This has been either a bad week for Israel, or a great week for Israel, depending on whom you ask or what your Twitter feed looks like. In the end, this may matter more for the relevance and impact of Middle East studies than anything else.
This has been either a bad week for Israel, or a great week for Israel, depending on whom you ask or what your Twitter feed looks like. In the end, this may matter more for the relevance and impact of Middle East studies than anything else.
Like so much else in international relations, the answer to this question seems "obvious." But, like so much else, it gets trickier when we really investigate the situation, and it reveals nuances...
Earlier this week, Mustafa Kassem, an American held in Egypt, died. The Trump Administration did little to help him. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that the international religious...
One of the (many) concerns about the Trump Administration's foreign policy is the impact it will have on US influence around the world. Will Trump's rhetoric and actions restore US dominance in the...
A variety of commentators listened to President Obama’s Inauguration speech and, having heard few words devoted to foreign policy, declared that the second term of this Administration will be marked by less activism on the global stage. The draw downs from Iraq and Afghanistan readily reinforce this view, as do a variety of academics peddling recommendations for a new grand strategy of restraint. I am more circumspect, for inauguration speeches are by nature more domestic in focus. More importantly, America’s national security interests have not changed fundamentally. The Obama Doctrine...
Richard Grenell was pushed out as Mitt Romney's national-security spokesman. In The Daily Beast, he attempts to defend his former boss.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got it right. The Middle East desk at the State Department got it right, too. And so did Mitt Romney. All three correctly rejected the initial Cairo Embassy statement on the developing violence in Egypt and Libya as weak and inappropriate. And yet Romney was the only one to become the focus of media ire for it.Again with "the media." That horrible, terrible, no-good lamestream liberal media that also appeared in Erik...
U.S. Consulate in Benghazi 9/12/2012I heard Dan Drezner in the car on NPR yesterday talking about whether foreign policy might matter in this election. And, last night and today, with the events in Egypt and Libya, he may be more right than even he anticipated.We may have an incident, in the wake of the 11th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, that will shape the contours of the election and have wider repercussions for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa. Politically, does it constitute a disqualifying moment for Mitt Romney?Like Dan, I've been of the mind that foreign...
One of the most unsettling findings of our media and radicalisation research was the way in which the suffering of certain individual women is turned into a cause by radical Islamic groups that leads to violence by men in those women’s names. The availability of digital media, combined with a certain doctrinal entrepreneurialism by those using religion to justify political violence, has resulted in the widespread dissemination of amateur video clips depicting a specific woman’s plight and calling for reprisals. If you want to understand the link between online propaganda and offline action,...
A few sensitive souls expressed dismay this week when a Romney official declared that the campaign would “reset” itself for the general election after the primaries. Virtually all of the shock was insincere and hypocritical. The “Etch-a Sketch” approach is hardly news for anyone who understands election politics in the U.S. or just about anywhere. In fact, the only newsworthy aspect of the statement was its refreshing openness--but of course the Romney campaign furiously backpedaled from it. Of greater interest is another example of Etch-a-Sketch politics this week. Only a few months ago,...
Last week, at University of Bristol, I gave a talk called "The Future of World Order" to the student International Affairs Society. It was a speculative lecture, based on my 17 years directing the Grawemeyer Award (for Ideas Improving World Order) more than my scholarship per se. I warned the audience from the start of two personal biases: (1) I am an optimist; and (2) I don't really put much stock in specific predictions. I tried to stick to big ideas more than particular policies.In the presentation, I argued that any order built on coercion and force would inevitably face a legitimacy...
"... Yet the crowds were not placated, and they spent the next hour in the courtyard repeating the classic songs of the uprising, "thowra thowra huta nasr" (revolution, revolution until victory)." -Al Jazeera (4/25/2011)The revolution which overthrew Hosni Mubarak is in danger. While Western media outlets have given primacy in their coverage of events to speculative discussions about the historic, current, and future role of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the pivotal role of the Egyptian military, it is the organizations representing the rights of factory workers and allied leftist youth...
Nobody has come close to explaining how strategic narratives work in international relations, despite the term being banded about. Monroe Price wrote a great article in the Huffington Post yesterday that moves the debate forward. As I have already written, strategic narratives are state-led projections of a sequence of events and identities, a tool through which political leaders try to give meaning to past, present and future in a way that justifies what they want to do. Getting others at home or abroad to accept or align with your narrative is a way to influence their behaviour. But like...