Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
In a 1994 article for Foreign Affairs, former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously argued that “without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire.” His analysis is no less valid today.
At the time, Brzezinski was arguing against the United States pressuring Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons. It seems reasonable to say that there would be no war in Ukraine today if the country had not done so under the terms of the flawed Budapest Memorandum.
The South Caucasus region needs a clear push from the West to ensure its long-term stability and achieve a pro-Western orientation. But no lasting solutions in this space will be possible until there is an end to the war in Ukraine that fulfills the interests of both Ukraine itself and the broader West. The United States and the European Union, in cooperation with other key players — foremost Turkey — must showcase greater determination, flexibility, and coordination when it comes to their policies toward the region.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
For the sake of safeguarding transatlantic — and thus also American — security interests in the South Caucasus, it is becoming increasingly imperative that the United States better anchor itself economically, politically, and militarily in the eastern Black Sea region, especially strategically placed Georgia.
It is too early to tell whether the Wagner “uprising” is a one-off or foreshadows further cracks and the eventual collapse of Putin’s presidency, but the latter outcome would have lasting consequences in the MENA region.
Last week’s collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River in Ukraine is one of the largest environmental disaster the Black Sea region and Europe has faced in decades. Its far-reaching environmental, economic, and humanitarian consequences will affect not just Ukraine and the Black Sea region, but also the Middle East and Africa.
Even though Russia and China’s strategic partnership has strengthened in recent years, the leaderships of both countries infrequently engage on Middle East affairs. Russia views China’s growing diplomatic assertiveness in the Middle East as a positive step toward a multipolar regional order. Nevertheless, Russia is trying to avoid being completely eclipsed by China as a prospective conflict arbiter. While the two countries concur on opposing unilateral sanctions and democratic uprisings in the Middle East, Beijing does not universally approve of Moscow’s positions on regional crises and its power projection strategy.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The “Axis of Resistance,” a network of non-state actors aligned with Iran, has emerged as a significant force in the Middle East in the last two decades. Despite the attention given to the more well-known members of the Axis of Resistance, the Azerbaijani group Hoseyniyun, which also operates within the network, remains relatively unknown.
The Biden administration has been trying to diplomatically reengage with China, although so far with little response from Beijing. Any broad reengagement would necessarily include reengagement in the Middle East and North Africa. Both sides have a long list of common interests in the Middle East; the areas where their interests diverge relate mainly to suspicions of the other side’s long-term strategy and global ambitions. How can Washington and Beijing build on common interests in the region while addressing their long-term concerns, reducing some of them and accommodating robust competition or even sharp adversarial attitudes in other areas?
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.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Over the last two decades, the Mediterranean has become an important region. Many scholars, policymakers and analysts have mostly referred to this region from a nexus of security, geopolitics and traditional energy politics. With the war in Ukraine, the relevance of this whole region has increased along the same line. The Mediterranean today is home to some of the most enduring conflicts in the world. New energy resources are being discovered in disputed areas in an environment of intense geopolitical competition over regional leadership and energy routes within and beyond the region.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.