EGYPT
AP Images
March 2013
"The Long Hot Arab Summer"
Paper
By Nawaf Obaid, Visiting Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"The so-called Arab Spring has ushered in a great deal of hope that a number of Arab states might begin to develop and engender more socially responsive, economically prosperous and politically progressive indigenous conditions," writes Nawaf Obaid.
"Unfortunately, in the nine Arab nations I analyze here -Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Jordan and Iraq - this does not seem to be the case. Indeed, one might say that some or all of these nations are far worse off than they were before their social upheavals."
whitehouse.gov
March 19, 2013
"America and the Middle East-II"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
American and other foreign support for Arab autocrats and dictators for over half a century helped to create the conditions of disparity, corruption, and populist despair that ultimately sparked the uprisings and citizen demands for rights that we now witness. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq has been the single most important stimulus for new terrorists who gravitated to occupied Iraq from many lands, eager to repel the foreign invaders, and who have since seeped out of Iraq to do their dirty deeds in other Arab countries.
March 6, 2013
"In Egypt, Sliding Toward Ruin"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By David Ignatius, Senior Fellow, Future of Diplomacy Project
A"s Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government slides toward the financial cliff, what’s the right policy for the United States? That’s becoming an urgent question, as Egypt’s financial reserves decline and the country nears a new breaking point," writes David Ignatius for the Washington Post
March 13, 2013
"Proceed With Caution"
Op-Ed, American Interest
By Chuck Freilich, Senior Fellow, International Security Program
"Circumstances do not call for passivity, for doing nothing. They do call for sober consideration of diplomatic reality; the peace process cannot afford another failure.... Moreover, American diplomatic capital is a finite resource and should not be risked unless the prospects of success are significant."
March 7, 2013
"Whatever Happened to Egypt's Democratic Transition?"
Op-Ed, Jadaliyya
What, we are impelled to ask, went wrong in Egypt? What made it, one analyst is reported to have said, the stupidest transition ever or the revolution that never was? Or did the fault lie not in our Egypt but our selves? Not least in our inability to recognize that the complicated and confusing period, lasting a decade or more, between the first observation of revolutionary upheaval and its conclusion, is both more important and more uncertain than we feel comfortable with.
AP Photo
February 15, 2013
"Marry in Haste, Repent at Leisure: the Problem With the Egyptian Constitution"
Op-Ed, The Huffington Post
By Charles G. Cogan, Associate, International Security Program
"The above issues appear to be the principal points of contention between the text of the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Constitution and the aspirations of the non-Islamists, many of whom are among the youth. Though this matter is not at the heart of the country's current crisis, marked by rampant insecurity and economic stasis, the ambiguities contained in the Constitution may cause serious problems in the future."
February 11, 2013
"The Information Revolution Gets Political"
Op-Ed, The Australian
By Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
"Beneath the Arab political revolutions lies a deeper and longer process of radical change that is sometimes called the information revolution. We cannot yet fully grasp its implications, but it is fundamentally transforming the nature of power in the twenty-first century, in which all states exist in an environment that even the most powerful authorities cannot control as they did in the past."
January 29, 2013
"Iraq and Egypt: Learning Democratic Republicanism"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
The events in Iraq and Egypt these days are particularly important to follow and understand as best we can, because of what they tell us about how some Arab citizens and leaders behave at stages of the process in which they have the opportunity to shape their own political governance systems.
AP Photos
January 17, 2013
"Raised on Hatred"
Op-Ed, New York Times
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Fellow, The Future of Diplomacy Project
Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes, "As a child growing up in a Muslim family, I constantly heard my mother, other relatives and neighbors wish for the death of Jews, who were considered our darkest enemy. Our religious tutors and the preachers in our mosques set aside extra time to pray for the destruction of Jews."
December 2012
"A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East: Creating the Conditions for Sustained Progress"
Discussion Paper
By Martin B. Malin, Executive Director, Project on Managing the Atom and Paolo Foradori, Associate, Project on Managing the Atom/International Security Program
How can the states of the Middle East begin to create the political conditions for achieving sustained progress toward the elimination of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons? This paper examines the challenges and obstacles that the parties of the region will need to overcome to bring a WMD-free zone into force, and recommends near-term steps for improving regional security.
