A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to get a phone call inviting me to the Democratic Convention to hear President Obama give his acceptance speech. I’m a registered independent voter and over the course of my life have voted for candidates of both parties. Attending the convention was one of the best experiences […]
by Max Reibman Muhammad Moursi’s exploitation of recent events in the Sinai to shuffle the leadership of the Egyptian military is only the most recent manifestation of the disproportionate influence of the Sinai on Egyptian politics. Events in the Sinai have long dictated politics in Cairo. For decades, they shaped the fortunes of powerbrokers in the […]
After recently covering Ethiopia (here and here), I thought I’d stay in Africa for this article. I want to look at two nations with a wide space between them in terms of geography, culture, political ideology and democracy (i.e., government) itself. Basically, they’re as far apart from each other as you can be in Africa, […]
This film is almost a documentary. It follows two Israeli medics who are sent to the front lines during the 1973 Yom Kippur war that began when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. This movie, which is in Hebrew with English subtitles, is not political. Rather, it is a study of life in wartime and the […]
The following was taken from Jspace.com. The article was written by Jspace Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Rob Lattin, who also blogs about Israeli and Middle Eastern foreign policy for Foreign Policy Blogs. On Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman re-emphasized his belief that the Palestinian Authority should hold general elections, and continued his criticism of Mahmoud […]
Currently, a key question for U.S. policymakers is how to engage with and/or support new governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. For those of you interested in the topic of U.S. foreign assistance to the Middle East, I strongly recommend a new Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) paper, The Federal Budget and Appropriations for […]
I recently had the pleasure of leading a Great Decision’s group meeting that covered Augustus Norton’s chapter on the Middle East Realignment, AKA “Arab Spring: Where are We Now”? Our group had an excellent discussion and, as could be expected, jumped around to numerous subtopics within this wide ranging theme. We tried to go through […]
While much of what is immediately important about a democratic election is whether it was sufficiently free from corruption and interference for voters to decide the outcome, the devil is sometimes in the details. Seemingly minor bureaucratic and logistical concerns can threaten the value of an otherwise legitimate democratic exercise. Even in the United States, […]
The end of the Arab Spring has likely come about in two different ways. The official election of President Morsi in Egypt can be seen as the end of protests against the military government and the beginning of the first democratically elected leader in Egypt’s history, or it can become the beginning of a one […]
The following was taken from Jspace.com. The article was written by Jspace Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Rob Lattin, who also blogs about Israeli and Middle Eastern foreign policy for Foreign Policy Blogs. With all of the turmoil and uncertainty going on in the Middle East right now, the state of Israeli-Turkish relations has largely been under-reported and under-analyzed. While […]
The Arab Spring, or rather the Arab Uprising, has made history. Future generations will study this brave series of uprisings as a new chapter in the history of the Middle East-North African (MENA) region. Current generations are both proud and anxious as they watch history unfold before their eyes. Governments throughout the world are worriedly […]
One political earthquake after another is rumbling through Egypt. Things here seem to change on a daily basis, sometimes even on an hourly basis, as has been the case in the recent week. In fact as of late, Cairo feels a bit like the Twilight Zone, particularly in light of conflicting reports about whether or […]
The international relations history buffs among you probably know the story of former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai’s quip about the French Revolution: when someone asked him about the revolution on one of President Nixon’s trips to China in the early 1970s, he said that it was “too soon to say.” Last year, a former foreign […]
What to watch this weekend: the US golf open in San Francisco, the Euro 2012, the third game of the NBA Finals–Go Heat–or the latest Ridley Scott’s Prometheus? In fact the place to look and observe should be the Mediterranean. This weekend the world will be watching, especially in the US and Europe, the outcomes […]
We are now deep into year two of the Arab world convulsions. Not one country across the North African-Middle East arc is settled. Even where it sounds quiet it is not. Two years from the first cry of freedom, very few things are how the outside world predicted. As Egyptians vote for their president in […]