Middle East & North Africa

We have the most solipsistic president in American history offering up the most solipsistic foreign policy ever at a time when the me-me-me generation are busy taking selfies and other pols the planet over are trying to play that self-centeredness to their advantage. Have we reached Peak Solipsism? And what does that mean for the international system. We discuss in honor of and in the context of this week’s meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York City with David Rothkopf in New York, Ambassador Nicholas Burns in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rosa Brooks in Washington, DC and Kori Schake in London, England.

Amb. Nicholas Burns discusses protests near the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel as the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem is set to open.

David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, discusses the drivers behind the displacement of over 65 million people and the changes that must be made to existing political and humanitarian systems in order to address the crisis on a global scale.

An audio recording from Susan Akram, Clinical Professor, Boston University School of Law.

On March 23, 2015 at MEI, Susan Akram presented her latest book Still Waiting for Tomorrow: the Law and Politics of Unresolved Refugee Crises on the legal and political strategies and frameworks of modern protracted refugee crises throughout the world, highlighting the cases of Palestine, Western Sahara, and Tibet and drawing insight from the success of Namibian refugees.

From Eastern Europe to South Africa to the Arab Spring, nonviolent action has proven capable of overthrowing autocratic regimes and bringing about revolutionary political change. In fact, recent research suggests that nonviolent movements are more than twice as effective in achieving their goals than violent ones. So why do some political movements nevertheless believe it necessary to take up arms? Can they be convinced otherwise?

Did the U.S. threat of force push Bashar Assad's regime to relinquish its chemical weapons? International Security Program Fellow Marisa Porges isn't so sure. Porges dives into the complicated situation in Syria, analyzing the interests of various players including the Russians, the United States, and the hundreds of individual groups that comprise the Syrian resistance

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, argues that despite not falling victim to a major terrorist event in the last 10 years, the United States must not be complacent in its counter-terrorism efforts. Mowatt-Larssen said in a Belfer Center seminar in September that he believes the possibility of a major attack is higher in the next 10 years than in the preceding decade.