi Moi, or “renovation,” was launched in 1986. As a result of this and other gradual reforms, Vietnam has become one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, with annual GDP growth averaging 7.1 percent between 2000 and 2012—a rate that the country is expected to sustain over the next decade. In this context, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-Vietnam relations are promising and may develop steadily over the coming years.

The nuclear deal with Iran, though still temporary and tentative, is ushering in a historic shift in the patterns of power, conflict, and diplomacy in the region. Like all historic shifts, it is laden with uncertainty and risk of new conflicts, but also carries with it potential opportunities for further diplomacy and finding common ground. Given the precedent of conflict and mistrust in the region, it is no surprise that the deal has raised concerns among many of America’s allies.

Keynote Speaker, Amb. Susan Rice, U.S. National Security Advisor. 

Whether Saudi Arabia takes a seat on the United Nations Security Council or not, the initial snub is aimed primarily at the United States. In particular, U.S.-Saudi relations are in for an exceptionally difficult period—perhaps a return to the policies of King Faisal bin Abdulaziz. It appears that Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf now share the view of Sir Charles Johnston, a British diplomat in the 1960s, who offered the following assessment of U.S.

Last week, MEI scholars Allen Keiswetter, a retired Foreign Service officer, David Newton, former ambassador to Yemen, and Roby Barrett, author of Yemen: A Different Political Paradigm in Context (2011), gathered for an informal discussion about Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (NDC), which began in March.

The openly difficult relationship between Saudi Arabia and Muslim Brotherhood chapters across the region has become a salient feature of Middle East politics since the advent of the “Arab Spring.” This mutual mistrust has increased in the wake of the Kingdom’s recent support for the military takeover in Cairo and the generals’ subsequent repression of the Brotherhood there. But how is the Islamist organization affected by this dynamic in Syria, where the Muslim Brothers and the Saudis both battle against Bashar al-Assad?

Over the past two decades, Dubai has risen to become a global financial, commercial shipping, aviation, and art hub. These essays examine Dubai’s key role in revitalizing the historic ties between the countries of the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions.

This article first appeared on Lobe Log.

Whenever a Saudi Arabian king or senior prince publicly criticizes U.S. policy, they inevitably touch off speculation about how the Saudis may be rethinking their security alliance with the United States.

Like pieces fitting together in a jigsaw puzzle, Arab governments – presumably from the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council – offered to finance a U.S. military strike on Syria, according to comments made by Secretary of State John Kerry during testimony September 4 with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In an exchange with Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) on the potential cost of U.S. military action in Syria, Kerry said,

When King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and his foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, issued unequivocal pledges of support for Egypt’s military government and its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, their move was widely depicted in the news media as a logical extension of the kingdom’s opposition to revolutionary movements in the Arab world. This simplistic view overlooks the fact that Saudi Arabia has responded differently to different uprisings—it supports the rebels in Syria, helped to crush them in Bahrain—and that aligning itself with Egypt’s new rulers could be a risky strategy.