Middle East & North Africa

Stephen Walt writes that those who favor foreign policy restraint believe the United States should trade and invest in other countries, encourage other states to do the same, and be open to managed immigration instead of building walls in a fit of xenophobia.

Mohammad Tabaar analyzes Iran's strategy to weaken Israel and divide the Middle East.

Meghan Garrity details the history of mass expulsions since the centennial of the signing of the Lausanne Convention—a treaty codifying the compulsory “population exchange” between Greece and Turkey. An estimated 1.5 million people were forcibly expelled from their homes: over one million Greek Orthodox Christians from the Ottoman Empire and 500,000 Muslims from Greece.

Jacqueline L. Hazelton  details why the international jihadi terrorist threat to the United States is down since the al-Qaida attacks of 20 years ago. Not through war or other uses of organized violence, but through cooperation, use of legal and financial tools, and strengthening homeland defense and resilience.

Ten years after the onset of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa are torn between two visions of progress: a democratic one that seeks to replace the leaders who dominate the region, and an ostensibly modernizing one that seeks to replace the people who inhabit it. Though the latter project is currently ascendant, it is likely to founder on its own internal contradictions. Arab publics may be ambivalent about democracy, but the region retains considerable democratic potential.

Stephen Walt unpacks foreign-imposed regime change and concludes that if the United States can't stop COVID-19 transmission at home, there is no reason to think it should ever try running another country.

The coronavirus pandemic has already devastated the international economy.  Stephen Walt explores what history and theory say about the military fallout.

The spread of the coronavirus is scary everywhere. But in Syria, which has faced war for more than nine years, humanitarian aid and health care is already stretched razor-thin.

We’re living in the information age. But when it comes to fundamental change in society, organized industrial workers remain a powerful, bedrock force. And that’s just as true in Iran as in other modern nations.

Unlike the Iraq war of 2003 when Europe was split in its support of the US, all of Europe now disagrees with the American approach to Iran. If the US were to use military force, there would be no European support and the sad likelihood of unifying Europe on an anti-American basis.