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.
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.
Supporting anti-Taliban fighters will spark a return to civil war, antagonize Pakistan, and draw the United States back into a conflict it sought to put behind it.
After 40 years, Syria once again has dual military rule, where the president and his brother are the highest authorities. In the early 1980s, Rifaat al-Assad, the brother of Hafez al-Assad, was the commander of the Defense Companies and the strong man in Syria in the military, security, and even civilian spheres, while Hafez was in a coma. Today, we see this scenario echoed with the control of Maher al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s brother, over the Fourth Division, which has become an elite military unit due to strong Iranian support and its control over various territories of the country.
بعد أربعين عاما، تتجدد ثناية الحكم العسكري في سوريا بين الرئيس وشقيقه، ففي مطلع الثمانينات كان رفعت الأسد (شقيق حافظ الأسد)، قائد سرايا الدفاع الرجل القوي في سوريا على المستوى العسكري والأمني بل حتى على المستوى المدني، بينما كان حافظ الأسد يشكو من الغيبوبة – آنذاك-.
While much of the discourse surrounding the Iron Dome controversy is mired in hysterics and hyperbole, some have put forward a more rational case for providing additional funding for it. One of the standard arguments advanced in recent days is that Iron Dome is crucial not only for saving Israeli lives but is equally important (perhaps even more so) for saving Palestinian lives. This claim has been echoed by numerous American and Israeli analysts and even Members of Congress, and seems to have been accepted by a number of journalists as well. But is it actually true?
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.
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