The Arab Spring, once heralded by many as the beginning of something beautiful and promising, is now a dark nightmare; legions of reactionary interpreters of Islam take hold in North Africa, Syria today is set to become like Yugoslavia in the 1990s, voices of racial and sectarian intolerance abound from Gulf to ocean (as pan-Arabists […]
A new Pew Research Center survey of Muslims around the globe finds that most adherents of the world’s second-largest religion are deeply committed to their faith and want its teachings to shape not only their personal lives but also their societies and politics. In all but a handful of the 39 countries surveyed, a majority […]
On Sunday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will fly into China for a two-day state visit at the invitation of Xi Jinping, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Shanghai for a trip that will include a meeting with Premier Li Keqiang. The Palestinian and Israeli leaders’ trips coincide with a renewed push to restart negotiations […]
On June 14, Iran will hold a presidential election. If the acrimony and fraud of the 2009 election was not enough to cast a pall over this vote, then the ongoing power struggle between Supreme Leader Aytollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surely is. Term limits prevent Ahmadinejad from running for reelection, but he […]
Agreeing on the combination of these issues – statehood, nationhood, sovereignty and governance – comprises the classic definition of national self-determination. Arab citizens have never had the opportunity to undergo the thrills of national self-determination. This is because Arab countries and governing systems have always been defined either by foreign powers or by very small […]
More than two years after the Arab uprisings began, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that U.S. policy toward the Middle East is more or less the same as it was before. Whether it is Secretary of State John Kerry effusively praisingregimes and failing to muster even a sentence of criticism; the unwillingness to condition economic […]
It is not entirely clear yet when and how the Cyprus banking crisis will be resolved. But what is clear is that numerous institutional and individual Russian clients of at least two of Cyprus’ largest banks will incur serious losses because of frozen and lost assets. What lessons for the future can be learned already? The Cyprus banking crisis revealed just how deeply Russian business […]
So has the time finally come when America and its allies will take action, send in the bombers, declare a no-fly zone? It seems not. For there is a matching shout from the West: “It’s Iraq all over again.” Indeed, if there are any polls suggesting intervention would be a vote-winner, governments across the world […]
Saudi Arabia’s Nitaqat law, designed to localize labor, could cost hundreds of thousands of expatriates their jobs. The prospect of unemployment and even deportation has triggered a wave of anxiety among Indian expatriates in the desert kingdom. Read Here – The Diplomat
As the great research ship Chikyu left Shimizu in January to mine the explosive ice beneath the Philippine Sea, chances are good that not one of the scientists aboard realized they might be closing the door on Winston Churchill’s world. Their lack of knowledge is unsurprising; beyond the ranks of petroleum-industry historians, Churchill’s outsize role in the history […]
looking beyond borders 