Research & Commentary Results

Not unlike during the lost decade of the 1980s, all Arab states are, to various degrees, in some form of deep crisis: weakened by fiscal deficits, losing their capacity to deliver services, unable to tax fragile economies, and facing the threat of social unrest. COVID-19 has revealed most of these weaknesses further.

Everybody wants development, nobody wants to change. This adage, variants of which have been attributed to many authors, is certainly true for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Although foresight on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is having a heyday today, this was far from always the case. A survey shows that in the early 2000s, a mere 14 foresight studies on the region came out — more than half of which were undertaken in the United States, and a quarter in Europe.

The world is changing and priorities are changing with it. The 2020 global pandemic has reshaped our evaluation of risks and rewards. The capacity of governments to manage crises and safeguard the well-being of populations has become the new metric by which citizens measure their success. The potential for global phenomena outside the management capacity of any governing institution to produce political and economic upheaval has become a reality.

Amid the troubling imagery of a Taliban victory in Afghanistan, teetering governments in Lebanon and Iraq, and ongoing civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya, it is hard to defend the view that the future of the Middle East will be better than the present. Pessimism about the region’s future has become accepted as a truism among those of us who observe and analyze this troubled part of the world. But pessimistic projections that the region will remain mired in its current state of turmoil cloud our ability to properly analyze the future as much as, or even more than, naïve and gratuitous optimism.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), for a variety of reasons, are unrivaled in their need for bold, creative thinking about their future.

Iran-Azerbaijan relations have been going through a rough patch recently; both sides have genuine concerns that they want addressed.

Conflicts are enormously destructive. They destroy lives and property, uproot communities, and reduce the economic potential for all involved. This devastation often has an unaccounted cost, both in terms of the obvious direct destruction of lives and assets, as well as the indirect costs that weigh on economies, often for years to come. This is true of all conflicts, and has certainly been true, and visible, during Russia’s unjustified and illegal invasions of its neighbors, Georgia and Ukraine.

Like the rest of the world during the past 20 years, Afghanistan has lived much of its life online and via networked technology; a multifaceted understanding of how digital rights are foundational to protecting Afghans in the face of an uncertain future must be key to any humanitarian or policy strategy undertaken by the U.S. or the international community.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), for a variety of reasons, are unrivaled in their need for bold, creative thinking about their future. But that is precisely why creative thinking about the future of the region — why strategic foresight — is essential. Produced in conjunction with MEI’s Strategic Foresight Initiative, Thinking MENA Futures aims to map out some of the possible futures for the region, as envisioned by thoughtful innovators working today to realize them.

Tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan are high right now but both sides will very likely soon step down. Neither Tehran nor Baku can afford to let recent events lead to a full-fledged crisis or a military showdown between the two Shi’a Muslim-majority countries. On the surface, this latest spat is about Azerbaijan’s resentment toward Iran for providing an economic lifeline through trade and transit options to its landlocked arch nemesis, Armenia. In reality, the split that underpins the ongoing Iranian-Azerbaijani tensions is more about fundamental foreign policy choices that Tehran and Baku have each made and are unlikely to reverse.

For the second time in the past two decades, a large number of Afghans find themselves escaping chaos. Twenty years ago, it was the American invasion of Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that caused a large wave of refugees. More recently, the hasty American withdrawal from the country and the ensuing Taliban takeover have created another wave of refugees.

Iulia Sabina-Joja and Alex Vatanka join the program to discuss Iranian foreign policy and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Amid growing concerns about the regional repercussions of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the SCO met for its 20th anniversary summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on September 16th and 17th. Regional security cooperation and Iranian accession were at the top of the agenda, with Iran formally joining the organization as a full member on September 17th.

For Iran, Washington’s Afghanistan fiasco has been touted as confirmation that U.S. policy in the Islamic world is doomed to fail. The immediate geopolitical and ideological gains, however, could be overshadowed by the potential challenges that a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan may pose for Iran’s security and regional interests in the long run.

China’s recent multi-sectoral engagements in Turkey suggest that the Black Sea region’s significance is on the rise in Beijing, and under President Erdoğan, Turkey has consistently sought its favor and investment.