Current Analysis Petraeus’ Real Failure On the sidelines of the catastrophic failure of the Iraqi army to hold back the militias of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (or ISIS, as it is usually known), and the fall of Mosul to that group, a debate is taking place in the United States about whether this turn of events is yet another Laleh Khalili • 5 min read
Current Analysis Indyk vs. Indyk Israelis and Palestinians share responsibility for the collapse of Middle East peace talks. That was the message delivered on Thursday [http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/other/IndykSpeechtoTWI20130508.pdf] by US special envoy to the peace process Martin Indyk, in a speech to the W (Author not identified) • 3 min read
Current Analysis Washington Gets “Less Crazy” Yesterday the New America Foundation (NAF), a center-left think tank located one block north of big, bad K Street, hosted a discussion [http://www.newamerica.org/events/2014/citizen_strangers] about the 1948 war, the expulsion of Palestinians from what would become Israel, the new state’s imposition Chris Toensing • 4 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2014) “Will China dominate the twenty-first century?” So asks the title of a short book by Jonathan Fenby, a British journalist who was editor of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post during the period when that bustling entrepôt was being transferred from British control to the sovereignty of the People’s The Editors • 9 min read
Current Analysis In Egypt, Nasty Business as Usual Egypt certainly has a penchant for tragicomedy. A week after prosecutors in the terrorism case against Al Jazeera employees [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/22/al-jazeera-trial-media-ejected-inaudible-recordings-egyptian-judge-journalist] introduced a video of sheep farming -- among other (Author not identified) • 3 min read
Current Analysis "Progress" in Afghanistan, Then and Now I recently came across a document in the archives, a reminder that the march of “progress” in Afghanistan sometimes seems more reminiscent of a never-ending marching band reliably circling a parade ground [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLJ8ILIE780]. The martial metaphor here isn’t accidental: As el Darryl Li • 4 min read
Current Analysis A Loveless Diplomatic Marriage with No Future Among the would-be therapists of the foreign policy world, the alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia is a textbook case of a “loveless marriage.” Though the values of the two states are at odds, or so the thinking goes, the great democracy and the absolute monarchy are bound together Amanda Ufheil-Somers • 2 min read
Current Analysis Learning from the Past in the Iranian Nuclear Dispute The controversy over the Iranian nuclear program is in many ways a product of the US-Iranian conflict. The United States and Iran are in the grip of mutual negative perceptions that, in turn, have been reinforced by the escalatory dynamics of the nuclear dispute. After years of seeming diplomatic de Tytti Erästö • 19 min read
Current Analysis Death and Taxes Last year 27 cents [http://static.natprior.org/images/charts/2015/taxes-desk.png] of every income tax dollar in the United States went to the military. Even so, that proportion has not generated enough revenue to pay for the military’s operations over the last 13 years, which, in a historic departur Amanda Ufheil-Somers • 2 min read
Current Analysis Preening Like a State On Tuesday, Mahmoud ‘Abbas surprised peace processers by making use of Palestine’s recently upgraded status as a UN-recognized “state” to sign 15 international agreements [http://nad-plo.org/userfiles/file/fact%20sheets/Q&A_Accession.pdf], mostly concerning human rights, humanitarian law and diploma Darryl Li • 4 min read
Current Analysis Stuck (or Not) in a "Special Relationship" What to make of the anxieties surfacing [http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/next-test-for-obama-soothing-the-saudis] in the press in advance of President Barack Obama’s stopover in Saudi Arabia? Is the US-Saudi “special relationship” [http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=10072] really Toby Jones • 3 min read
Current Analysis Romancing the Throne President Barack Obama plans an overnight stay in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on March 28-29 for a rendezvous with King ‘Abdallah. The enduring but always strange bedfellows [http://merip.org/mer/mer220/decline-not-fall-us-hegemony-middle-east] have been quarreling of late over Saudi Arabia’s bellig Sheila Carapico • 4 min read
