MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2013) “The Iraq war is largely about oil,” wrote Alan Greenspan in his memoir The Age of Turbulence (2007). “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows.” It may indeed be self-evident that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, as the former Federal Reserve chairm (Author not identified) • 9 min read
MER Article Embracing Crisis in the Gulf All claims to the contrary, the Persian Gulf monarchies have been deeply affected by the Arab revolutionary ferment of 2011-2012. Bahrain may be the only country to experience its own sustained upheaval, but the impact has also been felt elsewhere. Demands for a more participatory politics are on th Toby Jones • 9 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Fall 2012) “In the last decade,” wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the November 2011 Foreign Policy, “our foreign policy has transitioned from dealing with the post-Cold War peace dividend to demanding commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. As those wars wind down, we will need to accelerate efforts to The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article Gulf Juggernaut Adam Hanieh, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Karen Pfeifer • 6 min read
Current Analysis Ask Katy Perry Will he stay or will he go? Yemenis and Yemen watchers have been wondering for nearly a year, since the mass uprising against President ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih began, whether he would entrench or decamp. Sheila Carapico • 2 min read
MER Article Petrodollars at Work and in Play in the Post-September 11 Decade What does one do with a $1.3 trillion windfall? That was the cumulative value of current account surpluses that flushed into the Arab region from 2000 to 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. The main source was hydrocarbon export revenues, thanks to the rise in demand for oil Karen Pfeifer • 21 min read
Current Analysis The Precarious Existence of Dubai's Indian Middle Class Dubai, according to the conventional wisdom, is a bust. The International Monetary Fund predicts that economic growth in the United Arab Emirates as a whole will be lower in 2009 than in the last five years; the Dubai government has borrowed billions of dollars from Abu Dhabi to bail out its banks; Neha Vora • 11 min read
MER Article The Gulf Comes Down to Earth Between the summer of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, oil prices plummeted from a high of $147 per barrel to a low of $33. This extraordinary reversal of fortune announced the end of the second oil boom for the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Ar Kristen Smith Diwan, Fareed Mohamedi • 21 min read
MER Article Dubai in a Jagged World Surprisingly, what first strikes one upon landing in Dubai is not the skyscrapers going up at a dizzying pace. It is the sheer bustle of humanity. Ahmed Kanna • 13 min read
MER Article Oil Prices and Regime Resilience in the Gulf The steady summertime creep of oil prices past $40 per barrel and over an unprecedented $45 surprised most oil analysts, including this one, who were expecting the price to drop after the US-led invasion of Iraq. But no one is likely to have been as stunned as the Bush administration Fareed Mohamedi • 8 min read
MER Article Legalism and Realism in the Gulf In his State of the Union address in January 1998, President Clinton won thunderous applause for threatening to force Iraq “to comply with the UNSCOM regime and the will of the United Nations.” Stopping UN chemical and biological weapons inspectors from “completing their mission,” declared the presi Sheila Carapico • 7 min read
MER Article Bringing the Peninsula In from the Periphery Research on the political and economic development of the contemporary Arabian Peninsula is often relegated to the fringes of general comparative and Middle Eastern scholarship, isolated from larger theoretical debates and narrowly defined in terms of threat typologies, regional security alliances a Gwenn Okruhlik • 7 min read
