Middle East & North Africa

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s most recent announcement on Iran policy has raised some eyebrows. He indicated on Monday morning that the Trump administration will not renew waivers to importers of Iranian crude and that other suppliers (meaning Saudi Arabia) have agreed to increase production in to ensure the global oil market remains well-supplied. Skeptics question whether — after last summer’s debacle — there is sufficient trust between Washington and Riyadh for this arrangement to work. What skeptics may not have digested is that, while timing remains a problem, this is a classic win-win situation. It is a near-perfect example of the very limited universe of occasions when transactional diplomacy could actually work.

As Sri Lanka reels from a series of deadly Easter Sunday attacks, the problem of violent extremism enters the spotlight once again. How can the U.S. and the world anticipate and counter the threat of terrorism, which experts agree cannot be addressed by military means alone? Amna Nawaz talks to former diplomat Farah Pandith, whose new book “How We Win” outlines a strategy for keeping us safe.

This report, based on three prolonged trips to the Kingdom over the past year, the most recent in January 2019, will take a deep look at Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who dominates every aspect of foreign and domestic policy, to try to answer what lies behind his Mona Lisa smile. It will also examine the Kingdom’s social progress, its economic stagnation and its growing political repression. Readers will have to evaluate for themselves whether the social progress he has offered Saudis in general—and women in particular—offset his autocratic tactics at home and abroad.

Chuck Freilich proposes a variation of the traditional Passover seder song which highlights the events of 2019-2020.

Professor Joseph S. Nye, Jr. received the Sakıp Sabancı International Research Awards' Jury Prize at a ceremony held at Istanbul's  Sabancı Center on April 10, 2019. The ceremony was hosted by the Sakıp Sabancı family and  Sabancı University.

Stephen Walt argues for a return to a realism-based U.S. grand strategy.

Stephen Walt writes that the number of problems Americans need to address is growing and at an increasingly rapid rate. Issues such as climate change, refugees, changing labor markets, soaring deficits, violent extremists, privacy, shifting balances of power, etc. may outstrip the country's capacity to formulate workable solutions. Addressing such problems  successfully will require paying less attention to conditions abroad and more attention to domestic institutions.

BEIRUT — The ongoing street demonstrations in Algeria and Sudan and the high-level changes in leadership they have sparked include political developments that are very different from the Arab Uprisings of 2010-11 (the so-called “Arab Spring”). We should watch two dynamics, in particular, to find out if this is genuinely a historic moment of change, or another re-run of previous uprisings and some toppled leaders of Arab authoritarian states that did not fundamentally change how power is exercised or how citizens are treated.