Current Analysis The Push for Petro in the Twenty-First Century With another interminable presidential campaign approaching, Americans grit their teeth as the aspirants to the White House take turns deploring the country’s dependence on foreign (particularly “Middle Eastern”) oil. It is a theme as old as disco and the pet rock -- vapid and dull, yet forever capa Chris Toensing • 5 min read
MER Article Rosen, Aftermath Nir Rosen, Aftermath (Nation Books, 2010). In addition to numberless tales of human misery, the post-September 11 US wars in the greater Middle East have produced a veritable library of war reporter’s books. Most of them are formulaic and eminently forgettable, but a few are valuable chronicles tha Chris Toensing • 6 min read
MER Article Visser, A Responsible End? Reidar Visser, A Responsible End? The United States and the Iraqi Transition, 2005-2010 (Just World Books, 2010). There are few keener students of contemporary Iraqi affairs than Reidar Visser. Since the spring of 2006, when he released a lengthy paper on the politics of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Viss Chris Toensing • 4 min read
MER Article Scenarios of Southern Sudanese Secession In January 2011, if they are allowed to, the people of the southern provinces of Sudan will almost certainly vote to declare the independence of South Sudan from the north. The referendum is to be the culmination of an armistice in the longest-running civil conflict in Africa, between the Sudanese g Amanda Ufheil-Somers, Chris Toensing • 12 min read
Current Analysis Rebranding the Iraq War The war in Iraq is over. Or so the government and most media outlets will claim on September 1, by which time thousands of US troops will have departed the land of two rivers for other assignments. With this phase of the drawdown, says President Barack Obama, "America's combat mission will end." The Chris Toensing • 2 min read
Current Analysis Ethno-Sectarian Approach Likely to Have Lasting Consequences Which American has done the most harm to Iraq in the twenty-first century? The competition is stiff, with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and L. Paul Bremer, among others, to choose from. But, given his game efforts to grab the spotlight, it seems churlish not to state the case for Vice Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article Willful Blindness Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Harvard, 2010). Chris Toensing • 6 min read
Current Analysis A New Conversation Peace Iyad Allawi, the not terribly popular interim premier of post-Saddam Iraq, is in a position to form a government again because he won over the Sunni Arabs residing north and west of Baghdad in the March 7 elections. The vote, while it did not “shove political sectarianism in Iraq toward the grave,” Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article Iraq's Water Woes The eastern cusp of the Fertile Crescent is turning barren. Statistically one of the water-richest states in the Middle East, Iraq is nonetheless losing arable land as rainfall lessens, the level of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers drops and saline water creeps northward into the Shatt al-‘Arab, the great Chris Toensing • 8 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2010) The Middle East is running out of water. Chris Toensing, Jeannie Sowers • 8 min read
Current Analysis More Troops Won't Do It For the past two months, President Barack Obama has been weighing Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request to send an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda. That same effort, according to Obama, entails ensuring that the Taliban can’t regain control of the coun Chris Toensing • 2 min read
