Middle East Articles

At the heart of the alliance is article five of the North Atlantic Treaty: if one NATO member is attacked, all will respond. Now, as US President Obama reminded us in Strasbourg, NATO “remains the strongest alliance that the world has ever known.” NATO’s summit, however, revealed the weakness of that alliance. Contrary to the spirit of the NATO treaty, some countries are doing much more in Afghanistan than others. The discrepancy is so great that it is almost misleading to call it a NATO mission. Countries cannot share the benefits of collective security without sharing its burdens too.

By Azeem Ibrahim | October 26, 2009

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Correspondence, Middle East

Failing States

William Rosenau (“Counterinsurgency: Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan,” Spring 2009) raises several important points. It is difficult not to agree with most of them. But in regard to his “more fundamental” criticism, this is not the case.

By Jochen Hippler | October 26, 2009

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Africa, Letter from the Editors, Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East

The Exigence of Exile

In 1951, a post-World War II United Nations bent on protecting human rights adopted a landmark document known as the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The Convention first defined the refugee as an individual who, ‘owing to a well-founded fear of persecution…is outside of his or her country of nationality.” The world has changed since 1951, to such an extent that the original framework--even the original definitions--applicaple to refugee protection demand reevaluation.

By Natasa Kovacevic, Owen Barron | October 26, 2009

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Web Perspectives, Americas, Europe, Middle East

Is It 1848 All Over Again?

Historical parallels capture the collective imagination, and for good reason. They offer an intelligible way to understand present events and avoid past mistakes. The Vietnam War, for instance, continues to inform American decisions in Iraq and Afghanistan; it warns us of the perils of lengthy occupations, of public sensitivity to mounting casualties, and of the importance of exit strategies. But there is always the hidden danger of taking such parallels at face value. This is happening now, with the widespread comparison of the current economic crisis to the Great Depression.

By Gustavo de las Casas | July 10, 2009

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Global Notebook, Middle East

A Tightrope Act

In December 2008, as televisions worldwide lit up with footage from the Israeli assault on Gaza, protestors next door in Amman, Jordan shouted their support for Hamas, their opposition to Fatah, and their frustration with conciliatory Arab regimes. The sentiments were not new, but the fact that demonstrations were permitted at all in a country as controlling of public opinion as Jordan indicates the state’s shifting attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

By Owen Barron | July 6, 2009

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Perspectives, Print Perspectives, Middle East

Faith and Fragile States

Once upon a time most social scientists assumed that the global march of political and economic modernization would relegate religion to a purely spiritual domain. Few, therefore, contemplated religion’s ability to influence the ways in which societies evolve. The advent of theocrats in Iran, the mujahideen in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and Islamists in the skies of New York changed everything. Today social scientists, as well as almost everyone else, have opinions about how religion—in the forms of both spiritual faith and organized religion—shapes domestic and international politics.

By Seth Kaplan | July 6, 2009

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Features, Print Features, Middle East

Counterinsurgency

Before the US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the subsequent outbreak of insurgencies in those countries, counterinsurgency was a badly neglected part of the US defense establishment’s security repertoire. During the 1990s, civilian leaders, academic specialists, and the officer corps convinced themselves that insurgency was essentially a Cold War phenomenon. Instead of understanding it as enduring political-military strategy, they perceived insurgency as an operationalized form of Marxism-Leninism (and Maoism, in particular) made irrelevant by the decline of the Soviet and Chinese communist projects.

By William Rosenau | July 6, 2009

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Features, Print Features, Middle East

The Vanishing Law of War

In 1952, Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, then the Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, opined in the British Yearbook of International Law that “if international law is the vanishing point of law, the law of war is at the vanishing point of international law.” The renowned scholar, who later served on the International Court of Justice, was merely echoing Cicero’s famous dictum that inter arma leges silent—in war the law is silent. Today, echoes of Luterpacht and Cicero pervade discourse on the law of war. Has post-World War II history merely confirmed their dismissive observations?

By Michael N. Schmitt | July 6, 2009

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Review Essays, Americas, Middle East

An Eye for an Eye

Mark Osiel’s provocative new book, The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture and the Law of War, provides detailed discussions of a number of important moral and legal issues arising for the United States in its ongoing response to the threats posed by the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The specific focus is the US-deployed counter-terrorist methods of sustained detention, torture, and targeted killing of suspected terrorists. The author, Mark Osiel, displays a wide knowledge of relevant literature in a number of fields, including international law, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies.

By Seumas Miller | July 6, 2009

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Endpaper, Americas, Asia Pacific, Middle East

The Other Great Depression

There is a part of our brain which firmly believes that disaster begets disaster. This intuition probably comes from daily life—for example, we see gambling misadventures lead to a job loss, a painful divorce, and so on. It is also natural to apply this dogma on a macro-level, and the current economic crisis is no exception. A chorus of doomsayers loudly predict that today’s economic ailments will usher in a dark “age of upheaval.” Not surprisingly, these pessimists rush to embrace the 1930s as the empirical centerpiece of their argument.

By Gustavo de las Casas | July 6, 2009

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