MER Article From the Editor (Spring 2008) From December 2006 through the late summer of 2007, four foreign policy commentators reached for the same 1980s movie title, Back to the Future, to describe the peregrinations of US Middle East policy in the oft-proclaimed twilight of the neo-conservative moment. There was confusion, however, as to The Editors • 6 min read
Current Analysis Debating Devolution in Iraq In early August 2007, Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a Shi‘i preacher affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, made headlines with striking comments to a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. The cleric revealed in an interview with Sam Dagher that “a massive operation” was underway to se Reidar Visser • 11 min read
MER Article Imagined Youths Youth -- what is it? The notion tends to be taken for granted, as a natural stage in human development. But, in fact, “youth” is a socially and culturally determined category, a transitional phase between childhood and adulthood that, in its contemporary form, is a product of modernity. In the Ted Swedenburg • 15 min read
MER Article Rogue Libya's Long Road On May 15, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced that the United States would soon open an embassy in Libya, long classified by Washington as an inveterate “rogue state.” This move came, she said, “in recognition of...the excellent cooperation Libya has provided to the United States... (Author not identified) • 16 min read
Current Analysis In Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means At an intersection in front of Nablus city hall, a pair of women threaded a knot of waiting pedestrians, glanced left, then dashed across the street. “What’s this?” an onlooker chastised them. “Can’t you see the red light?” Not long after, his patience exhausted, the self-appointed traffic cop himse Mouin Rabbani, Robert Blecher • 14 min read
Current Analysis War Is Peace, Sanctions Are Diplomacy The White House is pressing ahead with its stated goal of persuading the UN Security Council to pass far-reaching sanctions to punish Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear research program. Sanctions are what President George W. Bush is referring to when he pledges to nervous US allies that he in Carah Ong • 13 min read
Current Analysis A Country at a Crossroads “A very frank discussion” -- so President Bush described his November 7 telephone conversation with Pervez Musharraf, four days after the Pakistani general imposed a state of emergency and dissolved the high court expected to rule his continued presidency unconstitutional. And frank the discussion p Kamran Asdar Ali • 2 min read
Current Analysis Israel's Military Court System Is the Model to Avoid Should the United States, seeking to recalibrate the balance between security and liberty in the “war on terror,” emulate Israel in its treatment of Palestinian detainees? That is the position that Guantanamo detainee lawyers Avi Stadler and John Chandler of Atlanta, and some others, have advocated Lisa Hajjar • 3 min read
Current Analysis Waging Peace, Step by Step The war debate in Washington is bogged down. Partisan rancor is one reason why, and bipartisan desire for US hegemony in the oil-rich Persian Gulf is another. But many Americans are vexed by a nobler concern: that a “precipitous” US departure from Iraq would leave intensified civil war, ethnic-secta Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article The Politics of Refugee Advocacy and Humanitarian Assistance Despite advance warnings of entrenched conflict and the displacement of tens of thousands of people, in 2003 the Bush administration embarked on a regime-changing war in Iraq with little consideration of the human costs. The Iraq war has created a flow of forced migrants, both within and across nati Kathryn Libal, Scott Harding • 12 min read
MER Article Unsettling the Categories of Displacement The Middle East has long had the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s major producers of refugees. By the beginning of 2007, the Middle East was generating 5,931,000 refugees out of a world total of 13,948,800. Over the past century, not just conflict but development projects, environment Julie Peteet • 18 min read
MER Article "The Israel Lobby" in Perspective John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s 82-page paper “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy” has entered the canon of contemporary political culture in the United States. So much, positive and negative, has been written about the March 2006 essay that the phrase “the Mearsheimer-Walt argument” is now Chris Toensing, Mitchell Plitnick • 19 min read
