Beset by challenges ranging from the collapse in oil prices, to the spreading instability in the region, to criticism from its longtime allies in the United States, Saudi Arabia is facing its most difficult test in decades. But the kingdom has the means to overcome these difficulties, and also has the will to seize a unique opportunity to carry out important reforms.
Many in the Middle East are curious how the next American president will deal with the major unresolved issues in their tumultuous, unsettled region.
ISIS’ growing activity has caught the attention of U.S. officials who see no other option than to address the Islamic State threat in Libya with military action.
ISIS’ potential acquisition of radioactive material puts forward a scenario in which the extremist group may try to produce and use a “dirty bomb”.
The multiplicity of Kurdish national movements throughout the Middle East adds an additional layer of complexity in the fight against ISIS.
Turkey, long hailed as a bastion of secular democracy in the Muslim world, could be spiraling toward an all-out civil war as conflicts between Turkish security forces and Kurds as well as other ethnic minorities continue to escalate.
Lacking outside alliances and with the geopolitical situation slowly starting to tilt against it, Islamic State’s pretensions to act as a legitimate government seem to have its days numbered.
Since preventing terrorist acts is extremely difficult—why take any chances by allowing fighters to return?
Following Saudi Arabia’s execution of the Shiite Cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, observers of the Middle East are pondering a multitude of eventualities, many of which point to a hot conflict between the two regional powers.
Last week, Twitter announced that it suspended 125,000 accounts since mid-2015 suspected of “threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS.”
One country on the forefront of the battle against the Islamic State is Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, which has over the past year successfully crushed militant cells.
Militarism and terrorism are on dangerously accelerated course. Both are driven by men with myopic vision who galvanize the uninformed masses with half-truths and propaganda that are seldom exposed.
In quick succession, the set of ISIS attacks in Paris, Sharm el-Sheikh and Beirut suggest that the group has crossed a threshold for international terrorism.
Deterrence theory may help explain ISIS’s change of strategy and also how to address it.
Rwanda will always be remembered as a genocide that came from the failure of the international community to act.