The Middle East is reeling from domestic battles between progressive and repressive visions, the impact of globalization, and an exploding youth bulge. Now the reemergence of Russia, the rise of China, and the election of a nonconformist American president also require the Arab World’s urgent attention.
Given the domestic upheavals that accompanied the Arab uprisings of 2011, how did Tunisia become the Arab Spring’s success story? Part of the answer is the pragmatism of the Islamist Ennahda movement, which formed a troika coalition with two secular parties after the ouster of the country’s dictator.
It’s tempting to blame the country’s recent slide into repression on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s thirst for personal power. But did the ruling Islamist party ever really abandon the country’s long tradition of state authoritarianism?
Narendra Modi was a global pariah only a few years ago, a Hindu nationalist vilified for anti-Muslim riots that left hundreds dead in Gujarat state. Halfway into his term as India’s prime minister, his swashbuckling foreign policy is scoring military and economic deals from Washington to Beijing.
The specter of a revisionist Russia, disintegrating European Union, and isolationist America has Berlin rethinking its foreign policy. One important sign of the shift: Germany is assuming a crucial military role within NATO’s new strategic posture.
Donald Trump has expressed sympathy for gay rights in the past, but his conservative supporters are out to reverse the hard-won gains made by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. Activists are ready for a fight.
The Tahrir uprising in 2011 was quickly followed by a backlash against women’s rights. Under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi the government is once again championing the role of women, but is gender equality possible without a change in public attitudes?
Especially in the West, Arab men are often stereotyped as violent fanatics or oppressors of women. The truth is that Arab men, too, experience daunting political, economic, and social challenges related to their gender roles.
Perceptions of the Islamic State’s attack on the Yazidis focus on the enslavement of women and girls, but the barbarous gender-based assaults on women as well as men are an integral part of the group’s campaign of genocide to eradicate a religious minority.
The “Egypt The Future” economic development conference reaffirmed the primacy of the strongman in Egyptian politics. That may win the hearts and minds of some global capitalists, but will Tahrir Square revolutionaries buy it?
In the United States and Britain, the Trump and Brexit campaigns in 2016 embraced and encouraged voices of xenophobia, fear of the other, racism, and divisiveness that we thought had been marginalized in the modern era. To understand the democratic crisis, pay attention to the social conditions of democracy.
Donald Trump’s tough talk of defeating Islamic terrorists, ripping up the Iran nuclear deal, and barring Muslims from entering the U.S. suggests a sharp pivot in Middle East policy, but could be surprising continuity with Barack Obama’s approach to the region.
Judging from his campaign rhetoric, Donald Trump aims to radically alter American foreign policy, but broad political and social forces constrain any American president’s foreign policy agenda.
Donald Trump’s anti-establishment campaign confounded the Republican Party, foreign policy experts, and the news media. His mobilization of an angry electorate has reshaped the contours of American politics for years to come.
Does the gender of a world leader matter? Having a female U.S. president might break a glass ceiling, but the policies of the woman holding the office could still leave women in the basement.
Obamacare. The Wall Street bailout. Race relations. The Iran deal. The Arab upheavals. How will history judge the 44th American president? Much will depend on what happens after his successor takes office.
Vladimir Putin intervened in Ukraine and Syria to mobilize domestic support for Russia’s decaying political system. But how long can the Kremlin survive on false images, fake agendas, and manufactured complexes?
Amid a Taliban insurgency and discontent with government officials, Pakistanis remain strongly attached to free elections. But until politicians improve the standard of governance and the popular military recedes from politics, democracy will remain incomplete.
Decades of U.S. policy blunders add up to a foreign policy disaster of historic proportions. With the region in transition, will Washington abandon delusion and deal with the region’s realities? Don’t bet on it.
The international deal to combat global warming comes into force in 2016. For climate activists, it’s the beginning of a new stage in the struggle to hold nations accountable for their greenhouse emissions.
