Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
In a new policy briefing book, entitled The Biden Administration and the Middle East: Policy Recommendations for a Sustainable Way Forward, MEI scholars tackle a large number of country-specific and region-wide issue areas, laying out both the abiding U.S. interests and specific recommendations for Biden administration policies that can further U.S. interests amid a region in turmoil.
Thinking out of the box means recognizing that the old paradigm of scapegoating Israel undermines Egyptian national security interests.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Sahar Khamis, Sabina Henneberg, Karam Shaar, and Ibrahim Jalal join host Alistair Taylor to examine the legacy and impact of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria ten years after the uprisings began.
“الإشكالية الراهنة هي مواجهة المُفسدين المُحتملين”
Ongoing conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Yemen are expected to continue to destabilize the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2021. However, technology will likely add another layer of complexity to these conflicts and reshape the region throughout the 2020s. When the Arab Spring began a decade ago, the biggest challenge facing long-standing Arab autocrats was grappling with the power of social media and the rise of online political opposition by tech-savvy millennial activists. In the 2020s, however, regional governments are now facing a new set of emerging technologies that will shape not only domestic politics but also regional geopolitical dynamics. These advancing technologies include: drone, cyber, and space technologies.
Five years ago, President Barack Obama characterized the failure “to plan for the day after” the U.S. intervention in Libya as his worst foreign policy mistake. Certainly, the aftermath of the decision to provide support for the Feb. 17, 2011 uprising, which ended 42 years of Moammar Gadhafi’s erratic and dictatorial rule, hasn’t been happy. Libya’s past decade has featured recurrent civil war, state collapse, terrorism, militias, and warlords, together with competing foreign interventions despite the continuing U.N. arms embargo.
Dr. Marwa Maziad discusses the relationship between Turkey and Egypt over the long term, analyzing the causes and effects of the divergent approaches to domestic and regional politics held presently by the respective Turkish and Egyptian presidents.
“يَدعي عبد الحميد الدبيبة أنه شعبوي وصل لمنصب سياسي لأنه أتى من خارج الأوساط السياسية، وأن مؤهلاته هي وعوده القائمة على ما أسماه تجفيف مستنقع الفساد. ولكن الحقيقة أن هذه مجرد شعارات.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
In Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, coverage of negotiations around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has tended to consistently be in the news over the past few years. The events of the last few weeks, however, have easily pushed GERD talks to the side. On Nov. 4, 2020, Ethiopian federal government forces started pounding the Tigray region, one of 10 semiautonomous regions in the country, after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of attacking a federal base. Relations had been disintegrating after Abiy cancelled elections, due to COVID, that would have marked the end of his term. While most of Ethiopia’s ethnic minorities took umbrage, the TPLF went a step further by holding their own elections, the results of which were declared null and void by the federal government.
The Middle East is in turmoil, with civil wars raging in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. COVID-19 is now an additional factor on top of the violence and monumental international support tasks, all of which require a sustained commitment. The effects of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic highlight the need for more robust international stabilization efforts to achieve long-term peace and self-sufficiency in the Middle East.
Rapid and unprecedented transformation in the Middle East, whether political, social, or technological, is forcing governments to reckon with enormous changes. Many governments are responding by attempting to pursue two contradictory paths forward — cyber sovereignty and digital transformation — and they might end up not achieving either.
مثل الكثير من دول العالم، وقعت مصر في مُستنقع الجائحة في عام 2020. ومع ذلك، فإن قدرتها على إخراج نفسها من المُستنقع ستعتمد بشكل شبه كامل على حكومتها، وعلى الطريقة التي تختار بها مُعالجة مجموعة المُشكلات المُؤسسية التي كشفتها الجائحة.