MER Article Iran and the Virtual Reality of US War Games The year is 2002. Saddam Hussein has been assassinated, and Shi‘i forces in Basra have declared their independence from Baghdad. Iran, the dominant regional power, invades Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to gain regional hegemony, control the price of oil, finance its military buildup “and ameliorate its so William M. Arkin • 9 min read
MER Article Gun Belt in the Beltway On August 22 and 23, 1993, Saudi Arabia’s finances received rare front-page coverage in the New York Times, inaugurating a period of hand wringing inside the Beltway and among the academy’s consulting class over the kingdom’s future. This is a tradition going back decades, to the 1940s, when the Sau Robert Vitalis • 3 min read
MER Article From the Editors (September/October 1995) Not all international travelers are tourists. The August deployment of thousands of US troops to participate in war games in Jordan and Kuwait will not show up in the statistics of this fast-growing global industry, though shore leaves may boost some bar and brothel receipts in Haifa and Bahrain. Bu The Editors • 2 min read
Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance: Israel and US Foreign Policy (Columbia, 1994). This long overdue inquiry into what Camille Mansour, with typical understatement, calls “the privileged character of American-Israeli relations”(p. xi) provides an exceptionally lucid analysis of a central feature of Joe Stork • 3 min read
From the Editors (July/August 1995) We have always been uncomfortable using the phrase “peace process” to refer to the actual dynamic of Palestinian-Israeli relations. The phrase in fact appropriates “peace” to refer exclusively to terms of American-Israeli imposition, and to exclude as “enemies of peace” those who insist that these t The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Intervention, Sovereignty and Responsibility Four years after Operation Desert Storm, and the mass uprisings that followed in the southern and northern parts of Iraq against Saddam Hussein’s regime, the country’s economic and social fabric is in tatters. Economic sanctions, following a destructive war and compounded by the Iraqi government’s a Sarah J Graham-Brown • 32 min read
MER Article From the Editors (March/April 1995) A public debate over the US-led economic sanctions policy against Iraq is long overdue. More than four years have passed since the Gulf war ceasefire and Baghdad’s bloody suppression of the popular uprisings that followed. The regime, the ostensible target of the sanctions, appears to be firmly in p The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Paris, Washington, Algiers The prospect of an Islamist victory in Algeria has alarmed French policymakers and politicians across the political spectrum. The French right, from the National Front's Jean Le Pen to Gaullist Interior Minister Charles Pasqua have, in varying degrees, raised the specter of Algerian “boat people” sw Roger Diwan, Fareed Mohamedi • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editors This issue looks at the economic and social crises that beset Iran more than 15 years after the Islamic Revolution. While the articles presented here share a critical perspective toward the present government, the authors allow us to see aspects of a society that both endures and challenges the inep The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Clinton, Ankara and Kurdish Human Rights China makes the headlines, but US policies toward the top three recipients of US aid -- Israel, Egypt and Turkey -- are perhaps the most egregious examples of the failure of the Clinton administration to make good on its commitment to human rights. While the human rights situation in the Maryam Elahi • 3 min read
The Democratization Industry and the Limits of the New Intervention In the wake of the Gulf war, the question of democracy in the Middle East has finally caught up with Washington, but in ways that reinforce dominant strains of Cold War thought and action. Witness the regular depiction of Islam and Islamist movements in terms once reserved for communism, reflecting Robert Vitalis • 12 min read
MER Article Chemonics Revisited In mid-October 1993, the New York Times ran a series exploring in detail how influential agribusiness firms have managed to reap huge profits from Agriculture Department programs designed to promote US exports. One case in point was Comet Rice, a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Erly Industries, whos Al Miskin • 3 min read
