Toward the start of Omnia El Omrani’s emergency medicine internship, Hurricane Irma hit Miami. As a second-year medical student, she saw firsthand the devastating impact of climate crises on public health. El Omrani has since merged her career in medicine with one in climate change leadership, working with organizations such as the International Federation of Medical Students Association, the WHO, and UNICEF, in an effort to keep health at the core of climate change negotiations.

She emphasizes the need for structuring policy not merely in response to political or economic incentives, but in anticipation of an evolving health crisis affecting individuals and communities. This is of particular consequence for the unrepresented victims of climate change – children, adolescents, and women in poor countries – whose health and livelihood bear a disproportionate vulnerability to its consequences.

Last year El Omrani was appointed the first Youth Envoy to the President for COP27, acting as the conduit between youth-led organizations and the government to ensure that the voices of young activists and advocates are taken into account by institutions during the negotiation process.

In light of her expertise at the intersection of medicine and climate change, Cairo Review Assistant Editors Ana Davis and Andre Mikhail discussed with El Omrani youth involvement in COP27, mental health in the climate change era, effective climate policymaking, and the fossil fuel industry’s influence on the health sector. 

CR: In the past, you’ve done work on the gap between planetary health and its lack of integration in the medical curriculum. Could you speak on that and how our understanding of planetary health has been impacted by climate change?

OO: One of the things that we worked on is bringing health to the policymaking spaces on climate change, such as COP and other UN spaces. The second thing we worked on, and this is something I was very passionate about, is education of students, especially medical students. So we did for the first time a survey of 2,817 schools across 112 countries to ask students in these universities about their curriculum. In each school the students were asked whether climate change was part of their medical curriculum or not, because we wanted to make the case that students and doctors are not prepared to face a climate emergency, despite how it affects health—and it is the biggest global health threat of the twenty-first century. We discovered that less than 15 percent of them had a mention of climate change in the curriculum. And based on that, we worked on creating a curriculum on climate change for students to work on and its integration globally.

CR: Touching on the curriculum, what are the unconsidered implications for health specifically in the Middle East and Africa as a result of climate change? And how can the resources of the medical field and health professionals be used in service of climate change victims?

OO: I think in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region, in terms of climate impacts, what is most important is that we are the driest region in the world. And when we look at the water-scarce countries, there are fifteen of them globally, and twelve of them are in the region. So what we would suffer most from is food and water insecurity, which leads to malnutrition, which leads to acute water stress. And this is one of the biggest challenges that as health care professionals and as doctors, we need to be prepared for, especially in children and adolescents. 

The second most important thing is heatwaves and how it leads to acute heat stress, heat strokes, and increasing temperature. Doctors and health care facilities need to be prepared to understand how to diagnose a heat stroke and how to respond to it effectively as quickly as possible, especially because there is a huge rise in mortality related to heat in elderly people above sixty-five that is increasing more than ever before. 

And then there’s also the mental health impacts related to heat, but also related to, especially in young climate activists, lack of funds, lack of political action, and a lack of climate urgency. And this leads to anxiety known as eco-anxiety, and stress, and depression, and worry about the future, especially in young people, who also worry about food and water and security. There’s also the terminology related to ecological grief, because now there’s crop failure, so you see—like loss of food—loss of income, but also extreme weather events, such as flooding and wildfires, which is also very common in the MENA region—in the past years in Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon—the wildfires lead to acute injuries, but also the destruction of houses and schools and universities, and deaths as well.

CR: It seems like mental health isn’t talked about as much as physical health when discussing the health impacts of climate change. Is that somewhat of a new conversation that’s being had?

OO: The reason why I moved to the UK is that I started a fellowship on climate change and mental health at Imperial College, because I was very interested in that intersection, and to understand more. What is the evidence out there and what are the solutions? So what we are doing right now for the next year is developing a series of dialogues on the global level and seven regional dialogues to bring in and to build a community of practice of linking the climate change community and the mental health community—the mental health care professionals and advocates together with the climate scientists and leaders and policymakers—in this space to understand how to really respond and to understand what are the mental health impacts of climate change, what are the interventions and the solutions, but also what are the co-benefits of climate action to mental health. For example, when we are working toward creating cleaner air, cleaner cities, more access to green spaces, we’re also increasing mental health and building resilience to the climate change impact on health. But at the same time we need to understand and quantify what are the impacts of climate-related events on mental health. 

[Earlier this year], we launched this project that is funded by Wellcome Trust and led by Climate Cares at the Institute of Global Health Innovation. We’re bringing in, to the center of these dialogues, working groups. We have a working group for young people and a working group for people with lived experience and indigenous communities to co-create these dialogues together with the regional partners. 

CR: Would you say that there are areas of dependence between the health care and fossil fuel industries? 

OO: We saw from the COVID-19 pandemic that our health care systems are weak. They are not resilient to withstand any crises, not the pandemic, nor the climate crisis. But at the same time, we’ve also seen that the healthcare sector as a whole contributes to around 3.5 percent of the global carbon emissions, and this needs to be changed. Health care facilities need to be more environmentally friendly, to use renewable energy resources instead of using fossil fuels, and to also reduce the waste that is coming from the health care facilities, and to really adopt an environment-friendly net zero carbon approach. And this was done here for the first time in the UK where the NHS [National Health Service] committed to being net zero by 2050, and other health care facilities are now doing the same in the United States, in Kenya, and in other countries. In Glasgow, the World Health Organization launched a set of commitments where countries will commit to be climate change resilient and environment friendly, and they had over fifty countries commit to this. So health care facilities can also lead by example as a sector that is in its core promoting and protecting the health of the people; and it should also respond to climate change and not contribute to the carbon emissions that are leading to the climate crisis.

CR: Something you’ve spoken about in the past is the importance of creating climate plans that are “gender sensitive”. Could you explain what this means and how incorporating a gendered perspective can contribute to more transformative climate policy?

OO: In terms of gender, this is very important, because, first of all, understanding what “gender sensitive” means [is vital]. Because when you look at the evidence, women are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change. When we look at air pollution, for example, more women are killed by air pollution. When you look at climate-related disasters, more women lose their lives during such catastrophic events. At the same time we see how climate change also affects the maternal health services, but also access to sanitary products, especially during menstruation, and all of these different impacts that women are disproportionately affected by. 

But at the same time when we look at the representation of women and climate leadership, their presence at events such as COP, and also their presence, or being part of national leadership positions related to the environment and climate change, there’s still more to go. There is a commentary I worked on in terms of how women leadership in climate change and planetary health has been. Yes, there’s yet more to do, especially with very low presence at COP, and so on. And this is why there is a Gender Action Plan that is being implemented right now that is being discussed. This year we have the Global Stocktake process, which means that the UNFCCC is going to assess whether countries are on track in terms of the climate commitments or not: Are they responding to women? Are they responding to young people? Are they integrating the voices of the most vulnerable, especially indigenous communities and local communities in their commitment, and in their climate plans? And this year we’re going to assess that and the outcome is going to influence the next set of national climate plans that countries are going to develop for the next five years.

CR: Moving on to COP27, could you speak to the significance of the COP President appointing a Youth Envoy for the first time, and also talk about what your responsibilities were during COP27?

OO: Every year at COP since 2009, and before that, young people have been attending COP. But they did not have any meaningful way of bringing in their perspective and their calls to action at global leaders who are at COP. So to really bridge the gap between young people and the Presidency, we decided in Egypt to create a position of a Youth Envoy to be the link between the challenges, the demands, and the voices that young people or young leaders have, and the Presidency and the work of the Presidency. 

So my responsibilities were to listen and to consult the different youth-led organizations, groups, and advocates and activists in this space, and to bring in their demands and the challenges and the solutions that they are proposing directly to the Presidency to then integrate that into the negotiation process. The second thing is to build the capacity of the young delegates that are coming to COP to understand the different entry points and the different technicalities, and to support all their youth-led initiatives, campaigns, and work toward the conference itself. The third thing is to create intergenerational dialogue. So a meaningful space where young experts can come in with the negotiators, the chairs of the country groups, and the ministers, and have a meaningful intergenerational conversation with outcomes that we, as the Presidency, integrate in the outcome decision of COP. And the final thing is to really elevate the voices of young innovators, entrepreneurs, and solution makers, and really change the narrative from young people being seen as victims, but as actors and natural partners to the climate agenda.

CR: What efforts were made at COP27 to center the voices of youth?

OO: So in terms of, first of all, the efforts of the Presidency for youth and the highlights is that for the first time we had a Children and Youth Pavilion, which was a dedicated youth-led space that is made for young people, and led by a steering committee of ten youth-led organizations right at the heart of the negotiation zone or the Blue Zone. It is a space that we had for two weeks, and we had events running from 9 to 6 and 7 PM every day. We had over eighty-eight events taking place at the Pavilion. We had the COP President himself come to the pavilion and speak with the young people, and have these dialogues in a way that was meaningful, but also youth-led at its core. 

The second thing is that for the first time we had, during the Children and Youth Day, an education session for children and adolescents where we invited the children to present their work, their efforts, their demands, in a way that was conversational with Ministers of Education to really transform and integrate climate change and school curriculum, and also looking at the climate crisis and the child rights crisis. 

The third thing is that we had two round-table discussions. For the first time, we had the young experts on adaptation and mitigation and loss and damage, together with the ministers, the negotiators from the EU, from small state islands, and we also had the chairs of the funding groups of G77 and China, AOSIS. Together in these round table discussions the young leaders were given the floor to speak first and to deliver their demands, and then the outcomes from these round table discussions were all integrated in the COP27 outcome decision, which was adopted by over 170 countries at the end of COP. We also had for the first time the mention of children in the COP outcome decision seven times, and youth were mentioned eleven times. And the dialogue, the pavilion, appointing a youth envoy, were then mandated for the next Presidency to do, so that we make sure that there is a sense of sustainability beyond COP27 in Egypt. 

We also had the Conference of Youth (COY) right before COP. We had over 1,000 young people participate at COY. And then the outcome decision, the Global Youth Statement was then presented to the Presidency and then discussed on the Youth Day, so that we also find a way of keeping this beyond just having young people present that statement, but to also discuss it at COP. 

CR: Looking forward over the next couple of years, what should top the list of priorities for COP28? 

OO: I think it’s amazing that at COP28 there is going to be, first of all, a youth climate envoy or youth climate champion with an amazing team, so that the youth milestones that we did in Egypt are going to be further sustained, and this is very important. And right now there was the project that was launched, which is the International Climate Youth Delegate Program, which is going to fund 100 young people from every single small state island and least developing country to come to COY and to COP28, and the priority would be to really recognize the role of young people in the negotiation—to not just be observers, but to also be co-creating the demands their countries are calling for in the negotiation process. 

At COP28, there’s going to be, also for the first time, a Health Day, which is very exciting, and this means that health is going to be recognized more as integral to the climate process when you look at the health impacts, but also the health co-benefits to climate mitigation and adaptation, policies and planning. This also needs to be a priority, because we saw, for example, with COVID-19, which was a health emergency, countries were responding and were mobilizing resources and financing for it. Climate change needs to be the same. It is a health emergency. We need to respond to it with the necessary financing, with the necessary resources, capacity building, but also translating these political commitments and targets into implementation on the ground with a sense of co-creation with the most vulnerable groups, communities, especially young people, and also indigenous people and local communities. 

So if I were to choose two priorities, I would first say the meaningful engagement of young people in the climate space. There’s so much more that needs to be done when it comes to that engagement, and how meaningful it would be. And the second thing is to really centralize health at the heart of the climate negotiations to bring in the urgency, but also to bring in that implementation and that sense of climate justice, to make sure that processes like COP are credible and are relevant to what they’re calling on.

Europe has not seen carnage such as that unleashed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in nearly thirty years. The war this time has produced a massive European refugee crisis, disrupted much-needed energy supplies, and plunged the world into yet another global economic crisis.

The impact of the Russian invasion is not restricted to Europe alone and stretches as far as the southernmost tip of Africa, South America, and Asia. Known to supply much of the developing world with wheat and other agricultural staples, Russia and Ukraine have either directly or indirectly halted exports. As a result, this has created a global food crisis, affecting 400 million people, especially those in poorer countries. The United Nations stated that the most impoverished countries will be the hardest hit by the food export disruptions.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began earlier in 2022, is the most significant development in international relations in recent times, vastly affecting the global economy and supply chains, politics and diplomacy, food security, and many other areas.  In this issue of The Cairo Review titled “The Ukraine Effect,’ we explore the multi-layered influence the Ukraine War had and continues to have on the political, diplomatic, security, and economic fronts.

On the diplomatic front, countries with robust relations with both Russia and the United States (and Western Europe) have been forced to choose sides. Responses of countries in the Middle East and North Africa have wavered; many states have been guarded in taking clear official positions, playing the political long-game to ensure their interests are met in the long run or erring on the side of caution lest they eventually end up on the wrong side of the war. In The Ukraine War: The View from Iran for example, Hamidreza Azizi explores why Iran’s official rhetoric has been shifting toward publicly supporting Russia. Zine Labidine Ghebouli, in Fortune and Hazard for Algeria, explores how Algeria, which has traditionally remained neutral in global conflicts, is maneuvering to become an energy hub for Western countries seeking to cut dependence on Russian oil. And in Syria, where Russia has had the strongest military presence in the region, the Russian–Ukraine war might potentially impact Russia’s continued role on the ground and cause other actors to gain a foothold in the Syrian conflict, Omar Abu Layla argues in Strategic Survival in Syria.

More broadly, the ongoing war in Ukraine has dampened regional hopes of Russia becoming a trusted alternative to the United States as an ally. In his piece on Russia, Ukraine, and U.S. Policy in the Middle East, Daniel Kurtzer writes that the outcome of the war can cause the United States to reassess its policies toward the region and intensify its engagement with it. Being a flagrant violation of international law, the war is a threat to multilateralism and the United Nations-based system, causing Antonio de Aguiar Patriota to question whether the multilateral system is at all democratic in Democratizing International Relations.

The “Ukraine effect” has exposed other fractures and tensions in the international stage on several issues, although they are sometimes less visible. For example, sanctions on Russian oil exports coupled with the recent OPEC+ decision to cut oil production quotas has deepened the rift between Saudi Arabia and the United States. In OPEC+ versus the United States and World Democracies, Giacomo Luciani details the unfurling implications of that decision. The war, in which United States and the European Union are notable players heavily involved militarily and otherwise, has laid bare the deep skepticism of Western intentions across the Global South, a skepticism that goes back for centuries, writes Ayman Zaineldine in his essay The West’s Stigma, and Why It Loses Global Support by Its Own Actions. Finally, the war’s direct and indirect impact on economically vulnerable countries like Egypt is the topic of the CR Interview with political economist and American University in Cairo professor Amr Adly.

Firas Al-Atraqchi & Karim Haggag

Cairo Review Managing Editors

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917-2017. By Rashid Khalidi. (Macmillan) New York, 2020. 336 pp.

Most books on the Middle East and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict fall into one of two categories. One category is marked by a brand of writing executed by academics, historians, journalists, and other observers in one capacity or another. Those are highly academic and full of footnotes with a thesis backed by documents and interviews. The other kind are personal books that make use of diaries and observations, mostly by journalists, diplomats, and cosmopolitans. Rashid Khalidi, a well-known Palestinian historian and the Edward Said Professor of Modern History at Columbia University, has written something unique. His latest book The One Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is a high-quality academic effort ripe with vital facts and figures. Khalidi uses 459 footnotes to document all the issues he refers to. Yet at the same time, his book is highly personal, weaving personal family stories, reflecting on his own wide-ranging extended family, and spanning continents. One of those stories is that of his uncle Husayn Fakhri Al-Khalidi, who was imprisoned by the British in the Seychelles islands, and spent decades in exile in the first half of the 20^th century. Readers take an imaginary walk with Rashid as he drops in on his father, Ismael Raghib Al-Khalidi, an Arab diplomat working in New York’s UN headquarters, and witness his shock as American Jews march and fundraise to support the Israeli occupation in 1967.

During the 1970s, readers get a front-row seat in Beirut before and during the Israeli invasion, while Mona, Rashid’s wife (who is pregnant at the time with their son Ismael) works as an editor for the official Palestinian news agency Wafa. Ismael would at an older age help his dad review this book, as Khalidi notes in his acknowledgment. Readers also follow Khalidi during the First Intifada and on the eve of the Madrid Peace Conference. Khalidi’s visit to east Jerusalem would result in his being seconded to help the Palestinian delegation to Madrid and Washington. He would soon become privy to the disastrous results that the alternative talks in Oslo have come to represent in the terrible years since the intifada. Khalidi also shares his own thoughts on his Chicago university colleague, and later president, Barack Obama.

The personal stories give important credence to the conclusions that Khalidi draws from both his academic research and his front-row seat to history. Khalidi heaps huge responsibility regarding all that has happened to Palestine on the British and the Americans, as well as other Western countries.

In his book, Khalidi breaks the hundred years of war on Palestine into six periods. He describes the Balfour declaration and all the British bias in favor of Jewish Zionists that followed, especially between 1917 and 1939, as the first declaration of war on Palestine. He shows with skill and documentation the simple fact that the great colonial power at the time, Great Britain, not only acquiesced with Jewish Zionists but also went overboard in denying the existence of the Palestinian people and Palestinian nationalism. Khalidi argues that while settler colonialism was ending in the middle of the 20^th century, in Palestine it was just beginning.

In the second declaration of war, Khalidi deals with the 1947-8 Nakbeh with similar precision in identifying the Western world’s complicity with Zionists and with some Arab regimes (notably King Abdullah I of Jordan) to continue denying Palestinian nationalism. In the run-up to the 1967 war, Khalidi exposes the myth that Israel was in danger of extinction (personified in David fighting the Arab Goliath) when in fact the consensus of three U.S. intelligence services had been that if Egypt were to attack, Israel would “whip the hell out of them”. Of course, it would be Israel that made the first attack on June 5, 1967.

Perhaps the most detailed chapter in the book is what Khalidi calls the third declaration of war on Palestine, namely Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut, followed by the departure of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters to Tunisia and the ensuing massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982 (for which U.S. guarantees to protect the safety of Palestinian civilians proved worthless).

Khalidi concludes his book with the first and second intifadas, praising the relatively unarmed 1987 uprising and criticizing the Second Intifada of 2000 as having literally wasted all the public relations gains that Palestinians made during the First Intifada. He references here their heroic early resistance to Sharon’s brutal Israeli war machine and Israeli defense minister’s Yitzhak Rabin’s alleged orders to “break the bones” of Palestinian youth in an effort to stop the first uprising.

In addition to the colonial settler theme and total western bias favoring Zionists and Israel throughout his book, Khalidi also deals in a harsh way with Arab leaders’ failure to genuinely support the Palestinian cause. He details how certain Arab countries were active in weakening the Palestinian national movement in various ways, including supporting a number of assassinations of top PLO leaders by means of Palestinian groups aligned to them.

Rashid Khalidi has succeeded in bridging the heart and the head in tackling the wars that have been declared on Palestine and the Palestinian people. He has combined the highest academic standards and brought in the human and personal aspects often ignored in the worldwide narratives that deal with this conflict.

The hundred years’ war unfortunately has not ended and an honest appraisal of the situation brings about the conclusion that it will be a long time before Israel, a powerful settler colonial country supported by the West, would be willing to recognize and deal with a proud Palestinian people.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shaken the world in many ways. One of its most shocking effects has been on the economic level, where supply chains have been disrupted, the trade of basic food staples—especially wheat—severely hampered, and a shadow of uncertainty cast upon the international economic order.

Countries like Egypt that are highly dependent on imports—particularly when it comes to food security, as well as frequent reliance on global creditors and foreign inflows—have been affected by the war in ways which require a serious reconsideration of current political-economic models.

The Cairo Review’s Deputy Senior Editor Omar Auf sat down with Amr Adly, who is also a professor of political economy at the American University in Cairo, to discuss the effects of the Ukraine War on Egypt especially: what weaknesses exist in our current food and economic systems, what are the sequence of events which served as precursors to the current crisis, and how can we look at future prospects.

CR: What does the Ukraine War tell us about our global economic model, especially regarding food security, supply chains, and related mechanisms?

AA: Economic crises that result from such major geopolitical events reveal the weaknesses that are already there. And that, of course, is no exception to Egypt. We have seen this specifically in Western Europe, as well as Central and Eastern Europe even more so with their very pronounced dependence on Russian gas. And that applies pretty much to North Africa and the Middle East, as well as significant parts of Africa that have developed this auto-dependency on importing staples from Russia and Ukraine, or from both.

So, on the one hand, yes, we have this revealing stance, but on the other, we also have the transformative potential that is usually there when such big crises happen. And this is something that we have seen, for instance, with the revised energy policies, revised patterns of regional integration within as well as around the periphery of Europe . . . something that might create some opportunities for North Africa.

CR: What weaknesses have specifically been exacerbated by the ongoing conflict?

AA: I think that we have two main weaknesses. One of them, of course, is food dependency. And I’m not sure that we [Egypt] can do much about it, because we already need to have some of the highest productivity per acre worldwide. The main problem in Southwest Asia and North Africa is that they are some of the most arid regions in the world. And hence, we have limitations on natural resources on arable land that is available for cultivation as well as supply of fresh fruit, especially with global warming, etcetera. And hence, the only rule that is left really is to adjust to the global economic changes by defining what is to be cultivated and what is not to be cultivated.

So for the past thirty years, the Egyptian agricultural sector has been reoriented to fit as a producer of fruits and vegetables that are primarily directed to export— for exploitation—to Europe. This might be revised now, of course, if we decide to cultivate more wheat, for instance, instead of being dependent on importing it, or at least not to such a great extent. So when it comes to the exact composition of what is being produced, it is something that is definitely left for agriculture and policy making. But otherwise, I don’t see much big room for change, given the demographic as well as natural limitations that this part of the world really faces and has been facing for a very long time.

The other form of vulnerability is more indirect because it has to do with the turmoil that hit financial markets in the wake of the war in Ukraine and that did not result only from the Ukraine War. It also has to do a lot with the earlier outbreak of COVID-19. The measures that were taken, especially in the United States—the expansionary policies that were adopted led to a very huge supply of dollars that eventually translated into higher inflation. And then you have the issue of supply shortage or the assumption of supply shortage resulting from the war, especially in raw materials, the rising energy prices, all of these fueling inflation on a global scale more and more.

And at this very moment, Egypt has been dependent on short-term financial inflows in order to rebuild our reserves, to be able to fill in the financing gap of the money that we need that is not in dollars, and to meet our commitment—especially when it comes to the inflated importance and the ability of the economy to generate foreign currency and especially in dollars. This made us quite vulnerable together with thirty or forty other countries, some of which are low to medium income, some of which are medium income, and some of which are low income. But you have this problem with a credit crunch, to a great extent, that is taking its toll on the external position of many of these economies as well as their internal workings.

CR: Since you described a credit crunch, how do you view the recent IMF agreement with Egypt? Are these the structural steps Egypt needs to address, as you said with the over-bloated import bill and our structural weaknesses in general, or are there other measures we need to take?

AA: The very short answer is no. It [the IMF-suggested structural reforms] cannot solve our problems. Why? Because the IMF to start with is not responsible. It’s not within its mandate, by the way, to restructure Egypt’s external economy, a sector of or its economy as a whole. The IMF at the end of the day is a monetary fund that extends money in times of need to its member countries. And that’s it. The problem is that this is the third time we have resorted to the IMF in less than seven years. By the way, that’s something that indicates that whichever measures were taken [in the past], proved to be very short fixes. [They] proved to be not the remedy needed for structural weaknesses.

So, if we trace the structural weakness to the fact that our imports are almost 2.5 times our exports, and that we have a problem with the generation of dollars that we need in order to keep the economy going, then this would require the development and implementation of a coherent industrial policy . . . which will divert resources away from non-tradable sectors like real estate, housing, and so on, that have been driving economic growth in the past four decades. And that would raise questions about the institutional challenges that exist in coordinating this between the state and businesses. So the IMF team is not going to deliver this, it’s not expected to deliver this. These are short fixes. The problem is that we deal with short fixes as if they were long-term ones and they are not—by definition, they are not. And that’s why we ended up having a deal with the IMF and then running into trouble just a couple of years afterwards.

CR: You mentioned Egypt should adopt an industrial-based policy. What do you see as the model for our transformation?

AA: It’s very hard to give a clear answer to this because devising such a policy and implementing it is something that is by definition multilateral. Academics or experts, you name them, will only be one single ingredient in that bigger recipe, where we have business people who have workers and you have local communities, and we have the state. In a way, this is really the investment in institutional arrangements through which we can come up with ideas and then pursue them.

But I think that overall, we will be significantly closer to some smart model of import replacement. Smart in the sense of something that is not inefficient. But at the same time, counting on the classical models—as they were called once by a leading economist ‘fetishes of the Washington Consensus’—like export-led growth and foreign direct investment, is not going to deliver at this moment. It doesn’t make any sense if the leading exporting nations, like China for instance, are facing a very uncertain global economic context with a trade war with the United States and [geopolitical struggles] are coming up again with rising nationalism. How is it possible that this is going to be the strategy—that was devised in the 1990s, by the way, when things looked much better for everyone? Nowadays, they don’t look as good for anyone. So, at least we need to recognize this.

CR: Taking a step back, how do you see the Ukraine War affecting Egypt in the present, but also in the future?

AA: Well, the Ukraine War is not over yet. And the ramifications of the war are not very clear yet. I think it will leave some long-term impacts on the global economy that will indirectly impact a country like Egypt, as well as many other countries that occupy similar positions in the global economy. Many of these transformations are going to result from the future ability of the global economy to remain globalized. Because here the sequence is more important than just the event of the war. This is the third major hit to the global economy, especially in terms of global investment, like global capital flows and trade, following COVID-19 and before that the 2008–09 financial meltdown from which the global economy never recovered. By the way, this is something that many people just overlook. But it’s extremely important [to note] that until even 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, global trade as a percentage of the world’s GDP, as well as global, foreign direct investment inflows, were not close to where they were in 2007. So the world never recovered. And when it’s being hit more and more, I think that eventually we will end up in a world that is less globalized in terms of trade. And this, I think, will create its own troubles as well as its own opportunities in some areas, but it will result in some reorientation, and it’s already happening.

There’s the fact that you have not necessarily governments in the Global South reorienting their policies, but creditors, for instance, reorienting their policies, their money. These are the partners in the Global North, who are more powerful in setting rules and then implementing them. I think that these changes are not clear yet. But to try to express it briefly: we are most probably ending up in a world that is de-globalized, meaning less globalized than it used to be.

CR: So how do you see the future interactions between politics, economics, environmental policy and our reliance on fossil fuels, especially considering that the Ukraine War exposed [the world’s] heavy reliance on fossil fuels? And how does Egypt factor into this in terms of opportunities we can take advantage of?

AA: As a political economist, I think that the problem is not technological, meaning that technology does not grow on trees. I mean, the issue is that technology is not an exogenous factor that we have fossil fuels, and then the way out will be the development of more efficient ways of using them or [through] renewable energy, for instance. Many of these are important, but they have to be seen as part of a broader political-economic setting. And here, it becomes a question of environmental justice to a great extent, because a country like Egypt, which is one of those impacted by climate change, is either doing a lot in addressing this, or is not expected to do a lot because its footprint is not that big anyway.

And then it becomes clear that because of the huge gap in income, and consumption patterns between the Global North and the Global South, people that don’t actually consume much are severely affected by climate change.

Take Pakistan, for instance, where you have [it] very tragically express[ed] with no footprint whatsoever, even though it’s a country of almost 250 million people but it’s so poor to the extent that people don’t consume that much at all. And yet, it’s a country where one-third of the total surface got submerged—so that’s one of the things here that are alarming.

And even if we think of cases like China, for instance, we don’t really understand this—the hyper-industrialization in China, without considering China’s dependency on U.S. markets for the production of consumer goods. At the end of the day, we have consumption that is so unevenly distributed, to the extent that without addressing justice and just expressing the whole thing in terms of technology defeats the purpose.

I think that COP27 here [in Egypt] has [put it in those terms]—we are at a deadlock. This deadlock has to do with the fact that the political economy part is not likely to be recognized by everyone, especially the richer parts of the world. This would definitely impact the mitigation [of climate crises] as well as the policies that need to change in the Global North more so than in the Global South—I will say in the Global North plus China mainly, that happen to together make up 60 percent of the world GDP anyway.

Our record as a humanity in coordinating beyond nation states, [taking] big steps, is not very encouraging. And I hope that we are not locked eventually into a tragedy of the commons situation, because we seem to be pretty much heading in that direction. I mean, [for instance because of] the inability to act, so I’m not very optimistic.

The only thing that makes me a bit optimistic is that nowadays the environment has become very central to the discourse on public policy, on political economy, and this was not the case twenty years ago. So that means that despite all of these hurdles to coordinate something, global civil society has managed to create a discourse that is nowadays occupying the center stage. This is an encouraging thought.

CR: You’re saying that justice is not only important on a political level, but it is actually efficient on an economic level . . .

AA: I think it’s sine qua non for any collective action to address climate change. It’s not a luxury, it’s not to legitimize actions, no, it’s really a precondition for any action to take place.

Iran’s nuclear crisis has been at the center of Middle East and international politics for the past two decades and continues to impact the dynamics of regional and international politics. However, the current phase of the crisis surfaced a little over a decade ago, when Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States—plus Germany) signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231. While the Iranians fully held to their side of the deal, the United States later withdrew under the Trump administration, and the European Union subsequently failed to fulfill its responsibilities under the agreement. The upshot of the U.S. withdrawal and European complacency was a revival of sanctions at a pace and intensity unprecedented over the past forty years.

The JCPOA, and its abandonment, has altered the geopolitics of the Middle East. The deal would have laid the foundation for a nuclear-weapons-free world because of the strong regime of inspection that was put in place to make sure Iran complied with the laws and regulations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). By withdrawing from the JCPOA, the Trump administration dashed all prospects of a resolution of tensions between Iran and the United States. Just as its abrogation led to more insecurity on the international stage, its revival can lead to more peace and security, both in the Middle East and across the world.

The Nuclear Crisis: A Brief History
As part of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program, Iran began its nuclear program under Mohamed Reza Shah’s rule in 1957. Soon after the United States and Iran agreed to a civilian nuclear cooperation arrangement—known as “Cooperation Concerning Civil Uses of Atoms”— the Shah established the Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC) under U.S. supervision. He then began to negotiate with and press the United States to provide Iran with nuclear technology and materials until his downfall in the 1979 Revolution.

The revolution changed the trajectory of the country’s nuclear program. Iran, which was seriously pursuing nuclear technology, decided to curb these ambitions. Failing to honor their commitments based on the deal that the Iranian government had with the West during the Shah’s rule, the United States and other Western countries including Germany withdrew from their agreements. Germany stopped supplying fuel rods to the Tehran Research Reactor and reneged on its contract to build a nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr, while France canceled an agreement with Iran signed in 1973 to enrich its uranium. At the time, Iran had no plans to pursue uranium-enrichment or heavy water activities on its own soil.

The double-standard policy of the United States and its Western allies forced Iran to proceed with efforts to develop its own nuclear capacities. After the revolution, the United States turned its back on Iran, now no longer considered a Washington ally. As a result, Iran failed to acquire the fuel necessary to power facilities. Moreover, the United States and its Western allies supported the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. This greatly impacted Iran’s security calculations; Tehran saw how the Western world had no hesitation in supplying Saddam with chemical weapons while Iran struggled to access conventional weaponry.

Iran’s nuclear program truly came to the fore in the summer of 2003, when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a report revealing that the country had obtained enrichment capability but still remained compliant with the NPT. A few months later, however, another report was released that noted trace amounts of high-enriched uranium at the Natanz nuclear power plant. As a result, the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution demanding that Iran suspend enrichment and all related activities for an indefinite period, as well as implement the Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement. The Additional Protocol entailed the highest level of transparency measures ever devised by the agency. In October 2003, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decreed his fatwa prohibiting the production and use of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. To be sure, Iran, both before and after the 1979 Revolution, supported the initiative to establish a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) in the region. That is to say, both the late Shah and the current Ayatollah expressed strong opposition to the development of nuclear weapons.

It is important to note that NPT member states are allowed to acquire nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes. Iran is no exception. Since 2003, there have been numerous rounds of negotiations to resolve Iran’s nuclear crisis. On October 21, 2003, Iran and a number of European countries signed the Tehran Declaration through which it voluntarily agreed to halve its introduction of gas into centrifuges and to implement the Additional Protocol. In return, the Europeans agreed to recognize Iran’s legitimate right to peaceful nuclear technology, remove the nuclear file from the IAEA’s board agenda, and expand political and economic relations with the country. The Iran–EU3 (France, Germany, and the UK) negotiations lasted through 2005. Despite various proposals submitted by Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s lead negotiator at the time, the negotiations did not lead to a lasting and sustainable resolution to the crisis.

In 2005, Iran made an offer to the EU3 and was prepared to limit enrichment to 5 percent and export all low-enriched uranium beyond domestic needs or convert it into fuel rods, among other things. The main purpose of the proposal was to ensure that Iran’s civil enrichment program could not be weaponized while also recognizing its right to enrichment under the NPT.

In exchange for these commitments, the IAEA would view Iran’s nuclear activities with a more neutral eye and the European Union would pursue broader political, economic, and security cooperation with Tehran, which would include ending trade and economic sanctions. However, although England, France, and Germany favored the offer, the George W. Bush administration spurned it and insisted on its maximalist demand of “zero enrichment” in Iran.

The failure of the nuclear talks, despite Iran’s attempts to operate exclusively for peaceful purposes, gave rise to right-wing populism in Iran represented by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, most analysts believe that the breakdown in the 2003–2005 nuclear negotiations during former President Mohammad Khatami’s tenure contributed to Ahmadinejad’s victory in Iran’s June 2005 presidential election.

Once Ahmadinejad was in office, Iran restarted its uranium conversion facilities in Isfahan, and on September 24, 2005, the IAEA board of governors found Iran to be in noncompliance with its safeguards agreement. On January 10, 2006, Iran resumed enrichment activities at its Natanz plant, and on February 4, the IAEA voted to refer the file to the UN Security Council. Between 2006 and 2009, the United Nations Security Council passed resolutions 1696, 1737, 1803, and 1835, imposing sanctions while demanding full suspension of enrichment and heavy water activities in Iran. In October 2009, a meeting was held between Iran, Germany, and the UN Security Council (UNSC) permanent representative in Geneva to discuss the possible transfer of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium out of the country in exchange for reactor fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor. As part of the swap negotiations, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, and U.S. Under Secretary of State William Burns, held the highest level of direct talks in thirty years. In the end, this round of negotiations also failed, though at a later stage, Brazil and Turkey intervened to mediate the process.

On May 17, 2010, an agreement was reached to transfer 1,200 kilograms of Iranian low-enriched uranium to Turkey, in return for which Iran would receive the 20 percent enriched uranium fuel required for operating the Tehran Research Reactor. However, U.S. and European officials rejected the deal. Instead, the UNSC immediately passed Resolution 1929, which included an arms embargo and tightened restrictions on financial and shipping enterprises. During Barack Obama’s first term in office, Iranian nuclear facilities came under cyberattacks and several of its nuclear scientists were assassinated. According to media reports, the cyberattacks were jointly operated by the United States and Israel and the assassinations were carried out by Israel. Tehran’s overtures seeking a mutually acceptable deal went nowhere, primarily because the United States maintained that there should not be even a single centrifuge in Iran. The United States’ total denial of Iran’s right to enrichment and its blocking of efforts to have fuel rods for its reactor sent clear signals that the United States was not interested in resolving the nuclear issue. During his visit to New York for the UN General Assembly in 2011, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had mastered 20 percent enrichment and was stockpiling 20 percent enriched uranium, but he proposed ceasing its 20 percent enrichment in exchange for Western-provided fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor. Moreover, as a show of goodwill toward the United States, Ahmadinejad announced the release of two Americans imprisoned in Iran under suspicion of espionage. The United States turned down Iran’s offers, which some analysts believe was done as a pretext to intensify economic sanctions.

In Fall 2011, the United States and the EU imposed an oil embargo on Iran, sanctioned its central bank, and introduced two UN resolutions condemning its record on human rights and terrorism. At the same time, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano publicly expressed that the IAEA “remains unable to confirm that all nuclear material is in peaceful activities”.

On August 3, 2013, President Hassan Rouhani took office in Tehran. His moderate stance on foreign policy allowed him to succeed in pushing for a deal. As noted already, under its terms and conditions, Iran agreed to limit much of its nuclear program and open its facilities to the highest transparency measures ever accepted by a sovereign state in exchange for sanctions relief. It must be noted that the JCPOA was achieved because President Obama changed the U.S. policy from “Zero Enrichment” to “Zero Nuclear Bomb” in Iran.

The Impact of JCPOA on the Region’s Geopolitics
The policies that the West has implemented toward Iran—particularly as regards its nuclear program and the JCPOA—have had serious consequences for the geopolitics of the region. The following is a list of fourteen such consequences.

First, shortly after the 1979 Revolution, Iran decided to forgo all ambitious nuclear projects, including a U.S.-devised plan to build twenty nuclear plants. Iran had no choice but to maintain the Tehran Research Reactor built by the United States in 1967, simply because it needed to produce isotopes for medical purposes and cancer treatment. Indeed, Iran had no plan to develop any domestic enrichment plant or heavy water on its land, but was forced to after many failed attempts at importing the necessary resources from Western countries. Indeed, regional geopolitics would have been very different if the United States and its Western allies had welcomed the policy of providing fuel for Iran’s nuclear program. Iran would have continued to receive its nuclear fuels from the United States without having to develop its own capabilities.

Second, when negotiations between Iran and the EU3 began in 2003, both parties were in a position to hammer out a deal, but the United States stood in the way of reaching an agreement. Jack Straw, the then-UK foreign minister, testified to this:

“All of us accepted Iran’s right to a civil nuclear program. I personally accepted Iran’s right to run some centrifuges for its low enrichment program. We gained the interim agreement in October 2003 that was agreed in Tehran, and we had two more agreements in Paris and Brussels. But we were very close to final agreement; and when I saw Dr. Zarif at the beginning of 2014, on a Parliamentary delegation, he acknowledged that what stopped the deal in 2005 was not about centrifuges; it was our inability to get agreement from the Americans for concessions like aircraft spare parts.”

Hence, an agreement back in early 2000s would have fundamentally shaped the region differently if the United States had agreed to a nuclear deal in 2005 rather than 2015. Such an agreement would have primarily impacted the course of the Iranian presidential election in 2005. The election of the conservative Ahmadinejad, at least in part, was a response to President Bush’s hostile policies against Iran despite President’s Khatami’s earlier rapprochement policy with the West. Moreover, the region’s 2011 uprisings and their aftermath in Yemen, Syria, and the rise of ISIS could have been averted were it not for the previous failures in Iran’s relations with the West.

Third, by mobilizing international attention, often through providing misinformation on Iran’s nuclear program, Israel distorted the realities of nonproliferation in the Middle East. Despite its rhetoric against Iran, Israel is the only state in the Middle East region that possesses nuclear weapons, is not a member of the NPT, and holds an estimated volume of 80 and 400 nuclear warheads. Iran, on the other hand, is a member of the NPT, does not possess a single nuclear weapon, and has accepted the world’s most intrusive regime of inspection concerning nuclear-related activities. This has significantly delayed the process of establishing a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, which was formally introduced by Iran and Egypt in 1974.

Fourth, since the collapse of JCPOA, concerns over nuclear competition in the Middle East have intensified. For instance, when the JCPOA restrictions were in place, the United States predicted in 2015 that it would take Iran twelve months to produce enough nuclear fuel for a bomb should it decide to abandon the deal and seek a workable weapon. Today, that estimate has shrunk to about one month as Tehran has installed more advanced centrifuges in its nuclear centers, enriched uranium of a far higher grade than allowed under the original nuclear pact, and restricted international inspectors’ access to Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran has thus achieved enrichment and heavy water capabilities, posing a new challenge to Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Now other countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Turkey are seeking to increase their nuclear power capabilities.

Fifth, by propagating the idea that Iran is a threat, Israel has aligned itself with countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, among others. On August 13, 2020, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash announced an agreement to normalize relations with Israel, saying that his country wanted to deal with the threats facing the two-state solution, specifically annexation of the Palestinian territories. “This new architecture—the shared capabilities we are building—intimidates and deters our common enemies, first and foremost Iran and its proxies,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said. Hence, an alliance of four countries—the United States (the Trump administration), Israel (Natanyahu’s government), Saudi Arabia (Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman) and the United Arab Emirates (President Mohammed bin Zayed)— emerged against Iran.

Sixth, the long-lasting conflict in the Middle East—the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories—was completely pushed to the margins. Trump went on to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing nearly seven decades of a failed American foreign policy and moving the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “Today we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” Trump thundered from the White House.

Seventh, the effects of U.S. withdrawal from the deal in May 2018 were detrimental to ordinary Iranian civilians. After the United States enforced unilateral sanctions, the European Union was unable to resist U.S. pressure. The complex set of unilateral sanctions against Iran, compounded by zero-risk policies by European businesses and financial institutions, worsened existing humanitarian and economic challenges and negatively affected the lives of the people, in particular low-income and working-class Iranians. Accessing certain types of medicine has been particularly challenging.

Eighth, Iran negotiated and signed the world’s most comprehensive nuclear deal with the West—particularly the United States—but was not able to bear the fruit of this agreement by expanding its trade and economic ties with the United States. As a result, Iran was forced to resort to seriously expanding its ties with China and Russia with a sweeping long-term political, economic, and security agreement known as the Iran–China 25-year Cooperation Program, which would facilitate hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in the Iranian economy. State managers in Tehran simply view the agreements with the major powers in the East as a necessary means of combating U.S. hegemony and hostility. Iran’s new policy of pivoting to the East has gained all the more credibility among Iranian officials after the United States’ ill-advised move to renege on the JCPOA.

Ninth, due to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal, Iran has actually become a nuclear threshold state. Under the terms of the 2015 agreement, Iran was permitted to stockpile up to 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and operate just over 5,000 1st-generation centrifuges at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant. Iran did not enrich to more than a 3.67 percent concentration of uranium. Indeed, since the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear pact, Iran has been steadily enriching uranium at higher levels. In July 2019, Iran began enriching up to 5 percent, and then to 20 percent in January 2021 and 60 percent in April 2021. Hence, withdrawal from the JCPOA significantly accelerated Iran’s enrichment program, and this will surely have huge impacts on regional diplomacy and geopolitics.

Tenth, the JCPOA had provided an opportunity for Iran and the United States to hold direct talks at the ministerial level for the first time since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Indeed, the highest executive powers in both Iran and the United States directly communicated with each other in a phone conversation. Obama reiterated that the nuclear deal prevents the most serious threat from happening, which is Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. Thus, negotiations between 2013 and 2015 demonstrated that agreement between the United States and Iran is in fact possible, and that such a challenging issue can be negotiated and agreed upon. By withdrawing from the deal, the United States destroyed the trust it had built with Iran. After Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, Khamenei declined the Trump administration’s offer for unconditional talks, reiterating that “the U.S.

withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal was clear proof that Washington cannot be trusted”. That’s why Iran has only agreed to negotiate with the United States through an EU mediator in an attempt to revive the nuclear deal. The deepened Washington–Tehran mistrust has led to more bilateral, regional, and international animosities.

Eleventh, Khamenei announced Iran’s official strategy of “No War, No Peace with the United States” after Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. Even if Iran chooses to negotiate on regional issues to resolve their differences, it is not certain whether the United States will abide by any agreement reached. But if the United States commits itself to its international obligations and other potential major agreements that would bear on regional geopolitics—such as terrorism and extremism as well as issues related to the long-term security of the Persian Gulf—such agreements could lead to the betterment of many issues of concern for both countries.

Twelfth, the JCPOA provided the ground for regionalization of the most comprehensive inspection regime to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This is a tremendous step toward denuclearization of the Middle East. Amid heightened tensions in the region, Iran presented its Hormuz Peace Endeavor (HOPE) plan—the first concerted effort to ensure that the Persian Gulf remained free of nuclear weapons—at the September 2019 UN General Assembly. Iran’s invitation for all Persian Gulf littoral states—namely, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates—to join HOPE elucidated a series of objectives and principles as well as a concrete roadmap for peace and security in the Middle East. HOPE was inspired by the JCPOA, and aimed at building a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. Had Trump not withdrawn from the JCPOA, HOPE would likely not have been agreed upon.

Thirteenth, Israel’s opposition to the deal from the start is likely to spill over into a regional war. Netanyahu, for example, pushed Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA, impose a “maximum pressure” policy, designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization, assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, and sabotage the country’s nuclear facilities, including through cyber-attacks. The Israelis also encouraged the United States to assassinate Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in Baghdad on January 3, 2020.

As part of a greater alliance to confront Iran covertly, Israel and the United States established the Abraham Accord, which could ultimately expand into all-out war. The years-long Arab–Israeli conflict is now being converted into an Arab–Iranian conflict.

Fourteenth, the nuclear deal would have ensured a safer world had it been concluded. A recent UN report confirmed that Iran has enough uranium to produce nuclear weapons. As a result of Israel’s pressure for Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA, Iran’s stock of 60-percent-enriched uranium is now estimated to be 55.6 kg, allowing it to produce enough material for a bomb if it decides to. In the absence of the JCPOA’s revival, the world should live with Iran as a new nuclear threshold state, which would have a dramatic impact on geopolitics and the balance of power in the region.

This list of consequences of Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA is not exhaustive. One could go on. For example, Mohammad Bin Salman has vowed that “if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we would do the same”. The JCPOA provided a perfect opportunity for the IAEA to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region while simultaneously monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities, but the United States simply decided not to take advantage of such an opportunity.

The Only Path Forward
No sustainable peace can be achieved without Iran’s participation in a regional agreement. It has been fallaciously argued that a joint agreement normalizing Arab–Israeli relations may help stabilize the region, but the reality proves otherwise as tensions in the Middle East show no signs of subsiding anytime soon. If President Joe Biden is seeking to restore sustainable peace and security in the region, he has to start with reviving the JCPOA as a stepping stone.

In the absence of the JCPOA, Iran will still remain a member of the NPT. But the absence of the JCPOA also means that Iran would withdraw from the Additional Protocol and Subsidiary Arrangement. Iran’s potential withdrawal from the NPT would limit the IAEA’s ability to provide technical verifications since its access to Iran’s facilities will be severely curtailed. Moreover, Iran will also disregard all of the limits imposed within the JCPOA such as limited stockpiling and enrichment below 5 percent. In effect, the absence of the JCPOA could translate into Iran’s ability to enrich uranium up to 90 percent, which is the breakout level and a step to producing a nuclear bomb.

It is important to note that according to the NPT, short of a nuclear bomb, all the above activities are legitimate. Still, the European Union has the snapback at its disposal. If the EU uses the snapback procedure and refers the Iranian nuclear file to the UNSC in order to reinstate sanctions, Iran will likely withdraw from the NPT. And in the event of potential U.S. or Israeli military attacks, Iran will likely start building a nuclear bomb.

To avoid all these potentially disastrous outcomes, there remains a safer and less costly option through the JCPOA. That is, if the United States provides assurances that it will not withdraw from the JCPOA again if it is reinstated. Indeed, a bipartisan congressional legislation can provide such an assurance. Reviving the JCPOA would prevent future conflicts in the region.

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) civilians has become one of the most contested concepts in international norms and relations, and not without good reason. There are questions of whether and how to apply R2P in conflict zones such as Ukraine, Syria, Palestine, and Myanmar, to name a few. But R2P is not merely a theoretical debate, augmented by an intervention in Libya over ten years ago. Rather it is a living concept with potential for more widespread (and needed) application. However, it lacks the political will—and the comprehensive framework—that is essential to its application in a fair, careful, and truly protective manner.

The Responsibility to Protect is a political norm—meaning it isn’t a binding law based on a treaty or custom—interacting with international law by setting standards, common practices, and expectations, often into soft or hard law. Norms place a responsibility on all states to protect. But to protect whom? The answer, first, is to protect a state’s own people; second, to aid states that are incapable of protecting their own people; and third, to intervene in states incapable or unwilling to protect their own people. The third aspect is the controversial element as well as the reason R2P came into being in the first place.

There is a strong argument in support of R2P, which focuses on preventing atrocities being committed against civilians. However, there are equally strong arguments against the concept, both in theory and in current practice. Both those for and against generally see the way which R2P has expressed itself in practice as problematic: R2P as a norm in international relations demands a reconsideration of our conceptualization of sovereignty at best and is a violation of the principle at worst.

Addressing such flawed implementation—especially when applied against the will of the state, which took place in Libya—is a priority, either by canceling the concept altogether, or by reforming its implementation.

Too Late to Act?
The Responsibility to Protect was birthed by a world which witnessed atrocities and where it was too late to act. This is the context in which international pundits, particularly the late United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, began to question the concept of sovereignty vis-à-vis stopping atrocities.

The first shock to the world was the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, where hundreds of thousands of Rwandans died while the UN, and all its member states, effectively did nothing during the mass slaughter. Just a few months later, in 1995, thousands of Bosniak boys and men were systematically killed by the Serbs in what came to be known as the Srebrenica Massacre.

These two tragic events were a shock to the world, and to Annan. In his 1999 report entitled “We the Peoples”, he asked the all-important question: “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica—to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?”

Enter R2P. In 2000, the Canadian government commissioned the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) to answer that question. A year later, the commission issued its report, which formulated a clear idea of R2P for the first time by challenging the absolute nature of state sovereignty, referencing “constitutional power sharing arrangements”. This essentially deconstructed the state and the notion of sovereignty along with it. The commission looks at the state—and sovereignty—not as the absolute sum of its parts, but as conditional upon the fulfillment of obligations toward all of its parts. The ICISS thus shifted sovereignty from a state-centered, inviolable notion to a people-centered, conditional one.

The international community generally embraced the notion, but states were still skeptical. At the 2005 World Summit, the General Assembly unanimously voted in favor of the World Summit Outcome, which included an acceptance of R2P as a norm for protection and intervention in articles 138 and 139, but limited its mandate to genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The following year, the UN Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution reaffirming articles 138 and 139.

In 2009, the concept was further refined by then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Report on Implementing the Responsibility to Protect. He identified three pillars to R2P—the three aforementioned cases where R2P is applicable. There are compelling arguments on both sides, as well as clear problems with the implementation that need to be addressed.

The Arguments for R2P

Atrocity prevention

The first argument for R2P is as potent as it is simple: how can atrocities be prevented without intervening? Rwanda and Srebrenica were wake-up calls for a reason, as the toll on human life was huge, and the manner in which life was violated was cruel and unbecoming of the world in which we strive to live.

There are valid concerns regarding R2P, and they must be addressed without forsaking R2P altogether. Genocide cannot be mitigated or addressed creatively; it is either halted in its tracks, with those responsible tried and put behind bars, or it is allowed to endure at a very high cost.

The idea that states are responsible for the protection of their own people is a powerful normative and transformative one, but is far from complete or conclusive. The challenge is how to establish a framework which stops atrocities from taking place but does not threaten the age-old paradigm of sovereignty.

People-centered sovereignty

The ICISS report was the opening salvo challenging the concept of an unconditional sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty conditional upon the security of populations has become at the core of understanding R2P since its formulation. There are many objections to this idea of sovereignty, which will be addressed, but there is also a distinct rhythm to such a conceptualization.

Sovereignty is largely sacrosanct, as expressed through the UN Charter, because it acknowledges a state’s independence and ability to make its own decisions and decide its own fate. These were integral to the decolonization process and the self-determination of oppressed peoples. In other words, sovereignty is respected so that the will of the people is preserved through the sovereign authority’s governance. But what happens when the sovereign authority takes on a life of its own and gradually becomes disconnected from the people it’s supposed to represent?

State-centered sovereignty assumes the state continues and will continue to represent the will of its people, and that the will of all its people is respected, either through some sort of special representation or benevolent rule, or for an agreed-upon democratic arrangement in which the minority voice consents to its decisions. If such was the case, there would be no oppressed minorities. The post-colonial state system was maintained in a way to allow a people small in number to rule themselves, grouped by their conception of nationhood.

Ironically, sovereignty is respected to allow minority peoples in the global context to rule themselves, but when the voice, or, worse, the basic safety of minority groups is undermined, the international community is hesitant to intervene because of sovereignty.

A people-centered sovereignty, on the other hand, respects sovereignty as long as sovereign authority respects its people. And the standard for respect is not very high; sovereignty would be undermined only when atrocities are imminent or committed.

The Arguments against R2P

Violations of sovereignty

While an argument has been presented with regards to the merits of a people-centered sovereignty over a state-centered one, there is another side to the argument. According to Adom Getachew, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, R2P diminishes the normative value of sovereignty as a postcolonial value used to ensure equality between states. By going to the Security Council to decide when to intervene, R2P reemphasizes a hierarchy in the international order, and leaves intervention in small, post-colonial states at the discretion of large, powerful states. In the Security Council, R2P becomes a selective concept, and sovereignty is unconditional for some and conditional for others, based on a state’s power to resist intervention and their clout in the international system. Clearly, R2P is problematic or at least a concept which has yet to mature. The question is whether this argument is strong enough to forsake R2P altogether, and fail to prevent atrocities, in the name of deconstructing hierarchies. This no longer becomes a question of theoretical integrity but of moral urgency. Many atrocities would not be stemmed without a clear, formalized framework of intervention which places not just the right to intervene, but the responsibility to do so, upon the international community. Here one must ask, is it so that just because there’s a much higher bar to intervene in the United States than in a small country, for example, that we shouldn’t intervene in a small country at the brink of atrocities because of this lack of consistency?

Difficulty in measuring success

Was Libya then another Rwanda? It generally wasn’t, but it is impossible to say for sure. Alan J. Kuperman, a political scientist at the University of Texas in Austin, argues that the regime didn’t perpetuate violence against rebels who laid down their arms, yet there is no way to know whether there would have been a massacre in Benghazi or not. Certainly, the rhetoric of exterminating rats did little to ease the nerves of world leaders, quite the contrary.

Nevertheless, even if Libya is in fact a resounding success in humanitarian intervention and in exercising the Responsibility to Protect, the world will never know, and we will continue to criticize the intervention in Libya for all of its faults without knowing the alternative scenario to weigh it against. Any intervention under R2P will always be faced with all of its flaws and almost none of its merits, and will be under constant scrutiny and criticism.

R2P as a Norm
R2P has, in fact, made for itself a place in the international system as a norm. It is important to emphasize its role as a norm, as it aids understanding the full scope of R2P as well as helps distinguish itself from other concepts.

What R2P is, at its very core, is a way of understanding sovereignty in terms that are concerned with the welfare of people. Based on this, R2P is a doctrine that places the primary responsibility of protection of a people on the state itself, and then places the responsibility on the international community to aid or intervene in states that fail to fulfill such a responsibility. Accordingly, R2P is not only intervention, even though it was designed with such an end in mind, but it is important to understand the wider effect of R2P in the global system. R2P as an idea is an important one: for the debate which it invites, for the future change in the actions of states in accordance with the norm, and for the normative undertones it places on the international system in general. International relations scholars and experts on the UN Thomas G. Weiss and Giovanna Kuele state that “R2P seems firmly embedded in the values of international society and occasionally in policies and tactics for a particular crisis” despite the fact that it is very new as a concept vis-à-vis other norms in the international system.

R2P in UNSC resolutions

In 2011, R2P was mentioned in several important UNSC resolutions. In Resolution 1975, pertaining to Cote d’Ivoire, R2P was mentioned in the preamble. It is worth noting that there was already a UN mission and French forces present in Cote d’Ivoire authorized to use force since 2004, under Chapter VII of the Charter. While it can be said that R2P was invoked to strengthen the normative integrity of the resolution and their mandate, the intervention by UN and French forces would have been present anyway.

With regards to Libya, a pertinent question arises: On what grounds did the UN authorize the use of force?

The actual military intervention was authorized based on threats to international peace and security, given the way S/RES/1973 was phrased. However, this doesn’t mean that R2P didn’t have a role to play. As a norm, it was central to the decision to intervene, and was relevant in the discourse as well as the formal resolutions. The abstentions of Russia, China, India, and Brazil on Resolution 1973 only came out of a fear of having another Rwanda on their hands. In that sense, R2P as a norm was the main driver of the intervention, despite the resolution implying that the actual intervention was due to threats to international peace and security.

Another interesting example of R2P acting as a norm in the context of a resolution is the 2012 UNSC Resolution 2085 on Mali, and international peace and security was again cited to refer to Chapter VII. Curiously, this time R2P is expressed in the operative clauses, as the resolution states that an armed support mission “to support the Malian authorities in their primary responsibility to protect the population” will be established. The Malian resolution is distinctively different from the resolutions concerning Libya for two reasons: first of all, the Malian government requested this military assistance to fight Al-Qaeda, so there’s no breach of sovereignty in whichever way it’s defined. Embedding R2P several times in the operative clauses of the resolution, however, implies an increased operationalization of R2P, and its governing notion on sovereignty. The second important distinction is that R2P was not used as justification for intervention in the case of Mali, but as a guideline for the intervening force to act by, and a mandate to respect in spirit and in action.

While these are some of the more distinct examples of UNSC resolutions where R2P is mentioned, there are more, including Resolution 2014 on Yemen, 2127 on the Central African Republic, 1894 on Sudan, and 1996 on South Sudan, among many others.

R2P in Practice

Hidden motivations

While in theory R2P should be undertaken in a non-biased manner without vested interests other than the safety of the population, in practice this may not be the case. The issue begins with the fact that it is often individual states or military alliances that are intervening, and not a UN force.

As such, missions may be at risk of escalation or derailment based on these interests. However, the ICISS, realizing this, articulated an “ulterior motive exemption” which forgives states for inevitably having other interests when intervening. This is an attempt to address the hidden motivations problem by simply accepting it. But is this ulterior motive exemption acceptable?

In pursuit of a possible hidden interest in regime change, NATO overstepped its mandate, as set out by Resolution 1973, and committed acts of aggression. Moreover, it knowingly allowed crimes that it was intervening to stop to be committed by the rebels. Clearly, NATO’s “ulterior motive,” whether it was there from the beginning or developed with the conflict, was highly damaging.

Post-conflict stability and war termination

Another issue which becomes clear is that intervention often plants instability in the medium term, and may make matters worse than before. Unless intervention is very well planned with a clear post-conflict plan which doesn’t leave a power vacuum or leftover tensions, there is a high chance that conflict will resurface. In other words, R2P, as it is used today, is a short-term solution to a long-term issue.

Lawyer James P. Rudolph points out a link between R2P and the even younger emerging norm, jus post bellum, or the responsibility to rebuild. There are some who would argue that jus post bellum must be linked to R2P. It mustn’t necessarily be carried out by the same people who intervene, they say, but it must be integrated in the plan before intervention; otherwise R2P would act like no more than a ceasefire.

Inconsistency

Another important aspect in which R2P fails in practice is consistency. There is a general inconsistency in the willingness to intervene in countries which do not protect their populations, for several reasons. One reason is convenience, as states are generally disinclined to intervene in conflicts where it would prove to be a financial, logistical, or indeed political difficulty. One of the reasons NATO did not want to intervene again in Syria was because the terrain is completely different to Libya.

There is a further inconsistency which is related to power politics. A common question is why Libya and not Syria? The probable answer is because of Russia. The aforementioned issues with R2P being linked to the Security Council are brought back to the fore, and demonstrated even more potently with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as it is likely, according to Amnesty International, that Russia has committed crimes against humanity.

Such inconsistency violates the very spirit of the Responsibility to Protect. R2P is not meant to be inconsistent or selective, but to be a responsibility toward all populations. The fact that R2P’s application is prone to inconsistency is both a fundamental flaw in the conceptualization of R2P through ignoring the potency of realpolitik in determining when to intervene, and also a failure to adequately translate the norm in practice.

Nevertheless, R2P is still young, has room for improvement, and has arguably yet to mature.

R2P in Ukraine?
Given current events, can R2P be applied in Ukraine against Russia? More importantly, should R2P be applied in Ukraine? In both cases, the answer is no. It cannot be applied simply because Russia has a veto in the Security Council, and therefore armed intervention cannot be authorized. Though there may be an argument for intervening on the grounds of collective self-defense, as authorized by the UN charter, with R2P as a guiding notion. However, even if such an intervention is legal, R2P-based intervention still should not be applied because it might contribute to dragging out the war and increasing its devastation to possibly continental scale, not to mention running the risk of nuclear war.

Such is R2P’s greatest flaw—that it is nigh impossible for it to be applied to the violations of major powers, even when it is completely justified. This is, however, a major flaw of the international community in general. The rules are not the same for the United States, China, and Russia, nor for the Global North compared to the Global South, because the former set the rules. Who will hold the United States accountable for its war crimes in Iraq, for example? Therefore, to criticize R2P because it suffers the same flaws as the community which created it is to criticize a part simply because it is part of the whole and inevitably shares its flaws.

Before discussing armed intervention, some interesting essays look to apply the concept through non-armed intervention. The options proposed include an information war, legal proceedings, economic sanctions, diplomatic sanctions, and military assistance. This is a positive approach for the concept as a whole, disassociating R2P from the necessity for armed intervention and reflecting the norm’s wider purpose. Practically, all these suggestions are already being implemented, though it would add a further layer of legitimacy to such efforts.

Yet R2P is blasted for being “a hollow promise for civilians under fire”. University of Portsmouth Director of Security and Risk Research Peter Lee’s entire essay, and most essays before it written by experts, have criticized R2P for leaving too wide a berth for myopic and/or self-interested maneuvering, and too little space for accountability to be sincere. Moreover, the recommendations are always to refine it to add more conditions to its proper application— essentially restricting its application compared to the Libyan intervention. Yet here authors are calling for an intervention which will inevitably prolong the war and increase its devastation, which are exactly the actions which NATO has been repeatedly blasted for in Libya.

In the “hollow promise” article, the author says that U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has come forward with “very credible” reports of war crimes committed by Russian forces. This claim is problematic because a claim by a state that its rival is committing atrocities is hardly sufficient evidence for an intervention. While this issue of who makes the claims which legitimize an R2P-based intervention is a practical and conceptual gap, it is currently filled by the Security Council through its decisions on whether or not to intervene, which is a highly flawed approach. And the ICC is simply too slow to be assigned the task. A novel body properly equipped for the urgency of the task must be created and empowered by the Security Council.

Another article by Charles H. Camp, Kiran Nasir Gore, and Lilia Chu claims that “the Responsibility to Protect doctrine requires States to prevent, react to, and rebuild following human rights crises”. This is inaccurate. While truer to the ICISS definition, which includes prevention and rebuilding, the current iteration of R2P certainly does not require prevention, reaction, and rebuilding following human rights crises. It only covers the four specified atrocities. More egregious, perhaps, is the same authors’—lawyers, no less— claim that “international scholars, nations, and the UN itself agree that it is part of customary international law, which is binding on all States, regardless of whether it has been codified as such, or whether the State consents”.

This is, again, inaccurate. R2P is not customary international law; it is a very young norm and lacks the all-important element of state practice. States have repeatedly failed in their responsibility to protect populations, whether it be in Syria, Myanmar, Palestine, or elsewhere. Its application has been the exception, not the norm. The UN is not claiming that R2P is custom, and the member states certainly are not. The World Summit Outcome Document is not law, nor is the ICISS report or other documents related to R2P.

Having said that, R2P has indeed proven to be a hollow promise for many vulnerable populations, and is contingent upon the political will of member states, which is tragic. It should not be so, but in such a flawed, state-centered international system, how could it not be? The fact that it exists in the first place in the current political climate is very positive. What critics neglect is that it is leading the charge toward a more human-centered system, but, of course, the opposition is tremendous. Failure and resistance are expected and, unfortunately, it will fail more than it succeeds until a political reorientation of the entire system—which it contributes to—occurs. One must hope that this is not instigated by further atrocities, replicating the same conditions through which the norm was born, and that it proves effective where it can.

Overall, R2P has emerged as a unique concept both for its daring aspirations and evident failures. Some scholars see the need for such a concept, and such a people-centered interpretation of sovereignty, in the global system, as, ultimately, the system is made to serve the people. The protection of populations is precisely R2P’s goal, and there seems to be no sufficiently compelling argument to counter the conceptual need for a framework which places the emphasis on people rather than states and works to prevent atrocities.

While there are some conceptual flaws which can only be mitigated at best, there are others in implementation, which must be addressed and changed significantly. First steps can be taken toward this goal, such as implementing a UNGA-UNSC dual approval mechanism to achieve a wider consensus before intervention, or refining the framework through integrating concepts such as the Responsibility while Protecting. Clear and effective plans for the post-conflict phase as well as enhanced peacekeeping processes are necessary. The desire to uphold R2P as an international norm is tied to the need to update and reform the concept and its application in ways suiting the needs and concerns of the global system.

To quote political scientist Thomas G. Weiss: whither R2P?

Is the multilateral system democratic? This issue has gained renewed relevance since the invasion of Ukraine. A Russian veto at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) effectively prevented the body responsible for maintaining international peace and security from performing its role, which illustrates the difficulty in dealing with situations in which one of the five permanent members violates international law. And this is not the first time it has happened. The 21st century has witnessed other unilateral military interventions incompatible with the United Nations (UN) Charter, as was the case in Iraq. This time, the organization was challenged by the President of Ukraine to demand compliance with international law by all or confront the risk of its decreasing significance.

An incipient reaction came about with the adoption, by the General Assembly (UNGA), of a resolution demanding that the author of a veto justify it to the organization’s membership as a whole. The Summit of the Future, convened by Secretary-General (UNSG) António Guterres for September 2024, can become an opportunity to guide multilateralism toward greater democratization. As 2022-23 marks Former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s centennial, his pioneer role in promoting a more democratic international system deserves to be recalled.

The first session of the Security Council with Heads of State participation took place in January 1992, when the Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali had just assumed command of the United Nations in New York. The end of the Cold War was celebrated amid the expectation that the multilateral system would guarantee a promising era of international cooperation. The UNSC summit commissioned a report from the newly appointed Secretary-General and assigned him the task of drafting recommendations on the future role of the UN in promoting a more peaceful world. The report presented by Boutros-Ghali in May 1992, known as An Agenda for Peace, is a landmark document on peace and security. A few months ago, it was the subject of a seminar organized by the Cairo International Center for Conflict Resolution, Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding (CCCPA) to commemorate the thirty years since its publication. In fact, the text was reaffirmed by the identification of six core areas for a New Agenda for Peace.

In his autobiography Unvanquished, Boutros-Ghali recalls two innovative proposals included in that text: the preventive deployment of peace operations as a way of preventing accumulated tensions from degenerating into open conflict, and the creation of permanent rapid reaction units—with a mandate to use force if necessary—in what is commonly known as “peace enforcement.” The first idea was implemented in the former Yugoslavia, where it helped to prevent the war in Bosnia from spreading into the southern Balkans. The second suggestion was more controversial. The creation of a permanent military mechanism capable of intervening in conflict situations received some support from the Western and Arab specialized media. At the same time, however, a host of critical voices denounced the Secretary-General for an alleged attempt to create an international army under his command. This second proposal was eventually shelved. On the other hand, two paragraphs included in An Agenda for Peace largely unnoticed at the time, deserve to be remembered in the troubled 2022 international scenario. These are the paragraphs in which Boutros-Ghali defends the application of democratic principles—both domestically and within the community of nations—and associates the construction of peace with the promotion of democracy in the national and international spheres. By referring to democratic principles in this way, Boutros-Ghali brought into the multilateral domain a concept that had not been mentioned in the 1945 United Nations Charter. Although founded on the principle of the sovereign equality of all member states, the UN injected a dose of institutionalized inequality into its decision-making processes by providing five permanent members of the Security Council with the right to veto. Over the years, these five permanent members (known as the “P5”) would further enhance this original inequality, due to certain practices (not enshrined in the Charter) which granted them other privileges, such as guaranteed participation in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The other members of the organization allowed this to happen without putting up much resistance throughout the Cold War and during the so-called “unipolar moment.”

In May 1994, Boutros-Ghali would add in his An Agenda for Development the notion that democratic principles must be also observed in the work of the UN itself, postulating that dialogue, debate, and the search for agreements constitute the essence of democracy “within nations and within the family of nations.” Shortly before the end of his tenure as Secretary-General, Boutros-Ghali issued An Agenda for Democratization, which may be considered a last plea in favor of an open and equitable multilateralism.  Sri Lankan jurist M. C. W. Pinto attributed the origin of these views to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), of which Egypt was a founding member under Gamal Abdel Nasser. In an article entitled “The Democratization of International Relations and its Implications for the Development and Application of International Law”, Pinto recalls that this notion manifested itself in successive declarations of the NAM since the beginning of the 1970s, before being endorsed, in 1992 and 1994, in both An Agenda for Peace and An Agenda for Development. Without diminishing the pioneering role attributed to the Egyptian Secretary- General, Pinto does not minimize the difficulty in transposing a concept that was historically applicable to national political systems to the international order.

What should we understand by democratic principles? As we know, the term democracy derives from two Greek words: demos, “people,” and kratos, which can be translated as “power” or “government.” The concept of democracy has undergone considerable historic evolution since its emergence in ancient Greece two and a half millennia ago. Needless to stress that today it would be inconceivable to call a society democratic should it not grant the right to vote to all its adult members, at a minimum. In addition to popularly elected government representatives, a non-exhaustive list of elements that are essential to a democracy would include the rule of law, civil liberties, pluralism, an independent judiciary, and the protection of minorities. Democratic constitutions establish parameters for the actions of governments elected by majority vote, whose legislative bodies deliberate on matters not constitutionally regulated and may resort to pre-established procedures to amend the constitution or replace rulers.

While recognizing the difficulty in establishing a strict parallel between national societies and the international community, Pinto suggests four main historical references, which provide a framework for a discussion on the democratization of the international order. He begins with the concept of sovereignty, dating back to the Westphalian accords of 1648, thereupon granting states unprecedented freedom in defining their national priorities. The concept of sovereign equality among states, which emerged from the 1907 Hague Conference, represents a further step toward an anthropomorphic view of the units that constitute the international fabric, allowing their rights and obligations to be equated, to a certain extent, with those of individuals within a society. The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 held the self-determination of peoples as a basic precept of a new order, which would translate—after being incorporated into the UN Charter in 1945—into the decolonization process that resulted in the present international community of 193 independent states. Finally, claims for “redistributive justice,” inherent to proposals that prescribe more favorable treatment for developing countries, represent a means of correcting inequalities or compensating for injustices that emulates internal democratic practices.

In a book published by the universities of Princeton and Oxford in 2014, under the title Good-Bye Hegemony, political scientists Richard Ned Lebow and Simon Reich formulate an additional axiom. They maintain that it is difficult to reconcile the defense of democracy, at the internal level, with the pursuit of hegemony internationally. Based on this premise, the two authors argue strongly in favor of applying the commitment to democratic principles at the national level also to international relations. They depict the position of international relations scholars who support hegemonic agendas, yet neglect their intrinsic incompatibility with democratic values, as indefensible. The preface to the book states that theirs is not a utopian vision, as they place themselves within the legacy of realist Hans Morgenthau, who encouraged international relations theorists to challenge the conventional thinking of their societies in potentially transformative directions. The book’s subtitle, Power and Influence in the Global System, further clarifies the theoretical tradition with which the two authors identify themselves.

It may seem surprising that a representative from Egypt assumed the role of spokesperson for democratic values in 1992. At the time, Egypt was ruled by Hosni Mubarak, a leader who had risen to the presidency of his country after the assassination of Anwar Sadat and would remain in power for thirty years before being removed by a popular insurrection in February 2011. As a representative of the largest Christian community in the Arab World, however, Boutros-Ghali was particularly sensitive to the importance of an aforementioned feature of truly democratic regimes: namely, the protection of minorities. Due to his Christian Coptic confession, he had never been appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, although, in practice, ministerial responsibilities had been assigned to him under the title of Secretary of State. His stance stemmed less from the direct experience of democracy in the government he had been a member of, than from his personal adherence to an ideology that would become increasingly explicit throughout his international career.

Boutros-Ghali’s innovative leadership was hailed in the opening speech of the 48th UN General Assembly in 1993 by the Foreign Minister of Brazil, Celso Amorim. Recalling a speech by one of his predecessors—João Augusto de Araújo Castro—exactly thirty years earlier, Amorim proposed that the international agenda be structured around “‘3 D’s’: Democracy, Development, [and] Disarmament,” with due attention given to its ramifications in the fields of human rights and the environment. The introduction of the first “D” for democracy was made to replace the “D” of decolonization, which was thought to have shed its significance by 1993. A decade later, similar reflections would be taken up at the opening of the 58th General Assembly, in a speech by then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who equated the improvement of the multilateral system with that of enhancing democratic coexistence within states. As he stated, “every nation that practices democracy must strive to ensure that in international affairs, decision-making is equally open, transparent, legitimate and representative.”

In contrast with the atmosphere of renewed hope prevalent at the 1992 Security Council Summit, however, the debate at the General Assembly in September 2003 took place against a backdrop of divisions and recriminations stemming from the U.S.-led military intervention against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Without authorization from the UNSC, and under a pretext that would be proven false, that initiative derived from the trauma caused in American society by the universally condemned terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on one hand, and reflected a “unipolar moment” of undisputed U.S. military and economic preeminence on the other. Unwilling to accept limitations on the use of force prescribed by international law, the United States, under George W. Bush thus put an end to the multilateralist disposition of his father, George H. W. Bush. Brazil would declare on the same occasion: “Let us not place greater trust on military might than on the institutions we created with the light of reason and the vision of history.”

The relationship between multilateralism, democracy, and the promotion of peace, brought to the fore by Boutros-Ghali, came back into focus. Today, the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation confronts the multilateral system with a new episode of violation of central precepts of the UN Charter by a permanent member. In condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the General Assembly expressed a particularly emphatic repudiation of the unauthorized use of military force and the violation of the territorial integrity of a member state. It did so by assuming the powers conferred upon it by the Uniting for Peace resolution, invoked no more than eleven times since its adoption in the 1950s, as a way of circumventing the obstruction of the Security Council by a veto.

It is worth recalling that, a few days before, Russia had vetoed a resolution at the UNSC that condemned its military action, thus preventing the body from expressing itself on a crisis of serious proportions. This occurred despite the fact that Article 27 (3) of the Charter stipulates that a state party to a dispute under consideration by the Council should abstain from voting. The resulting frustration with the paralysis of the Council was at the origin of the adoption by consensus of Resolution 76/262 on April 26, 2022, granting the President of the General Assembly the authority to call a formal session to publicly examine a veto’s justifications (or absence thereof). Bearing in mind that the veto is clearly the least democratic feature of the UN Charter, this resolution can be seen as symptomatic of a mobilization in favor of more legitimate and transparent procedures. Led by Liechtenstein, a country of forty thousand inhabitants, the initiative provides an interesting illustration of the elasticity of diplomatic space at the multilateral level. It is worth noting that none of the P5 opposed it.

At the same time, it would be incorrect to presume that a new international consensus in favor of a more democratic multilateralism has emerged. In truth, the manifestations by the General Assembly against the Russian invasion and the ensuing delegitimization of questionable vetoes conceal a reality of paradoxes and inconsistencies. Although the United States convened a summit on democratic values and ideals earlier in the year (The Summit for Democracy), those discussions did not address the issue of transposing democracy to the multilateral arena. On the other hand, countries that were not invited to the

U.S. summit issued communiqués in which they committed to promoting “more democratic international relations.” The quote is taken from the joint statement released by Russia and China on February 4, calling for a new era in international relations and global sustainable development.

As a member of BRICS (a collective composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), Brazil has signed successive joint declarations in support of more representative and democratic global governance institutions. However, such declarations do not translate into a clear commitment by BRICS as a group in support of reforming the UNSC, with expansion in both categories of membership—permanent and non-permanent—as advocated by South Africa, Brazil, and India. The aspiration to reform and expand the UNSC in both categories has significant support from countries in all regions, which are persuaded that such an increase in membership is necessary to render the body more representative and legitimate. Nevertheless, members of BRICS—who regularly express support for the democratization of international relations— seem comfortable with a status quo of unequal representation. In truth, the defense of democracy as an organizing principle of the international system is an objective that does not bring together an obvious coalition of adherents. There seems to be scant coherence between the defense of more or less democratic values at home and its endorsement at the international level.

This situation invites those who are in favor of plural and democratic societies, and who uphold multilateralism, to articulate their positions without ambiguity. In theory, the association between good domestic governance and enhanced international cooperation under the sign of democracy would not appear to raise controversy. In practice, however, its defense is not simple. Threats to democracy have become noticeable even in territories where it had apparently grown solid roots. The shortcomings of multilateral institutions have been exposed by the war in Ukraine and COVID-19. Unilateralism, including by powerful democracies, has placed them at odds with international law. The deterioration in relations between China and the United States renders an already problematic context even more challenging.  Still, the very scale of the current crisis is precisely what makes an ambitious effort all the more urgent.  In this regard, the preservation of the essential tenets of the UN Charter, along with the introduction of necessary reforms to prevent erosion of the system, should receive due attention. This may indeed be starting to happen, as illustrated by the approval of the aforementioned resolution A/76/262 on the veto but also in the convening of the Summit of the Future by Secretary-General António Guterres for September 2024.

The unprecedented proposal for a summit dedicated to the “future” is part of the report Our Common Agenda, circulated by Guterres in fulfillment of the request contained in the Declaration on the commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations. In an indirect reference to the report by his Egyptian predecessor, Guterres included a section entitled A New Agenda for Peace, in which he admits that the organization has not been able to fulfill its role in this field. On the contrary, he considers that challenges have multiplied, instability has increased, and responses have proven unsatisfactory. Six recommendations include sections on strategic risk reduction and in favor of a world free from nuclear weapons; a more effective prediction of security risks; the reduction of violence, including violence against women; the full use of the capabilities offered by the Peacebuilding Commission and its corresponding fund; and support for regional bodies as well as the “women, peace and security” agenda.

Such recommendations, made before the war in Ukraine, fail to provide new insights into either the substance of the UNSC’s activities or its modus operandi. In reality, the operational dysfunctionality of the Council does not occupy the center of the comprehensive menu of ideas and proposals offered by Guterres in Our Common Agenda. In a chapter dedicated to the adaptation of the United Nations to a new era, the Secretary-General limits himself to stating that it is up to the membership to decide on the functioning of the main organs of the UN system. While recognizing that the Security Council could be more representative through “more systematic arrangements for more voices at the table,” it does not go beyond an undetailed reiteration of suggestions such as the intensification of consultations with regional authorities or the exercise of self-restraint as regards the veto. This caution effectively shifts the responsibility back to member states, and encourages them to harness the imagination and boldness needed to achieve meaningful results at a summit aiming to revitalize multilateralism. The opportunity should not be missed.

The democratization of international relations can be the answer to the challenge presented by Guterres, when he confronts member states with the alternative between “breakdown or breakthrough.” The preservation of the centrality of certain notions contained in the UN Charter, which can be considered a true civilizational landmark for the promotion of peace, represent a necessary first step. Of foremost relevance is Chapter VII and the limitations on unilateral coercive action contained therein: use of force only in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council and military or economic sanctions in line with multilateral decisions. More broadly, the nonselective application of international law should be seen as a foundation for a more peaceful and cooperative international environment. Just as the domestic democratic order presupposes the indiscriminate application of the law to all citizens, regardless of their economic or political status, it is natural to assume that the law should not be selectively observed in the international order. Unfortunately, this is a postulate that, although unanimously accepted, is also frequently disrespected.

Nevertheless, it is important to note that this understanding continues to be reaffirmed in consensus statements. The inclusion of paragraph 10 in the commemorative declaration of the three-quarters of a century of the UN was of special significance. Its opening sentence reads: “We will abide by international law and ensure justice.” The paragraph deserves to be quoted more extensively because it also declares that international law, in addition to having a “timeless and universal” character, constitutes the indispensable foundation for a more peaceful, prosperous, and just world. Member states are committed, in the same breath, to fulfilling the agreements to which they are a party and to promoting respect for democracy, in addition to strengthening democratic governance and the rule of law. Without going so far as to explain whether this commitment applies to the international order, words such as these cannot be read as incompatible with democratizing purposes in a wider sense. On the contrary: they should be read as providing an incentive to proceed in this direction.

Our Common Agenda affirms that international legal regimes are essential for the protection of global public goods, among which Secretary-General António Guterres includes public health, the environment, and peace itself. With the aim of translating the commitment of the UN’s 75th anniversary declaration into a concrete initiative, Guterres proposed a “global road map for the development and effective implementation of international law”. This proposal acquired special significance in light of developments that had yet to occur when it was first put forward.

Not unrelated to this issue is the subject matter of an article published in the New York Times in June 2021 by academic and journalist Peter Beinart, who presents an insightful analysis of the expression international “rules-based order.” These words are being frequently used by the United States government and have become a common feature of G7 and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) communiqués. As Beinart helps to clarify, the defense of international law has a clear meaning and does not lend itself to ambiguity. On the other hand, “rules-based” remains a somewhat “nebulous” expression that may refer to instruments or rules that are not universally accepted. The established expression is, after all, the “rule of law” and not the “rule of rules.”

It is worth considering that, until recently, some of the most stalwart supporters of the resolution on the Aggression against Ukraine of March 18, 2022, either subscribed to or abstained from condemning doctrines providing for the use of force in a preventive manner, and were not detained by the lack of multilateral authorization to carry out coercive action. As Brazilian journalist Guga Chacra recalls in an article published in O Globo in January 2022, when we observe the United States questioning Russia in Ukraine, it is hard to ignore recent history. Be that as it may, and as we look toward the future, it is significant that all those who supported the UNGA resolution on the invasion of Ukraine have united in rejecting violations of Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter, in which member states commit not to use force against the territorial integrity of any other state. The absence of an interpretative margin, under international law, capable of justifying military invasions such as those in Ukraine or other countries in the Middle East and North Africa is addressed by Professor Ngaire Woods from the University of Oxford in an article published in the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs. According to Woods, the international legal order presupposes that the special responsibilities assigned to the most powerful should be manifested in their special commitment to safeguarding its essential provisions. If the most powerful violate the legal instruments they created, the order they are expected to guarantee can be weakened beyond repair.

Ngaire Woods attributes to Machiavelli the political tradition according to which national interest would allow a state to disregard international law. However, as she makes clear, disrespect for central provisions of the UN Charter today introduces a degree of unpredictability in international relations that is disadvantageous to all. The recent track record of military interventions undertaken outside international law leaves no room for doubt in this regard. Woods sustains, however, that although divisions arising from the invasion of Ukraine and the growing hostility between China and the United States generate new systemic challenges, international cooperation has become more pressing than ever to avoid war, combat climate change, and prevent economic setbacks and hunger. Woods concludes that the potential benefits of well-informed diplomacy should not be underestimated, as they provide perspective and counterbalance. The article asserts that “the clarity of international law will help even the most powerful to see more clearly.” There could scarcely be a sharper statement. Albeit indirectly, the crisis in Ukraine may be helping reposition the UN Charter at the center of concerns about international order. The two-thirds of the member states that supported the March 18 UNGA resolution underlined the benefits arising from observing, in good faith, the obligations incumbent upon them as stipulated in the Charter. At the same time, those who abstained, or voted against, did not do so in the name of an alternative compendium of obligations and rights. In fact, those are countries that are known to be strongly in favor of precepts such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the peaceful settlement of disputes.

The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, when reflecting on multilateralism in the age of multipolarity,  summarizes his proposal for reforming the multilateral system in three key points: consolidating what works, reforming what has proved ineffective, and extending the scope of multilateralism to new areas. If we leave what has proved ineffective for last, we can start by pointing to the nonselective application of international law as an example of what deserves to be consolidated. As relates to new areas, Our Common Agenda identifies many challenges that would benefit from a multilateral framework of rights and obligations, such as public health, the vast environmental spectrum, outer space, and artificial intelligence. The promotion of international peace, by comparison, cannot be described as truly effective and is manifestly in need of urgent reforms. The inadequacies in the functioning of the Security Council and the paralysis of the Conference on Disarmament are notorious cases.

In this regard, it is worth distinguishing between changes that can be introduced through innovative practices that do not involve amending the UN Charter and more profound reforms, which would require amendments to the Charter or even convening a Review Conference. Numerous improvements may be introduced through initiatives presented to the UNGA, or even simply by changing practices that are lacking in transparency and fall short of basic democratic standards. The more frequent use of the Uniting for Peace resolution and the new procedure that allows for a public questioning of the veto are examples of the role the UNGA is capable of playing in the face of an inoperative UNSC. It is curious to note, at the same time, that certain practices can be altered by a simple change in the attitude of states willing to correct them: in 2017, for the first time, a judge from the United Kingdom was not elected to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), thus ending an unregulated practice according to which the P5 would always be represented in the Court.

There are other changes in attitude which could have a regenerating effect in addressing important issues for world peace and for the multilateral system at large. For example, an ICJ manifestation, in response to a request from a group of countries, could call for the full implementation of Article 27 (3), according to which a party involved in a dispute brought to the attention of the UNSC should abstain from voting. In the field of disarmament, an interesting precedent was set by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which mobilized governments and succeeded in mandating the UNGA to negotiate a draft treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Considered a non-starter by some when initially proposed, the initiative evolved into a legal text that obtained a sufficient number of ratifications in 2021 to enter into force. The negotiating process was strongly opposed by nuclear powers and NATO, but the initiative went ahead and was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

However, it should be recognized that structural reforms such as the composition of the UNSC would require a degree of political mobilization that the ongoing negotiation processes do not seem capable of setting in motion. We thus come to the consideration of the opportunity to invoke Article 109 for the convening of a Charter Revision Conference. The Leaders pour la Paix (LPP) group, coordinated by former French Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin, recently presented their annual report for 2022 to the UN Secretary-General. The document argues in favor of a new multilateralism rooted in a new humanism. Based on an appreciation of contemporary geopolitics, the group considers it essential to associate the question of the survival of human civilization on Earth with the mobilization of support for multilateralism and peace. As Raffarin affirms, the future of the planet only became a political issue relatively recently, but today it has made its way to the center of a younger generations’ interest in international cooperation. Without the support of the young, a movement in favor of a more democratic multilateralism will probably struggle to advance. The UN Charter was written before environmental awareness became one of the defining themes of our times. Among other objectives, a review conference should consider incorporating into the UN Charter a call to our collective responsibility in this area.

On June 22, 2022, I was part of the delegation that delivered the LPP’s annual report to Secretary-General Guterres. The conversation flowed with spontaneity and went to the heart of the world’s problems. Guterres expressed particular concern with a scenario of gradual replacement of multipolarity with a new bipolar distribution of power potentially harmful to multilateralism. To some extent, his words echo the difficulties anticipated by Henry Kissinger in the book World Order. The American diplomat states in his final chapter that the reconstruction of the international system is the most challenging task to be faced by contemporary leaders. In his view, the inability to coordinate adequate responses will not necessarily translate into a major interstate war (although he does not exclude this hypothesis) but above all into the progressive establishment of spheres of influence identified with specific forms of government and domestic structures. In his recent work Adrift: How Our World Has Lost Its Way, Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf introduces much darker notes, quoting George Orwell as he speaks of an irrationality that today jeopardizes the future of democracy, threatens respect for the rule of law, and undermines adherence to the set of shared values that gives meaning to the human adventure.

The spaces of autonomy that multipolarity offers will inexorably shrink if multilateralism is replaced by zones of influence around powers incapable of constructively engaging in cooperation to face common challenges. At the same time, political pressure in favor of a more democratic multilateralism may offer a way forward to overcome current difficulties. This is the possible path to a “breakthrough”— the available answer to the challenge posed in Our Common Agenda. Certain reforms that appear to be unavoidable, such as the composition of the UNSC, will require a revision of the UN Charter. But just as the G20 replaced the G7, there should be no insurmountable obstacle to incorporating a greater degree of multipolarity into the premier forum in charge of collective security. In this case, as in the case of confronting global warming, the loss of biodiversity, and environmental degradation, it will be necessary to mobilize governments, civil society, the private sector, academics, the media, and the youth.

If we accept the premise that multipolarity can reinforce multilateralism, it will be important to unite efforts around democratizing platforms, while bearing in mind the pitfalls of competing hegemonic agendas. The preservation of the planet and human civilization on Earth are powerful unifying themes, which can become a counterpoint to ideological clashes, or arms races that promote fragmentation and impede international cooperation. The vast majority of nations do not feel any nostalgia for the Cold War. Bipolarity, a second time around, could entail more perverse geopolitical risks than those whose end was celebrated at a Security Council summit in January 1992. In brief: the objective of rendering international relations democratic remains incomplete, acquires growing urgency, and requires sustained political efforts aimed at revitalizing multilateralism.

Boutros-Ghali was not reelected for a second term due to a veto driven more by domestic politics in one of the P5 than by concerns with the health of the multilateral system. In spite of this, his intellectual independence and his commitment to the democratization of international relations continue to inspire all those who see the United Nations as a vector for civilization and peace. The 1996 Agenda for Democratization, circulated shortly before he left the United Nations, upholds the notion that democracy should express itself at all levels of human activity—local, national, regional, and global. It encapsulates his belief in the possibilities offered by democracy for human beings to fulfill their potential and flourish. He would never part with this deeply held belief. As the representative of a country with a history that is measured in half a dozen millennia, Boutros-Ghali states with ironic detachment, in the afterword to his autobiography, that “single superpower hegemony is a transitory phenomenon”. His last words point to the dream of the founding signatories of the United Nations Charter, whose expectation it was that the UN would be able to regenerate itself and deal effectively with a world destined to evolve in unpredictable directions. This dream is not over.

This article is based on a policy paper in Portuguese published in CEBRI-Journal, and was translated by Miguel Cooper Patriota and reviewed by Beatriz Pfeifer and Bruno Zilli.

When assessing the effects of the Russia–Ukraine war on Syria, it is first necessary to mention that the former is the military ally with the single greatest impact on the course of the conflict. Russia seeks to maintain not only its influence in Syria but also its diplomatic and military ambitions in the Middle East, taking advantage of the withdrawal of American troops in 2019, which greenlit the way for Turkey to penetrate deep into Syrian territory and capture large swaths of land along its border.

Russia saw further opportunity to expand its influence in Syria following U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to Merissa Khurma, director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center in Washington, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was an audible message to Arab countries, and the Middle East in general, to put their eggs in different baskets, including Russia’s. She described the American move as a slow withdrawal from the region.

Syria is also enthusiastic to show that choosing Russia was the best decision. Last March, it voted against a United Nations resolution condemning the Russian aggression against Ukraine. The country also recognized the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic—declared independent by Russia—on June 29, 2022. The regions were annexed by Russia on September 30, 2022, though they are not recognized internationally.

The Damascus regime is well aware that a strong Russian presence remains a crucial player in its desired outcome in Syria. This presence encompasses a strong Russian military, namely with bases in Hmeimim and the Tartus port, a Russian naval facility, a strong Russian economy, as well as phosphate contracts and other economic incursions. Russia also uses its Security Council veto power for the benefit of its ally.

Additionally, it seems that Ankara’s pressure on the Syrian opposition to make concessions in favor of the Syrian regime also fits within this framework. Turkey played dual roles in Russia’s war against Ukraine. On the one hand, it provided Ukraine with the Bayraktar TB2 drone, which played a decisive role in undermining Russian military superiority. However, Turkey also aided Russia by contributing to the easing of the Ukrainian grain crisis.

Meanwhile, Iranian presence alongside Russian presence in Syria has become a reality. The countries have become strong and effective players since the United States and Europe turned a blind eye to overthrowing the Damascus government in years prior. Russia’s entry into Syria came under the supervision of international parties, including Israel, with the hopes of curbing Iranian influence in the country. Despite this, Iran strengthened past expectations, for which international parties now bear responsibility.

This piece will discuss the effects of the Ukraine War and the impact of global developments on Russia’s presence in Syria. This includes how Moscow works with Ankara, wherein Russia allows Turkey to strike the Kurdish presence on its borders, if not through direct incursion, then by drone attacks, while Turkey pressures the Syrian opposition toward rapprochement with the Al-Assad regime. Each has its own survival strategy, including Iran. Economically, Iran has attempted to establish itself socially and ideologically and to complete the fulfillment of the “Shiite Crescent,” while Russia is trying to secure a footing in the warm waters of the Mediterranean.

Regression Not Withdrawal
Despite Syrian support at the official level for Russia’s presence, it seems that things do not always go according to plan. The Russia–Ukraine war led to a redoubting of the “safe” relationship Syria had with Russia. The most notable change to affect the relationship between the two countries has been the redeployment of Russian commanders, soldiers and elite forces from Syria to the battle fronts against Ukraine. Such moves are not being reported in the media. Although observers reported that the redeployment was limited to a certain degree, DEBKAfile, an Israeli military intelligence website, claimed that satellite observations showed Russia’s withdrawal of the S-300 air defense system from the port of Tartus to the Black Sea via commercial ships. Moscow has neither denied nor confirmed these reports.

In the meantime, Russia is trying to maintain its momentum and influence in the Syrian arena, continuing its military activity and role as a balance between regional influencers: Turkey, Iran, and Israel. Russia recently expressed strong opposition to Turkey’s plans, beginning several months ago, to launch a new military operation against the Syrian Democratic Forces, and new attempts at incursion into Syrian territory. Nevertheless, analysts believe that Russia continues to view its air and naval bases, especially the port of Tartus and the Hmeimim base, as strategic. It is not easy to abandon such strategic positions, which guarantees Russia’s tactical influence in the warm Mediterranean waters—a presence that has become increasingly more important in the confrontation with the West and NATO.

But Russia’s ability to maintain its strategic momentum in Syria will diminish the longer its war in Ukraine continues; Moscow will find it difficult to sustain this balance on two battlefronts. A report by the Syrian Observatory, on the seventh anniversary of the Russian intervention in September, cited a decline in the intensity of air raids carried out by Russia in Syria and the resulting lower death toll of civilians in Syrian opposition areas. Since the start of its war in Ukraine, the lowest annual death toll was reported since the start of the Russian military intervention in support of President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces on September 30, 2015. Although a favorable result, it also shows Russia’s preoccupation with the war in Ukraine, and its possible rethinking of its priorities in Syria.

Iran’s “Syrian” Opportunities
In October 2022, Russia transferred its S-300 anti-aircraft system out of Syria in order to bolster its offensive against Ukraine, opening the way for Israel to launch raids with greater intensity. The defense system had been a barrier to the Israeli Air Force operation in the country, according to the Times of Israel. Conversely, the withdrawal of Russian intel regarding Iranian influence and military convoys in Syria led to a weakness in the accuracy of Israel’s goals against Iran. Russia provided Israel with coordinates and intelligence information regarding Iranian movements, and it seems that the Russia–Ukraine war played a decisive role in slowing this intelligence-sharing. In this equation, Iran may benefit from a weakening Russian position in Syria by attempting to further establish itself, which Israel is trying to prevent as much as possible.

Iran is also exploiting the situation to strengthen its presence and expand its military, economic, and even social influence by gaining control over territory in Syria. Iran has strategic interest in northeastern Syria and Hezbollah maintains influence along the Syria–Lebanon border. It seems that Russia intends to leave wider areas open for Iran’s capture, not only because of its preoccupation on the Ukrainian front but as a response to Iran’s support for the war in Ukraine through government partnership and arms support, although its drones have been repeatedly shot down in the conflict. Iran is even considering supplying Russia with ballistic missiles.

The relationship between Iran and Russia, whether it is in Syria, which is the most critical for Tehran, or in Ukraine, which is currently the most pivotal for Moscow, is nothing but pragmatic and momentary, and is not rooted in ideology. Russia is not enthusiastic about Iran’s regional ambitions. However, due to Iran’s military assistance, Russia attempts to please Tehran by allowing it to expand in Syria. While this angers Tel Aviv, Russia maintains its relationship with Israel by helping it strike Iranian targets.

Iran, Russia, and Survival Strategy
Even if they both seek economic benefit and strategic survival, Russia and Iran have very different ambitions in Syria. Russia seeks to maintain its foothold in the Mediterranean and to gain influence in the international community outside the geography of the former Soviet Union. It has achieved success at several points due to its presence in Syria and the prevention of the overthrow of the Al-Assad regime. Russian arms trade flourished, penetrating a market that was once monopolized by the United States and Europe, and Russia was able to make multiple partnerships and sales to Egypt and Turkey. Politically, Russia has proven that there is no path that transcends its role.

On the other hand, Iran aims to finish the road of the Shiite Crescent. Iran has been establishing dozens of sectarian militias in Syria with the aim of connecting areas in which the Shiite militias are located in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon with each other. In addition to its military activity, Iran practices many different activities related to demographic change in the Sunni Arab regions, especially in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, long considered a non-radical tribal province, by supporting in many forms anyone who sides with it. Husseiniyas—Shiite mourning houses or religious commemoration halls—and cultural centers were also established and renovated so as to build Shiite influence in Syria and convert those it could.

Iran’s goal of establishing umbrella influence in Syria also includes economic and trade contracts, infrastructure investment, and religious tourism, not to mention its political desire to maintain a government favorable to its ambitions in the region.

Militarily, Russia and Iran have both tested their various weapons in Syria. Moscow has tested more than two hundred types of weapons in the country, while Iran has tested its arsenal of short-range missiles in Damascus and sometimes long-range from Iraq to Syria.

Socially, Russia focused on improving its reputation in Syria with loyalists— societal actors promised security by Russia in exchange for medium- to long-term loyalty—and broadcasting messages to the Arab and regional countries that Moscow does not abandon its allies, while, in contrast, Iran pursues sectarian policy. Only time will tell which strategy will survive.

On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion against Ukraine after years of military and diplomatic tension between Moscow and Kiev. Unlike the Crimean crisis in 2014, this conflict appears to carry significant strategic shifts that risk setting off a new cold war. In their statements, Western leaders stress the unique nature of this conflict as Europe’s acutest security threat in decades.

Beyond heated debates on the origins of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict, fallouts of this aggression are clearly far from being restricted to Eastern Europe, or even the West. Ten months in, the war is heading toward a sensitive and decisive moment that will likely determine the future of regional and global alliances. Regions such as Asia and Africa are seeing shifts in these alliances. As the biggest African country and a pioneer of the non-aligned movement since 1961, Algeria finds itself encircled by complex and consequential events. Freshly out of protest dynamics and amidst its recovery process from the COVID-19 crisis, Algiers is now at the heart of difficult international equations.

Understanding Algeria’s stances and perspectives on the current conflict entails a careful analysis of its diplomatic maneuvering, current interests, and possible limitations. Despite simplistic perceptions that have shadowed Algiers’ positions recently, which have marked a certain rapprochement with Russia, current developments suggest that the leadership is essentially motivated by financial, strategic, and geopolitical interests. Nonetheless, the ruling elite faces an increasingly tense and ambiguous environment that is likely to shape relations not only with Russia but also with vital partners in the United States, Europe, and China.

The Path of Non-alignment
Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Algiers has been wary not to endorse either camp. Capitalizing on their reputable mediation legacy since independence in 1962, authorities seized the opportunity to join a ministerial contact group within the Arab League, which was charged with coordinating cohesive responses to the crisis. Senior civilian and military officials have also stressed their commitment to Algeria’s non-aligned doctrine: Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Army Chief of Staff Saïd Changriha have reiterated Algeria’s international principles and sought to cultivate closer ties with Western leaders. At the same time, authorities refused to limit the state’s bilateral cooperation with Russia despite U.S. pressures, and were keen to deepen relations with Moscow in anticipation of President Tebboune’s rumored visit to the Russian Federation in December 2022.

In this sense, Algiers has remained outside of the conflict as it prepared for an expected increase in demands for gas supplies from Western partners. For the past twenty years, Algeria’s Saharan oil and gas fields served as a preferred, stable, and committed energy source, particularly for southern Europe’s needs and markets. Therefore, it was only natural to see the presidential palace recently become a hub for visits by several senior Western officials seeking to cut their countries’ dependence on Russian energy. The financial benefits of this diplomatic revival created the first base of the Tebboune administration’s approach to the war in Ukraine. Algiers aims to maximize its profit margins, leverage its energy industry to attract investment, and rehabilitate its depleting foreign exchange reserves.

Catching a Windfall from the War in Ukraine
Over the past few months, state-owned oil and gas company Sonatrach engaged in a negotiations marathon with eleven partners to revise its gas prices. Capitalizing on new discoveries throughout 2022 and a revised hydrocarbons law that was passed in 2019, Algeria wanted to attract companies not only to continue their activities but also to invest in renovating ailing infrastructure. These efforts yielded agreements with six pivotal partners including Italian Eni, French TotalEnergies, and American Occidental on July 18. Sonatrach’s CEO Toufik Hakkar also said that talks reached advanced stages with another five partners and other accords are expected to be signed before the end of 2022. These energy deals will reportedly generate about 50 billion dollars in annual revenues.

It is worth noting that Algeria’s recent energy deals are not indicative of a more sustainable and developed economic model. Significant energy revenues have encouraged the ruling elite to maintain its policy of buying social peace at the expense of urgent and necessary reforms. In February 2022, President Tebboune announced an unprecedented unemployment allowance and increase in wages to address severe socioeconomic grievances. In line with this rentier governance philosophy, previously scheduled talks on reforms of subsidies, which cost the public treasury about 17 billion dollars back in 2019, were again postponed out of fear of social upheavals. To be sure, Algeria’s social welfare policies are popular and represent a fundamental element of the state’s ability to ensure social stability. They are also key to the establishment’s overall tactic to sell and defend its foreign policy doctrine locally.

What Algiers Can Do with New Funding
The war in Ukraine came at a time when Algiers was attempting to reclaim its place on the regional and international scene. Beyond Tebboune’s domestic socioeconomic agenda, the financial windfall created by the conflict is also assisting Algiers in upholding its regional policies and stances.

In March 2022, a letter from Spain’s prime minister to Morocco’s Royal Palace indicated a surprising shift for Madrid’s policy on Western Sahara, a disputed territory in Northwestern Africa. Madrid endorsed Rabat’s autonomy plan for the territory instead of a self-determination referendum, which was in line with UN Resolution 690 of 1991 and demanded by the Polisario Front, an independentist movement dating to 1973 which enjoys diplomatic and logistical Algerian support. Algiers swiftly recalled its ambassador to Madrid and on June 8 suspended a 20-year-old friendship treaty with Spain. This dispute indicates that energy diplomacy has become a vital asset for the country’s policy kit for a stronger regional posture (Madrid reluctantly agreed in October to double the price of Algerian gas imports for 2022 as talks continue for 2023 prices). It also means that third-party countries are now at risk of bearing collateral damage as Algiers leverages its energy sources to defend its interests.

For decades, relations between Algiers and Rabat have had their ups and downs. Yet, regional developments including the Abraham Accords and leadership shifts in Algeria are signaling a new phase of tensions. The ongoing regional cold war may not signal imminent military escalation, but it hints at increased Algerian and Moroccan assertiveness. These dynamics could complicate both regional cooperation and relations with international partners.

Algeria’s agreements with other partners also highlight the importance of energy as part of the establishment’s strategy to “grab a chair” at the international table. For that purpose, the new leadership is consolidating strategic partnerships with neighboring European and Arab countries from Italy to Tunisia and Mauritania. Facing strong Moroccan lobbying, Algiers is mobilizing its energy resources as a comparative advantage to sway countries on the conflict in Western Sahara.

Shifting the Global Order
Algeria’s diplomatic maneuvering since the Russian invasion of Ukraine sheds light on another aspect that seems to influence the current administration’s attitude. Earlier in 2020, President Tebboune called out the “dysfunctionalities” of the current international system in a speech before the UN. This argument would later surface in Algiers’s reasons for abstaining from condemning Russia at the UN level and even opposing attempts to exclude Moscow from the Human Rights Council. Algeria’s diplomatic missions underlined the “double standards” of global powers regarding the war in Ukraine in comparison with other crises, alluding to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This criticism is not new, however, and reflects a classical narrative reigning since the era of former President Houari Boumédiène (1965–78). The new global crisis represents an opportunity for Algiers to advance its demands for a reform of the international system in favor of developing countries, especially across the African continent.

On June 24, Tebboune, along with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, took part in an enlarged BRICS virtual meeting (referring to the five major emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) where he defended a new economic order. Tebboune further announced in July Algiers’s willingness to join the BRICS group, saying it exemplified the right international direction based on Algeria’s non-alignment doctrine. Economic cooperation between Algiers and Beijing has also boomed in recent years within the framework of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In this context, the Tebboune administration is likely to view the conflict in Ukraine as “the moment” to push for a rejuvenated anti-colonial struggle, especially on the economic front. With Chinese assistance, the establishment may seek to portray itself as a “defender” of African awakening in favor of a revisited geopolitical international order.

Challenges and Uncertainties
Looking at different energy deals, high-level visits and international recognition, Algiers seems on a path to inaugurate a new era of diplomacy. On the other hand, the war in Ukraine is still unfolding with several variables that could challenge the aspirations and promises of the Tebboune administration. Examining Algeria’s approach also requires a sober reflection on the limitations of its tools and positions. Recent developments point to serious concerns both regarding the country’s international direction and regional environment. Therefore, it is essential to analyze the risks of what may be perceived as Algeria aligning with one side, as well as a broader emerging geopolitical and security disorder.

Since independence in 1962, Algerian authorities have cultivated strong military bonds with the Eastern camp. Russia achieved and sustained a privileged status as the first arms’ supplier for the North African country despite efforts to engage with the Chinese and German security industries. Until recently, Western international partners appeared at ease with such military cooperation, but since Putin’s uncertain adventure in Ukraine, this has been complicated. In September, twenty-seven members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to impose sanctions on Algeria in accordance with the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. While such calls remain marginal for the time being, the aggravation of war and domestic politics in the United States could undermine Algiers’s standing.

Of course, Algeria established its post-independence foreign policy doctrine on its sovereigntist decisions. Successive administrations refused all types of geopolitical alignment and followed a pragmatic approach centered on their immediate military and financial needs. But the Kremlin’s anti-Western rhetoric and blatant violations of international law are likely to make it harder for its Arab and African partners to juggle their commitments and relations with Western capitals. While influential capitals still look at Algiers as a vital safety valve for the region, the “negative silence” on Moscow’s imperialist appetite may not be tolerated in the long run. Ultimately, nurturing special relations with Russia in such tense geopolitical times could suggest a certain alignment that would harm the administration’s regional agenda and international reputation.

Even if military operations are still isolated geopolitically in Eastern Europe, there are indications that the fallout of this conflict will impact other zones of influence. In April, the French army accused Russian mercenaries working for the private Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary outfit, of anti-Western propaganda campaigns in Mali. While mutual accusations between Paris and Moscow are not new, Algeria may be strangled in an emerging security turmoil in the Sahel. It is safe to say that the international battle for influence will lead to remarkable outcomes across the African continent. Algiers’s strategy of appeasing all its partners is useful today but could prove problematic to uphold as the world enters a dangerous phase of geopolitical disorder.

Furthermore, Algerian energy infrastructure is crucial not only for its economy but also for its national security. The deterioration of the situation in the Sahel following France’s expected full withdrawal and the infiltration of the Kremlin’s Wagner group could lead to serious security breaches like the hostage situation at the In Amenas gas facility in 2013. Indeed, the Algerian armed forces announced in October the capture of three fleeing terrorists in Bordj Badji Mokhtar (in southwestern Algeria). The Algerian army can claim significant counter-terrorist experience after the infamous 1990s civil war that involved local Islamist rebels. Nonetheless, the intensity of this geopolitical disorder could eventually create a serious threat for Algeria’s vital economic and energy infrastructure.

In light of these regional and international variables, Algiers will have to make complex calculations in the months ahead to score strategic points and avoid geopolitical liabilities. Facing a hostile environment and under the pressure of an international spotlight, the Tebboune administration is likely to focus its strategy on two primary goals: First, the dependency of Algeria’s armed forces on Russian weaponry calls for the development of a sovereign defense industry that capitalizes on recent energy revenues. Second, the contentious international scene will require striking balanced relations and firm red lines.

Ahead of Tebboune’s planned visit to Moscow in December 2022, talks are emerging on a new strategic document that would structure Algerian–Russian relations and cooperation. Based on a 2001 agreement, Algiers is bound to consolidate its technical cooperation with the Russian army especially in knowledge transfer. Moscow will remain the primary military supplier for the North African country as it provides necessary equipment with no end-user license agreement, allowing Algiers to use such weaponry as it sees fit. But as alluded to in the October issue of the army’s official gazette, Algeria is also keen to develop its own defense industry whose equipment was proudly displayed at the last July 5 parade. This would permit Algiers to sustain its military capacities and head off any strategic vulnerabilities with Western partners looking to sanction Algeria for its relationship with Russia or block its foreign policy agenda within international organizations.

At the same time, Algiers understands that its booming energy field is attractive for many Western companies, especially those engaged in renewables. With this in mind, Sonatrach is likely to expand its cooperation with international partners, particularly the European Union, benefiting from its natural resources (notably solar energy and potentially green hydrogen). With President Tebboune’s economic agenda, this strategy would help Algeria to increase its revenues and penetrate new emerging markets both within its immediate neighborhood and across the European continent. This financial balancing will also offer greater maneuvering capacity with powerful capitals to push for Algeria’s regional agenda on central dossiers including Western Sahara, Mali, and Libya.

Meanwhile, Algiers’s strategic direction is a work in progress. Despite last year’s rapprochement with Beijing, the current leadership is still evaluating its comparative advantages and offers from various partners. After almost a decade of diplomatic absence during the era of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria has decided to stand up and improve its posture. But the growing international interest in the country’s potential does not come free of engagements and expectations. The Tebboune administration will continue to navigate a complex environment, and the strategy of “sitting between two chairs” may not be an eternally viable one.

The intensity of these ongoing battles for influence could hinder the administration’s missions and result in substantial collateral damage. The Algerian establishment potentially understands the gravity of today’s geopolitics and is ready to adapt its narrative and policies accordingly. In the end, flexibility is perhaps one of the strongest assets of the ruling elite both domestically and internationally. For now, Algeria is embracing a “wait and see” mode ahead of decisive local presidential elections in 2024. One thing which remains clear in Algerian politics today is that any foreign policy shift will not be one man’s decision, but the outcome of a long and nuanced unofficial dialogue between the ruling establishment’s actors.

Whenever the war in Ukraine comes up in policy discussions or a casual chat in one of Cairo’s coffee shops, chances are that the rare individual calling it an unjustified Russian invasion is overwhelmed by those who squarely blame the West, particularly the United States, for conniving to besiege Russia with the help of a puppet regime in Ukraine.

In his article, “Why Does Some of the Arab Public Support Putin’s War in Ukraine?” published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in June 2022, Egyptian writer and researcher Amr Salah explains how polarization in the Arab World after the 2011 uprisings—commonly yet unhelpfully referred to as the Arab Spring—led people to look at external events through the prism of domestic divisions. Those who support democratic change take the side of Ukraine and its Western backers, while the skeptics support Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin in particular, adopting the narrative that movements demanding democratic change—whether in the Arab World or in Eastern Europe, Ukraine included—are mere Western conspiracies aimed at creating instability to achieve strategic and economic gains.

Salah adds two further points to explain the prevalence of this pro-Russia sentiment. One is the appeal of the idea of a strong leader who can bring order and progress, while standing up to the West, embodied by Putin. The other is the desire to see a multi-polar global system, where the West and the United States are balanced in global influence by opposing powers like China and Russia.

While those arguments are relevant and sensible, evidence shows that this phenomenon is older than the polarization left behind by the 2011 Arab revolutions and wider than the Arab World. In fact, a strong case could be made that the Arab World’s polarization around issues of democracy and change is equally a result of the division of the public’s attitude toward the West, as it is its cause. Understanding this phenomenon could be crucial for the advancement of both the cause of democracy and international peace and stability.

It is important to mention that what is meant here by “the West” is the group of countries in Europe and North America that define themselves as an alliance of liberal democracies that act globally in concert, and are viewed as such in the rest of the world, without ignoring the fact that the policies of individual Western countries differ and change over time.

Similarly, the term “Global South”, or “South” in the context of this article, refers to those developing countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia—including Arab and Muslim countries—which have mostly been colonized by countries of the West, while noting that their views of the West vary significantly across countries and over time. The discussion here is meant to present the views in the South that are critical of the West’s common foreign policies, and consequently undermine the West’s ability to pursue those policies.

Older than the Ukraine and Wider than the Arab World
Skepticism toward the West’s Ukraine policy, and receptiveness to Russia’s arguments, transcends the Arab World and is present to some degree or another in many countries of the South that did not have anything to do with the “Arab Spring” or which had their own transitions to democracy. Moreover, long before the upheavals of 2011, numerous public opinion polls taken during the West’s years-long confrontation with Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein, or in the aftermath of September 11 in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and even across the Global South, showed significant levels of skepticism of the United States and the West, and their intentions and conduct. Some polls at the time even revealed some understanding of or sympathy toward Saddam Hussein, and, to a lesser extent, Osama Bin Laden. The existence of such sentiments, even if not among the majorities, indicates that even when the cause was clear and little grounds existed for sympathy with the West’s opponents, such attitudes emerged. More accurately, suspicions and even schadenfreude toward the West surfaced.

In his address to the joint session of the U.S. Congress on September 20, 2001, just over a week after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in north Virginia, former U.S. President George W. Bush wondered rhetorically “Why do they hate us?”, reflecting the bewilderment many American citizens felt after the attacks. He attempted to offer his own answer:

“They hate what we see right here in this chamber a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa.

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way.”

Whether he was right or not, when it came to the feelings of those who were directly involved in the attacks, his argument certainly did not explain why “they” decided to act on this “hatred” in this way, nor why they found this level of sympathy among significant minorities in the Arab and Muslim worlds and beyond.

This is not a minor theoretical point, but rather one that has direct relevance to the discussion about Ukraine today and could have significant impact on the coming world order. The September 11 terrorists, as well as Saddam Hussein, knew at the time that challenging the West, the United States, or Israel, was so politically beneficial that it justified taking such immensely risky moves. They knew that no matter how much people in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and the Global South in general, admired Western culture, and bore no hostility toward Western society—as is evident by the continuous flow to the West of tourists, students, and emigrants—they nevertheless held deep suspicions toward it as global actors.

These find their roots in a history that is deeply etched in memories across much of the South which produced a conviction that the West is often motivated by selfish or bad intentions, no matter how lofty its rhetoric. This stands in stark contrast with the widely held view the West has of itself, especially regarding how the aftermath of World War II was conducted in Germany and Japan, and how the West supported many countries in East and Southeast Asia during the Cold War—economically, strategically and in advancing their transition toward democracy.

Seen from most of the South, it remains a history of self-serving, unjust, and unprincipled Western policies. These include slavery, colonialism, and economic exploitation; wars and aggression such as in Suez, Vietnam or Iraq; and the production, use, and export of arms to the invention and use of nuclear weapons and blatantly applying double standards regarding their proliferation, not just between nuclear and non-nuclear states, but also between the different nonnuclear states, such as Iran on the one hand and Israel, India and Pakistan on the other.

People remember how the West meddled in domestic politics and applied divideand-conquer tactics in their colonies—and continues to do so even though these have become independent sovereign states. They feel the West is all too eager to deal with and even prop up loyal dictators (something Roosevelt is believed to have succinctly articulated: “He may be an SOB but he’s our SOB”), and is far less supportive, if not outright hostile to more democratic governments if they take positions or adopt policies not favorable to the West.

They also detest how the West is asking developing countries to share in the burden of combating climate change, which was essentially caused by its own rapid industrialization, and thus driving them to take a slower and costlier path for growth. This while the West drags its feet in providing financial assistance to those same countries to help them in dealing with the burdens of mitigating the phenomenon and adapting to its repercussions.

Even regarding causes as clear as Apartheid or the plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation, much of the West has found it difficult to pursue principled policies, taking decades before standing up to South Africa’s racist regime; it remains hesitant to this day to take a similar stand in support of Palestinian rights.

These causes are not only of interest to intellectuals or those engaged in public policy; rather they are issues of justice, liberty, and livelihood that millions in countries of the South, for decades, if not centuries, lived and died for. In fact, they have become the prism through which the West’s foreign policies are being viewed, even those which seemingly are not related to such issues.

What makes matters worse is that the West continues to ascribe levels of legitimacy and even morality to its foreign policies, including those that have very little of either, while audaciously holding other countries accountable for opposing those policies or even taking a neutral posture toward them. This not only taints the West’s claims to legitimacy and morality, but also indicates a level of hypocrisy that hits at the heart of its standing and credibility, and, more importantly, its ability to pursue its more legitimate objectives.

This deep-rooted skepticism of the West’s policies is reinforced by two additional influences. One, which is instinctive and raw yet quite influential on policymakers as well as the general public, is spite. The heavy legacy left by the West created a deep desire to take positions against it or to welcome adverse events that hurt it, simply out of spite, especially when national interests weren’t at stake. The other more considered and rational influence is the desire particularly since the end of the Cold War to see a counterbalance to the West in the international system, which could increase the South’s foreign policy options and lower the leverage the West holds. This too can sometimes translate into sympathy or support for those actors that seem to challenge the West, particularly when they present visions or espouse causes that connect with their own.

The above sums up a view that is widespread in much of the South, but which is rarely properly presented in the West. To be fair, the September 11 attacks were immediately followed by some introspective soul-searching among scholars and national security bureaucrats in the United States and Western Europe, who voiced their concern that the long legacy of injustice and immorality in the West’s policy toward the South might have had a role in motivating the attacks. They also suggested that ignoring this legacy while trying to combat terrorism, would certainly undermine attempts to eradicate its root causes.

Some critics of Western policies specifically point to the lack of resolution to the “Palestinian Question” and the West’s positions toward this conflict in general as key reasons for the persistent anger in the Arab and Muslim worlds. These entice actors like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden to capitalize on such sentiments by undertaking anti-Western actions and policies. However, this introspection was summarily shut down by the overwhelming voices of Western politicians who considered any form of self-criticism to be directly justifying and legitimizing terrorism.

Instead, the policy of choice of the United States and many of its Western allies in response to September 11 was to launch a war in Afghanistan, which had a logical justification despite sporadic skepticism across the world. This was followed by the unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003, which damaged the legitimacy of the Afghanistan war and the credibility of a law-based international order. Seen in this context, the seriousness of the West’s subsequent protestations against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears woefully lacking.

Perhaps most important to the Middle East point of view is that those wars were accompanied by the sharpest pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian shift in U.S. policy in decades, damaging the already difficult, yet promising peace process. Ironically, this peace process was launched at the Madrid Conference in 1991 in a rare moment where the West, led by the administration of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, realized that it had to seriously address the “Palestinian Question” to ensure its international credibility, particularly in the Arab and Muslim worlds, or risk facing major difficulties in ending Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. This set back any hopes that the end of the Cold War would usher in a new version of the West that is more aware of its failings and therefore more willing to address them, and instead re-confirmed the region’s longstanding views of the West’s intentions.

This skepticism of the West is widely shared in the South among politicians, bureaucrats, and the general public alike but governments often choose not to act on it out of prudence and need. They do, however, find it often convenient to invoke this skepticism either to discredit Western policies they dislike, out of fear that they could gain public support—such as demands to respect civil liberties, human rights, and democracy—or use them to distract from their domestic failures and shift the focus of their displeased public.

Time for Change Is Running Out
If the West was able to live with this level of skepticism in the aftermath of the Cold War, it is far less capable today. During the Cold War, the West acted as if it did not need to pay a significant price for building wider global alliances, believing that countries of the South had no alternatives, and that the West faced few serious challenges internationally. But the international situation has been changing profoundly during the past decade-and-a-half, culminating in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the growing tensions between the West and China, widening the gulf in the worldviews of the West and those powers.

This is particularly complicated by the fact that much of the West sees the emerging global confrontation as one between liberal democracy and autocratic nationalism, between the rule of law and the law of the powerful. So not only does the West need to gain the support and trust of more countries from the South, but it also needs this to be based on democracy and the embrace of values of liberty, respect for human rights and the rule of law.

The West’s legacy puts it at a serious disadvantage in terms of credibility, respect, and support in the countries of the South, and works in favor of the West’s opponents who share much of the South’s grievances toward it. The West’s claim to be defending international law, justice, liberty and human rights will not be credible or gain the needed support in the South as long as it drags its feet in matters such as building a fairer global economic system; bearing its proportional responsibility in combating climate change; consistently working to advance causes of human rights, liberty and democracy, whether in Ukraine, the countries of Eastern Europe and the Arab World or Israel and Palestine; or pushing toward a world free of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction without distinction.

In short, for the West to pursue the strategic objectives it set out for this new era in the international order, it will have to better align its policies with the values of justice and liberty it espouses, and to do so consistently over time, in order to gradually build a new global perception for itself. This entails hard work and sacrifice because old habits, as the saying goes, die hard.

Token moves, like what many Western countries often make in order to make tactical gains internationally, will not suffice. Instead, what the West needs is major revision of the internal foreign policy thinking and discourse, not just at the official level but across society including civil society, political parties, and the research community. This is necessary to build a strong public understanding of the strategic and moral necessity of this change, and demonstrating the gains that come with it, to ensure that such a critical matter does not become subject to the usual domestic political jockeying and haphazard swings every time a new government is elected in another Western country.

The West has enough military, economic, moral, and cultural power to shape the norms that govern the international order. But it is not powerful enough to unilaterally determine those norms. By continuing to pursue policies that are mostly self-centered and self-serving, and that advocate for principles but act opportunistically, it helps the creation of a chaotic world, in which it might be able to win tactical battles yet lose in standing and influence in the long term. But if the West is willing to act globally in a more self-restrained manner, where it consistently upholds those principles even when it comes at a cost, it can expect a more receptive South, and a more effective and respected foreign policy.

The OPEC+ decision on October 5, 2022 to cut production quotas by two million barrels per day has enraged Washington and widened the rift in relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which is widely considered the prime mover behind the decision. Despite the target set by OPEC+, this move, if implemented as announced, is expected to lead to a production decline of only about one million barrels per day. This is because not all members of OPEC+ would need to cut production at all since they are already incapable of producing enough to surpass the quotas allocated to them. However, the decision counts as objective support for the Russian Federation and its aggression against Ukraine.

As a result of its invasion, Russia faces sanctions on its oil exports imposed by the European Union (EU) and individual European countries. As sanctions set in in December, reduced production from other OPEC+ members will facilitate Russia’s task of finding alternative buyers for its oil. Furthermore, keeping prices high protects Russian oil revenue. The OPEC+ decision, therefore, puts an end to the pretense that the major Gulf oil exporters—namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Kuwait—maintain a position of neutrality and equidistance in the conflict between the Russian Federation and most Western democracies following the former’s aggression toward Ukraine.

The Gulf countries attempted to present the decision as being purely technical, motivated by the desire to stabilize the global oil market. Whatever the intention, one cannot fail to note that the move came after multiple requests on the part of the United States and major European countries to do exactly the opposite (that is, increase production and facilitate a decline in prices) to support the fight against inflation.

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia in 2022
It is an open secret that President Joe Biden is not a fan of the current Saudi leadership, and the reluctance he exhibited during his visit to the Kingdom in July 2022 was under global scrutiny. He accepted to go on that trip because his aides convinced him that Saudi Arabia would be amenable to increasing its oil production as needed in order to isolate Russia and make sanctions effective. It was immediately clear that the goal of the visit was not reached; in this light, the OPEC+ decision to cut rather than increase production cannot possibly be perceived by Washington as anything less than a hostile act.

It is worthy to recall that it was former president Donald Trump, not Biden, who in October 2018 said: “OPEC and OPEC nations are, as usual, ripping off the rest of the world, and I don’t like it. Nobody should like it…We defend many of these nations for nothing, and then they take advantage of us by giving us high oil prices. Not good.”

Thus, though Trump treated Saudi Arabia as a means of meeting security goals—maximizing weapons sales and protecting the financial interests of his relatives—it would be a mistake to expect that, if today not Biden but a Republican were in the White House, the U.S. reaction would be any different. Indeed, the official justification made for the OPEC+ decision is paradoxical. What is being claimed is that the decision to cut production is necessary in anticipation of a slowdown in demand due to the higher interest rates that central banks have adopted to fight inflation, the recessionary effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, and a possible slowdown in the Chinese economy. Of course, a cut in oil supplies and higher prices only enhance the risk of simultaneous inflation and recession, or “stagflation,” thus making the task of policymakers in industrial countries more difficult. Meanwhile, emerging economies—already struggling with the upward movement in import prices across the board and also facing higher prices for food and fertilizers that used to be imported from Ukraine or Russia—also have to deal with higher oil prices. Only the major oil exporters—who defend a level of oil rent that is needed for their large, if dubious, quality—and investment and sovereign wealth funds stand to gain in this situation.

It is true that the trend toward higher oil prices had already begun in 2021, months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And while this may be attributed to insufficient upstream investment on the part of oil companies, it is hardly by cutting production that more investment is encouraged. Higher prices have not been accompanied by significant increase in upstream investment either in OPEC or outside of it, and reducing quotas can only send the message that additional production is not needed. In fact, the move is based on the assumption that production from elsewhere in the world would not increase to compensate for OPEC+’s cuts, thus allowing a stabilization of prices at a higher level (it is said that the Saudi leadership is aiming for prices of around $100 per barrel). But past experience has demonstrated the opposite: when OPEC attempted to defend high prices in 1980–1985, and again in 2011–2014, production from outside OPEC (Alaska and the North Sea in the first case, U.S. shale oil in the second) eventually led to conflict within OPEC and abandonment of unrealistic price targets.

Short-Term Implications: U.S.–Saudi Relations
So, what may we expect with respect to future U.S.–Saudi relations? President Biden has publicly stated that there will be consequences for Saudi Arabia’s actions. At the time of writing, different scenarios are possible, and some developments may take place in parallel with each other rather than exclusively.

The first possibility is that the OPEC+ decision will in fact not be implemented. Faced with the strong reaction from Washington, the three concerned Gulf countries have taken action to repair the rift: for example, all three voted at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in favor of the motion to condemn the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces by the Russian Federation. Then, Saudi Arabia promptly announced that it would extend $400 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Finally, on October 25, the Saudi oil minister cryptically declared: “We will be the supplier of those who want us to supply,” which could mean that the kingdom is readying to supply any volume of oil necessitated by demand.

The second highly probable scenario is that the United States will use its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as a tool to influence international oil prices. The SPR has already been tapped since March to inject one million barrels per day into the market over a period of six months, for a total of 180 million additional barrels. According to the Institute of Energy Research, the SPR is expected to shrink to a forty-year low by the end of October, with inventories of 358 million barrels, compared to 621 million barrels a year ago.

Following the OPEC decision, President Biden announced the release of a further fifteen million barrels. At the same time, the White House pledged to start buying back oil to replenish the reserve at a price of $67 to $72 per barrel. The move, Biden said, would “help create certainty around future demand for crude oil,” thus encouraging oil companies to invest in increasing production. Effectively, then, what is envisaged is the creation of a price corridor of $67 to $80 per barrel of crude oil produced in the United States. At the time of writing, U.S. West Texas Intermediate is trading between $85 and $90 per barrel; so, the goal of the U.S. administration is a further decline of some $10 per barrel.

Such use of the SPR has been criticized because, in theory, the reserve should be used only in case of emergencies and a physical shortage of oil. However, experience has repeatedly shown that oil is never physically scarce, because when supply is reduced prices increase rapidly and demand necessarily decreases. Ex post, the market is always in balance. Therefore, the national petroleum reserves that are maintained by all members of the International Energy Agency (IEA) have in fact rarely been used. In the current situation, a physical shortfall is rightly expected following the OPEC+ decision and the sanctions on Russian oil; hence, the envisaged use of the SPR seems perfectly justified. The determination of a price at which the SPR will start to be reconstituted serves the purpose of encouraging production in the United States and probably also in other regions outside OPEC+. In the past, OPEC’s market power has always been eroded by production increases outside of OPEC, and this may well be true again.

Another possible development is the imposition of a cap on prices for purchasing Russian oil. This measure is again favored by the U.S. administration, and the modalities for the enforcement of the cap are currently being discussed by the G7 group of major economies. Although the cap is only envisaged to affect Russian oil exports, it is clear that, if successful, it could be extended to imports from other producing countries, notably the major Gulf exporters. Indeed, this has been identified as one of the reasons behind the OPEC+ decision to cut quotas, which is viewed as a preventive measure against imposing a cap. What is shaping up is a battle for the control of oil prices, with the major industrial countries for the first time willing to directly interfere in the functioning of the oil market in a way that OPEC has done many times in the past.

A further possibility that has been discussed in the media is that the United States might react to the OPEC+ decision by curtailing weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia. Major weapons contracts with the kingdom were signed under Trump, and President Biden has announced some further sales. Delaying delivery of some of the contracted weapons systems may remind Riyadh that it is very closely dependent on the United States for its security. However, one would expect that the delivery of weapons would instead be tied to making progress on some of the security-related disagreements, notably with respect to putting an end to the war in Yemen.

Instead, what may very well happen is that the “NOPEC” legislation initiative will be allowed to make progress in Congress. The No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels (NOPEC) bill has been around since 1999, but successive administrations have shunned it in view of maintaining good relations with Saudi Arabia and other major oil exporters. The bill envisages modifying U.S. antitrust law to revoke the sovereign immunity that has protected OPEC+ members and their national oil companies from lawsuits. If signed into law, the U.S. attorney general would gain the option to sue the oil cartel or its members, notably Saudi Arabia, in federal court.

The OPEC+ decision to cut quotas has immediately revived the proposal, which passed in a Senate committee 17–4 in May, and now needs to pass the full Senate, the House of Representatives, and be signed by the president to become law. It is believed that NOPEC, if introduced to the Senate floor as planned, would likely get the sixty votes needed. The proposal is bipartisan and has strong support among both Republicans and Democrats.

If the bill passes, U.S. courts may impose substantial fines and threaten the seizure of assets owned by countries deemed to be participating in anticompetitive behavior. Although this may not be applicable to all OPEC countries, it is likely to affect not only the large industrial assets owned by Saudi ARAMCO in the United States, but also financial assets owned by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. It is also important to note that the lawsuit brought against Saudi Arabia by the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks remains open, and the Biden administration may lift the objections that have so far prevented the case from moving forward. From this discussion of potential alternatives available to the United States, we may easily conclude that the country has multiple and flexible tools to impose consequences on Saudi Arabia. Some observers believe that the Biden administration will refrain from using any of these tools, but the overwhelming impression is that the current Saudi leadership is not considered a reliable partner in Washington.

The OPEC+ cuts should become operational in November, and at the time of writing it is not clear what will actually happen. One will need to wait until the beginning of December and the start of the EU’s prohibition on importing Russian oil. In any case, politically speaking, the damage is done, and Saudi Arabia has lost the image of a reliable partner in the eyes of the U.S. and the EU: the eggs are broken and cannot be repaired, even if no omelet is made with them.

The Long-Term: the Viability of Oil
In the medium- and long-terms, the crucial question is: what will be the future role of oil as a source of energy? It is clear that recent developments have reinforced major industrial countries’ determination to drastically reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. It is also clear that the demand for oil will linger on for several decades, although the IEA in its latest World Energy Outlook expects that global demand will peak in 2035 at the latest. However, so far it has been assumed that the remaining demand will increasingly be satisfied by the lowest-cost producers that also have abundant reserves: i.e. by the members of OPEC. Hence, the IEA expects OPEC’s share (not OPEC+) of total crude oil production to increase from 35 percent in 2021 to 43 percent—and even 52 percent in one scenario—by 2050. But, is this a logical expectation?

For this vision to be credible, OPEC would need to behave competitively, and strive to maintain its oil exports in the face of declining demand, by offering low prices. If instead OPEC aims to target short-term revenue maximization by increasing prices, as their latest decision to lower production demonstrates, the rest of the world will inevitably react by investing elsewhere. This would not be the optimal solution; more important investment may be needed to increase non-OPEC production, while OPEC oil may in the end be left in the ground.

However, normal market response would bring this result about if oil prices remain at the level targeted by Saudi Arabia. Since 2014, the major international oil companies have curtailed investment first because of lower prices, then because of pressure to return value to investors and criticism from environmental, social, and corporate governance-conscious investors asking to stop investing in fossil fuels altogether. But with high prices, investment in new non-OPEC production remains extremely profitable and will attract both nimbler independents as well as international majors. What is needed on the part of the major industrial economies is a strategic decision to limit the market share of OPEC+ producers to make sure that prices are not unnecessarily jacked up.

Saudi Arabia claims that it is now just following the dictates of self-interest, but its future security and prosperity essentially depend on acceptance from the rest of the world. High oil prices may allow the kingdom to undertake flashy investment projects of dubious commercial viability, but run against the interests of just about every oil importer. If this strategy is not rapidly changed, the rest of the world will not accept it, and the Saudi state will face the consequences.

Three big power wars have come to define international relations in the first two decades of the 21^st century—the United States’s misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, and currently the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Each in its own way has exemplified the African proverb: “When elephants fight, the grass suffers.”

These three wars, each fought for a different reason, share at least one thing in common: They negatively impact the confidence that allies have in their bilateral relations with great powers. The United States has experienced almost two decades of declining support from its friends in the Middle East, fueled by the U.S. military misadventures, the perception of diminishing U.S. interest in the Middle East, and by doubts about U.S. commitments to its traditional allies. American policymakers have sought to dispel doubts about American constancy and commitment, but the fact is that domestic priorities and shifting global trends toward Asia have reduced the capacity and willingness of the United States to do all that it used to in the Middle East, most significantly, taking the lead in advancing the prospect of Israeli–Palestinian peace.

As U.S. influence continued to decline over the past two decades, Russia for a while appeared to be gaining support and allies even among some traditional U.S. friends. Russian arms sales increased, especially after its military intervention in Syria in 2015. It appeared then that the Russians were the rising outside power.

However, Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine raised doubts among some in the region, and more recently, its military weaknesses and setbacks have cemented those doubts. Russia clearly is not a first-rate military power, and it does not have first-class leadership, either in its military or within its political elite. Middle East states are coming to understand that Russia does not represent a trusted alternative to the United States as an extra-regional power.

Unbalanced Narratives
There are at least eight important takeaways from Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine that impact the Middle East generally, and the United States specifically.

First, Western nations pay far greater attention to crises and challenges in the West than they do to problems in other areas. The situation in Ukraine has monopolized the attention of Western policymakers, focused on arming Ukraine, while dealing with refugees and displaced persons within the country. The direct impact of Russian aggression on European energy supplies and the threats by Russia’s leader of the possible use of nuclear weapons have dominated the policy planning of European governments and the United States. The decision by Sweden and Finland to join NATO, after years of choosing to remain outside the alliance, is a direct result of Russia’s aggression.

A second takeaway from the situation in Ukraine is the precarious nature of food security in the Middle East and elsewhere. With uncertain schedules and quantities of grain exports from Ukraine and Russia, many Middle East states are scrambling to meet the minimum food requirements of their people. Egypt, for example, is significantly reliant on grain imports from Ukraine and Russia, both for food and as “virtual water,”—the water it takes to grow the crops that Egypt imports as food.

A third related issue is global inflation and the impact of supply chain issues that started during COVID but have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. The challenge of food security has worsened because of rising prices and uncertain supply. For some countries, the availability of food staples at inexpensive, often subsidized prices has always been an internal security problem, not just a health issue.

Fourth, Russia’s military setbacks and its pronounced military weaknesses have given pause to regional states that had hoped for Russian military support. More so, the fact that Russia is using Iranian “kamikaze drones” to terrorize the Ukrainian population sends a shiver through the halls of power in the Middle East. Gulf states and Israel were already seriously concerned about Iranian power projection in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen; this enhanced relationship with an aggressive Russia will deepen those concerns.

Fifth, the West’s reactions to Russia’s actions highlight what it is ignoring in the Middle East, such as ongoing state-directed terrorism in Syria, instability in Libya, the 55-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and unresolved disputes related to the Western Sahara and the GERD dam in Ethiopia. The Western bandwidth for active conflict mediation has narrowed considerably because of its diverted attention to Ukraine. The resources available to help vulnerable populations in the Middle East are shrinking and the patience for dealing with intractable conflicts and stubborn leaders is running out. Fatigue over conflict in the Middle East has given way to active engagement in the conflict in Ukraine.

Sixth, the breakdown in dialogue between the West and Russia has dimmed even further the prospect of a renewed agreement relating to the Iranian nuclear program. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), agreed in 2015, resulted from unprecedented cooperation among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, both in the negotiations themselves and in the multilateral sanctions imposed on Iran after 2010. Without coordination today, the JCPOA negotiations are likely to go nowhere. The failure to reach agreement on reviving the JCPOA will create a significant threat of escalation in the region. Israel will ramp up its overt and covert military operations designed to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program. Military escalation risks engaging extra-regional players in a widening conflict.

Seventh, Russia’s aggression has placed Israel in a particularly awkward position, as it grapples with challenging contradictions among its interests. Israeli hesitation to condemn Russia has annoyed the United States and European countries. While Israel has provided humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, it has not responded to repeated requests from Kiev for anti-missile defensive systems, such as the Iron Dome. Israel does not want to alienate Russia, given the close ties between the Russian Jewish émigré community in Israel and their families still in Russia, as well as substantial trade ties between the two countries. However, Israel’s diplomatic tightrope walk appears to satisfy none of the major powers.

Finally, U.S. opposition to the Russian invasion has provided Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas an opportunity to blast American policy as hypocritical and unfairly biased toward Israel. His criticism reflects his disappointment over the Biden administration’s hesitation to reverse some of the damage done by the Trump administration, for example, the shuttering of the American Consulate in Jerusalem and the closing of the PLO office in Washington. Abbas was disappointed after meeting Biden and appeared to jump at the chance to embrace Putin and criticize the United States when he met the Russian president on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), in Astana, Kazakhstan, in mid-October.

Assessing U.S. Policies
Several of these factors—food insecurity and the perception of alliance unreliability—are tied directly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, some of what we are witnessing now is old news, exacerbated by Ukraine, but in evidence well before the Russian invasion.

For example, many in the region believed the United States had started to pivot away from the Middle East toward Asia as long ago as the Obama administration. Never mind that the reality was far more nuanced; Obama invested significant time and resources in the region, including on the Israeli–Palestine conflict with John Kerry as Secretary of State. He also sought to reorient American policy in the Gulf, so as to create something of a balance of power between Saudi Arabia/ Gulf states and Iran, but that never meant abandoning America’s Arab allies or diminishing support for them in favor of Iran.

The Trump administration—for all the damage it did to U.S. interests in the region—also focused a great deal of attention on the region. This led to a strengthening of U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia which culminated in the Abraham Accords. Trump had no strategy for the region and allowed ideologically driven advisers to guide U.S. policy. But this led to an intensification of U.S. engagement with the region, not a diminution of interest.

President Biden, who entered office intent on domestic transformation, has pursued a relatively active policy in the Middle East, both prior to and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, however poorly executed, extracted America from what seemed like a never-ending war, thus removing a significant irritant in Arab public opinion. Active U.S. diplomacy in Yemen, bolstered by Biden’s appointment of a talented special envoy with significant regional experience, Ambassador Tim Lenderking, has contributed to the ceasefire there. The administration has also taken steps to reverse some of the most malign aspects of Trump’s policies toward the Palestinians by restoring assistance, resuming aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and establishing an independent diplomatic reporting channel from the Palestinians to Washington.

With regards to the U.S embassy, the administration cannot move the embassy back to Tel Aviv for at least two reasons: There is a law on the books requiring the embassy to be in Jerusalem; and there is no political support among Democrats or Republicans to move it. That said, President Biden can still find a way to put Jerusalem back on the negotiating table—after Trump said that he had removed the issue from the table—and to address Palestinian requirements of having their capital, and the U.S. embassy, in Jerusalem when a Palestinian state is established.

The real test of how the Russian invasion of Ukraine will impact U.S. policy in the Middle East is yet to come. One indicator will be the degree of American constancy, that is, whether the United States can continue to pour billions of dollars of military equipment into Ukraine, or whether domestic politics will force a change in policy. A second factor will be the unity of the anti-Russian alliance, as winter impacts Europe with diminished and more expensive energy supplies.

For the time being, the United States has proven capable of “walking and chewing gum,” that is, the U.S. administration continues to put pressure on Russia by supporting Ukraine, and it continues to engage on a number of Middle East issues. One example: the successful maritime agreement between Lebanon and Israel, mediated over several years by the United States. Absent a significant reversal of Ukrainian fortunes, these two pillars of American policy are likely to remain unchanged.

On October 10, the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other cities came under one of the most intense waves of Russian attacks since the war began in late February. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia used dozens of missiles and Iranian-made drones, which targeted energy infrastructure and civilian centers in Kyiv. These attacks were the most alarming case of the Russians using Iranian drones in their military aggression against Ukraine.

Although Tehran officially denies providing drones to Moscow for use in the Ukraine War—or supporting the Russian invasion in general—the evidence of Iran’s indirect involvement is undeniable. In fact, hardline Iranian media, especially those affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), boast about the role of Iranian drones in the war on Ukraine describing it as an achievement. In any case, Iran’s role in supplying weapons to Russia led the Ukrainian government to expel the Iranian ambassador and downgrade relations with the Islamic Republic.

Meanwhile, despite the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s continued emphasis on “neutrality” in the Ukraine War, Iran’s official rhetoric has been shifting toward publicly supporting Russia. In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei all but endorsed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a preventive measure. “Concerning Ukraine, if you had not taken the initiative, the other side would have done so and initiated a war,” Khamenei told Putin, according to a statement from the Iranian Supreme Leader’s office. It is safe to argue, then, that Tehran has increasingly appeared as an ally of Moscow in the Ukraine War. Iran’s position stems from ideological considerations and hostility toward the West, yet to better understand its approach, other elements must be considered, such as the Iranian leaders’ perception of transition in world politics, their geopolitical calculations, and the country’s domestic developments.

Iran and the Emerging World Order
For more than four decades, the Islamic Republic has placed opposition to the United States and the U.S.-led international order at the top of its foreign policy agenda. Since November 1979, when student revolutionaries took over the American embassy in Tehran, Iran has been recognized as a revisionist state trying to target the interests of the United States—and by extension, Washington’s allies in the Middle East. Successive administrations in Iran, whether moderate or hardline, have been unanimous in advocating for change in international structures and procedures, including the United Nations and its Security Council, so that they would be less Western-dominated.

Meanwhile, senior Iranian officials, including Khamenei, have in recent years increasingly spoken about the decline of America’s global role, emphasizing the inevitability of a shift in the international system toward a non-Western order. According to this interpretation, the ongoing transition in international politics allows revisionist powers, such as China and Russia, to increase their international clout and challenge the United States. In line with this ideology, Iran can assume a more assertive role and expand its own sphere of influence.

From this perspective, the war in Ukraine and the variety of international reactions in support of it are seen as a clear sign that the unipolar order has already come to an end. Iranian leaders are following with interest how Washington is unable to convince its traditional allies in the Middle East— and other regions, except Europe—to put diplomatic and economic pressure on Russia, considering this proof of the diminishing role of U.S. leadership on the global stage. For instance, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the Iranian Supreme Leader’s top military adviser, sees the war in Ukraine as a sign that the “power transition from the West to the East” has begun.

According to the Iranian government’s narrative, since the war in Ukraine has reached an irreversible point, especially with regards to the remapping of great power competition and politics, now is the time for Iran to develop ties with rising powers on the bilateral and multilateral levels. In other words, the March 2021 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement with China, full membership in the Russian and Chinese-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that was realized in September 2022, and military support for Moscow in the Ukraine war are all part of a single strategy to take advantage of the “emerging international order”.

Adopting Geopolitical Measures
Taking note of the decline in Washington’s leadership, other regional actors, just like Iran, have tried to adjust their foreign and security policies according to the new global realities. As far as Iran’s regional rivals—the traditional allies of the United States—are concerned, this adjustment has primarily taken the form of new regional alignments and security arrangements.

Iran’s Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf, for example, have chosen to cooperate closely and form a security coalition with Israel with the aim of filling the void of American support and establishing a counterbalance against Iran. At the same time, Turkey, a NATO ally of the United States, has assumed a more independent and assertive role in the Middle East, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia. Turkey’s role in supporting Azerbaijan in the 2020 war with Armenia over Karabakh was a case in point. Azerbaijan, another neighbor of Iran, has developed a growing political and military partnership with Iran’s arch-enemy: Israel. These developments have raised Iran’s threat perception toward its regional neighborhood to an unprecedented level.

To effectively deal with this increasingly threatening geopolitical environment, Iran has taken two main measures, one of which is relatively old and the other new. Over the last forty years, the main pillars of Iran’s strategy to enhance its deterrence and ward off security threats have been to develop indigenous military and defense capabilities and, at the same time, create a network of armed non-state allies across the region, known as the “axis of resistance.” The term often refers to the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), Yemen’s Houthis, and the Syrian regime.

The first pillar was a result of international arms embargoes against Iran and the impossibility of upgrading defense systems using foreign aid. The second pillar is concerned with the Islamic Republic’s relative isolation and lack of state allies, which fostered its desire to work with non-state actors.

What is new, however, is Tehran’s apparent and growing desire to form alliances with rising global powers, especially Russia and China. Because Iranian leaders believe that Russia and China are looking to form coalitions and allies from different regions in the world to countervail the traditional powers, Iran is looking to do the same. By abandoning the policy of “neither East nor West,” which was one of the main pillars of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic is seeking to form alliances with Russia and China as part of its own balancing strategy against regional rivals. Furthermore, Iranian officials probably hope that in the near future, Russia will return the favor by supplying them with advanced weaponry, particularly state-of-the-art fighter jets.

Why Closer Ties with Russia?
Although different administrations in the Islamic Republic, regardless of their orientation in domestic politics, have always taken a critical stance toward the United States and the liberal international order, there have been considerable differences in how the Iranian leadership views Russia and how Tehran should regulate its relations with Moscow. Generally speaking, Iran’s so-called moderate and reformist factions have taken a more cautious approach toward Russia to the extent that they are skeptical of an alliance or even a partnership with Moscow. This approach was evident in a leaked interview with the former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in April 2021, where he strongly criticized Russia’s role in Iran’s foreign policy, especially in the Syrian crisis and pre-2015 nuclear negotiations that led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal.

On the other hand, the conservative faction close to the Supreme Leader, as well as Khamenei himself, has held a favorable view of Russia and relations with the Kremlin. In fact, during more than three decades of his leadership, Khamenei has used every opportunity to praise Russia and Putin. The current Iranian administration of President Ebrahim Raisi shares this point of view, pursuing closer ties with Moscow in the context of its “look to the East” strategy. If, in the past, the presence of the moderates in power would have caused Iran’s policy to be a balancing act between the East and the West, the Iranian government as a whole is now bluntly in favor of closer ties with Moscow.

The desire for closer relations with Moscow also has to do with growing authoritarianism in Iran’s domestic politics. The 2021 presidential election, in which all reformist candidates were disqualified, clearly showed how determined the Supreme Leader and his entourage were in deterring any meaningful democratic activity. Indeed, the signs of the government’s authoritarian tendencies had started to appear long before, at least since 2009 and the crackdown on the Green Movement. The movement was initially a reaction to presidential election fraud, but it soon turned into a massive public uprising that challenged the whole political system. The Iranian government’s increasing despotism, along with corruption and economic difficulties, were the main factors that have led to a massive protest movement in Iran since September 2022.

Meanwhile, unlike Europe, which has always been critical of the human rights situation and political and social freedoms in Iran, Russia as well as China— themselves ruled by authoritarian governments—are seen as reliable partners for the Islamic Republic. Not only do these two states not criticize the Islamic Republic over domestic issues, but actively assist the Iranian government in establishing tighter control over its society and maintaining undemocratic practices by providing technological assistance and intelligence cooperation. Therefore, apart from foreign policy, Iranian leaders see the partnership with Russia as necessary to ensure their interests inside the country.

Contradiction vis-à-vis Ukraine
It is not possible to understand Tehran’s position vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine without understanding Iranian perception of the changing international system, the geopolitical implications of regional rivalries in the Middle East and Central Eurasia, and considerations related to Iran’s domestic politics. The combination of these factors has caused Iran to effectively side with Russia in what the Iranian leaders perceive to be not just a war on Ukraine, but one against the West. However, the reason why the Iranian government still claims “neutrality” and refrains from officially supporting Moscow in the war can be found in Iran’s concerns about the consequences of the Ukrainian crisis.

First and foremost, Iran’s open support for Russia would mean taking sides with the aggressor. Iran, which experienced Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s war of aggression for eight years in the 1980s during the Iran–Iraq War, would have a difficult time justifying such a position. Besides, the mixed ethnic composition of Iran’s border provinces to the east and west has consistently raised concerns that hostile states may manipulate ethnic and sectarian gaps to undermine its territorial integrity, just as Russia has done with Ukraine. This could become a serious challenge, especially in areas where the Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baloch have the majority, i.e., in Iran’s southwest, west, northwest, and southwest respectively. This is why, eight years after the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Iran still does not recognize that region as part of the Russian Federation. Therefore, Iran’s position toward the Ukraine War has an inherent contradiction at its core, which explains the difference between Tehran’s official positions and its practical behavior.

At the societal level, the expanding partnership with Moscow has been met with a primarily negative reaction from the Iranian public, which has historically been sensitive to Russia’s role in the country. Iranians recognize Russia as an aggressive power that in the 19th century, through the Golestan and Turkmanchai treaties, acquired a significant part of Iran’s territories in the South Caucasus, and later, during World War II, occupied the north of Iran. As such, among other aspects, the war in Ukraine also reflects a wide gap between the priorities of the government and those of the Iranian public. This means that Tehran– Moscow relations lack social support and infrastructure and depend heavily on the viability of the ruling regimes in both countries. Therefore, one can assume that widespread protests in Iran, which have already become a critical challenge to the Islamic Republic, have also raised concerns in the Kremlin. Any fundamental political change in Iran would most likely deprive Russia of a reliable partner in the strategic region that is the Middle East.

For more than two years, people and governments around the world have witnessed an unprecedented health crisis—one resulting in severe economic, social, and clinical consequences. During this time, COVID-19 has forced governments across the world to enact strict restrictions on people’s physical colocation, including lockdowns and curfews, to contain the spread of the virus. The pandemic has already disrupted numerous economic indicators and social determinants of health, including economic safety, food security, home security, and educational opportunities. In this context, a successful global COVID vaccination program provides a unique opportunity to curb the development of new and dangerous coronavirus variants.

While enabling global vaccine equity—a just distribution of vaccines around the world that improves access for the most vulnerable people—is a foundational part of the overall strategy to tackle the pandemic, some efforts to make the vaccine widely available have proven unsuccessful in the absence of sufficient uptake by the population. This situation necessitates that healthcare policymakers across the world implement policies that ensure the accelerated adoption of COVID vaccines. This effort requires investing in communities and addressing logistical challenges that are currently impeding COVID vaccine distribution.

Worryingly, COVID vaccination rates remain low, especially in African countries. According to research from global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, only one-fourth of the population is vaccinated with at least one dose on the continent, compared to almost 70 percent globally. These trends are increasing the epidemiological concern that unvaccinated populations could lead to the emergence of novel variants of the coronavirus, further complicating the public health response— especially in countries with low resources. Widespread misinformation about the adverse effects of vaccinations contributes to low vaccination rates. These concerns feed into a preexisting general lack of trust in governments. Therefore, the success of any vaccination campaign hinges on interventions that can help people understand the importance of their participation and improve trust in the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. In addition to developing partnerships that promote vaccine equity, healthcare policymakers should support primary care providers such as frontline physicians, nurses, and allied health workers.

Frontline care providers are uniquely placed in the global healthcare delivery system as patients put considerable trust in them. Most patients reach out to their primary care providers before making any significant decisions regarding their health. These providers are also familiar with the health history of their patients and patients’ families including potential comorbidities that increase the risk of adverse outcomes should the patient or a member of their family be infected. They also play an important role as information intermediaries and decision support systems. They can interpret, document, and reiterate information about the safety and effectiveness of the COVID vaccine.

There is evidence that employing plain language in communicating public health information improves the adoption of the message. The role of primary care providers—and especially nurses and community health workers—is critical to declutter the information, distill the key messages, and interpret them for their patients. In their position of trusted advisors for their patients’ health, these providers can act proactively and participate in outreach initiatives to raise awareness among their patients of the availability of a safe and effective vaccine and its importance for public health. This is particularly important in underserved communities that exhibit lower trust in the healthcare system. At the individual patient-physician level, these providers can leverage communication strategies based on behavioral economics to improve vaccination rates.

To start with, behavioral economists have demonstrated the importance of “choice architecture” whereby structuring the context in which people make decisions nudges them toward certain choices. In a randomized trial, investigators reported that healthcare providers who, after reviewing the patient’s profile and vaccination status, simply announced that the patients were ready for vaccination observed an increase in vaccination uptake of over five percentage points more than providers who started a conversation about why they would recommend that the patient should consider vaccinating. Vaccination uptake was higher among patients who recalled the provider communicating efficiently versus those that remembered engaging in a conversation with them. Assertive statements help to reduce the ambiguity that patients often perceive when talking with medical experts, which can lead to doubt about the true importance of vaccinations. By stating that the patient is ready for vaccination, physicians exhibit trust in vaccine effectiveness and safety, which in turn will enable their patients to decide on actions that prevent illness and improve health.

Additional public policy solutions include incorporating behavioral mechanisms that foster individual contributions to public goods. To illustrate: in addition to pursuing their best personal interests, individuals are motivated by their concerns for social image—that is, beliefs about how members of their reference group perceive them. Their behaviors are shaped by norms that operate within such reference groups and define actions that are approved or disapproved by its members. Therefore, positioning participation in the vaccine campaign to contribute to the welfare of one’s community, in addition to ensuring personal protection from the virus, is likely to form or sustain an identity of a “good citizen.”

Public health policies also need to leverage effective messaging about the role that each individual plays in their community’s welfare. Social media influencers need to be engaged more than prominent politicians to increase the appeal of the vaccination campaigns and, at the same time, reduce their association with political division. It is important to produce a perception that vaccination is not only a desired behavior, but also a normal behavior exhibited by the members of our community of reference. The presence of an audience further strengthens these mechanisms. Evidence suggests that observability of contributions to a public good leads to higher levels of contributions, especially when the contribution is made through actions instead of monetary donations. Tokens of appreciation, thank you notes, celebrations, and stickers to mark having been vaccinated are simple but powerful ways to foster image motivation to contribute. Healthcare leaders need to dedicate institutional resources toward these initiatives.

In countries that have dedicated electronic health record systems, healthcare administrators and policymakers can also institute “design solutions” to supplement these care provider efforts. Innovative solutions include incorporating subtle reminders or “nudges” into health record systems. A recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania demonstrated that flu vaccination rates increased by 9.5 percentage points within their primary care networks when an “active choice intervention”—an automated reminder for medical assistants to ask patients about their vaccination status during their initial visit—was implemented. Before the intervention, validation of the patient’s vaccination status relied on memory. In the later hours of their shift, when decision fatigue was more likely to ensue, instances of healthcare providers offering vaccination opportunities were less frequent. Implementing a relatively inexpensive mechanism to relieve the burden of active decision-making may prove instrumental in increasing participation in vaccination campaigns.

COVID-19 has brought to the forefront the importance of building robust and equitable public health systems. This pandemic has led to unimaginable societal and economic loss, mainly because of incomplete information and a lack of coordination and collaboration from national leaders. Now, with the availability of COVID vaccines, political leaders and health policymakers have an opportunity to change the trajectory of the pandemic and mitigate its impact by investing in system-level solutions to support care providers so that they can successfully guide their patients toward behaviors that promote health. Leveraging an array of solutions that have been shown to effectively influence individual behaviors represents a critical design element for a successful deployment of the ongoing vaccination campaign—one that could lead to safely navigating the new normal in people’s social and economic lives.

Established by the Fatimid dynasty in the 900s, Historic Cairo was shaped by succeeding rulers and regimes over the centuries. The area’s unique wealth of archeological sites gives it a place among the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage List. Modern day residents and initiatives continue to alter and add onto this heritage; but contemporary developments in the area are bound by a complex web of legal regulations. 

The simple act of defining the legal boundaries of Historic Cairo was a decades-long process. The area has figured on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979; and when it was first nominated for the title, the heritage site was known as Islamic Cairo. The map accompanying its candidacy dated back to 1948 and outlined five main areas of distinguished historical significance: Al-Fustat, the Ibn Tulun mosque and its surroundings, the Citadel and Mamluk fortresses, Fatimid Cairo, and the historic cemeteries of Cairo’s City of the Dead. 

Speaking at a webinar held by the American University in Cairo’s Law and Society Research Unit, Architect and Conservation Specialist Ahmed Mansour described the 1948 map as “more of a sketch than an actual map,” as the document only defined the broad outlines of the area.  

Up until 2007, legal maps of Historic Cairo failed to include many of its archeological sites. In addition, these maps made no mention of the Salah Salem tunnel and the Ring Road, both infrastructural developments that have widely shaped and facilitated access to the area. In light of these unmentioned landmarks and developments, questions lingered surrounding the exact delineations of the heritage site. 

It was not until 2010, when UNESCO launched the Urban Regeneration Project for Historic Cairo (URHC), that a clear delineation was established. Carried out in collaboration with the Egyptian government, the project aimed to implement measures for the protection of Historic Cairo, encompassing not only heritage preservation but also socio-economic and environmental regulations for the area’s development. 

UNESCO describes the project as being “based on the assumption that the tangible heritage of the World Heritage Site can only be preserved if life is kept in it;” but revitalising the area as an urban tourist hub while upholding the needs and interests of its inhabitants has proven no easy task. 

Laws and Institutions Regulating Developments in Historic Cairo

In April of this year, the Egyptian government ordered a revamp of the Al-Fustat neighborhood, which falls into the broader project of rehabilitating Historic Cairo into a prime tourist destination with integrated services; but conservation and development efforts of this nature are bound by a multitude of often conflicting requirements. Such projects must work toward structural improvement while also preserving the area’s historical and architectural singularity. They must also attend to the interests of various stakeholders including the state, the tourism sector, and the densely populated area’s residents. 

For this reason, developments in Historic Cairo are subject to a complex legal framework. Overarching these regulations is Law 119/2008 on Unified Building. The law is primarily aimed at consolidating Egyptian planning and building regulations into one comprehensive legislation, and is divided into five sections concerned respectively with urban planning, urban harmony, licensing regulations, tenant unions, and penalties. The second and third sections rely on certain foundations and standards approved by the Supreme Council for Planning and Urban Development, and meticulously outline regulations from the maximum height of a building, to room surface areas, and air duct dimensions. 

Further guidelines for the preservation of historic landmarks are specified in Law 117/1983 on the Protection of Antiquities, which sets the legal definition of antiquities and places them under the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities’ jurisdiction. Meanwhile, Law 144/2006 and its Executive Regulations set out further protective measures for inventoried buildings, and demolition procedures for ordinary buildings. 

Other legislation pertains more specifically to local governance and environmental preservation. Law 43/1979 establishes the election of local government units from governorate to district authorities, to enhance the efficiency of urban management at the micro level. Law 38/1967 on General Public Cleaning governs the management of solid waste -an especially prominent issue in Cairo, where 15,000 tons of solid waste are produced everyday, according to the World Bank. 

Assisting the efforts of legislative bodies and governmental institutions are a number of conservation initiatives working to ensure that development projects are carried out in a way that serves local communities and encourages their socio economic empowerment. One such organization is the participatory conservation initiative, Al Athar Lina (The Monument is Ours), which focuses on heritage preservation in the Al Khalifa neighborhood of Historic Cairo. 

Al Athar Lina was founded in 2012 and is run jointly by the NGO Built Environment Collective and the architectural firm Megawra. The initiative’s work focuses on three parts of Al Khalifa neighborhood, namely Al Khalifa street, the Hattaba area of the Citadel, and the Southern end of the neighborhood, which encompasses the Al Sayeda Nafisa Shrine and other historic cemeteries. All of its projects are carried out in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, as well as other government bodies like the Cairo Governorate authority, and center on the implementation of community-based conservation conservation efforts founded on participatory research. 

The reason for this emphasis on participatory research is that “when heritage is seen as a community resource, community members can see the value in its preservation,” said May Ibrashy, conservation and heritage management specialist, and founder and chair of Megawra.

Al Athar Lina’s work spans three main objectives, outlined on their website: identifying heritage nodes to conserve and rehabilitate for communal use; organizing heritage awareness activities primarily aimed at local children; and linking heritage to socio economic empowerment through the upgrading of public spaces, the promotion of tourism, and capacity building.

Since its inception, the initiative has completed the restoration of five heritage sites and two historical buildings. Their latest project, said Ibrashy, will work on the renovation of Qubbat Al Imam Al-Shafi’i, a carved wooden dome which was imported from India in the thirteenth century and placed over the Imam’s grave. 

The initiative has also launched a number of development projects in collaboration with governmental bodies and residents of Al Khalifa neighborhood, including the Athar Lina School for Art and Heritage, the al-Khalifa Community Center, and the capacity building program Khalifa Exchange, which encourages artistic collaborations between local artisans and designers for the creation of products inspired by the neighborhood’s heritage and craftsmanship tradition. 

Latest among these efforts is the Citizen Participation in Historic Cairo applied research project, the aim of which is to study three types of neighborhoods in the area which embody different aspects and challenges of heritage conservation. 

The first is traditional Historic Qasabas, like Al Khalifa neighborhood, which is home to many archeological sites and therefore rich in opportunities for tourism. The neighborhood is used as a case study for the development of a heritage conservation and management plan, working towards both architectural preservation and sustainable development. The second is modern pockets of urbanism within the historic city, like the Zaynhum public housing project. The project focused on the improvement of Zayhum’s open spaces and its integration into the surrounding area. 

The third focal point of the research was Historic Cairo’s dilapidated core, exemplified in areas like the Hattaba neighborhood, which is listed as an informal settlement. This classification creates a conflict between the laws that govern the neighborhood as a heritage site and those which govern it as an informal settlement.

The latter issue is a prominent one in several parts of Historic Cairo, including the Fustat area, where structural neglect and poverty have led to the construction of several illegal buildings over the years. Government demolitions in the area have been carried out since 2016, and increased in advance of Egypt’s historical transfer of twenty-two royal mummies to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, in the world-acclaimed Pharaohs’ Golden Parade. In light of the demolitions, 771 families were resettled after the removal of over 1400 informal housing facilities; but many were forced to search for alternative housing due to lack of documentation and administrative complications, leading to strong contention among locals. 

Persisting Challenges

Despite the ample work carried out by legislative bodies, governmental institutions, and conservation initiatives, a number of structural challenges continue to hinder development efforts in Historic Cairo. Chief among these issues is the implementation of existing legislation. 

In Ibrachy’s view, “There are great laws in place for the protection and conservation of heritage in Historic Cairo, but there are some serious issues with their implementation.” 

One notable example is the notion of “Haram Al-Athar,” a key legal area concerned with the immediate surroundings of a heritage site. Law 117/1983 permits the Supreme Council of Antiquities to define curtilage areas around monuments and archeological sites, where any form of intervention is forbidden without explicit permission from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. 

Common practice, however, has been to forbid interventions indiscriminately, even if permission is sought from the Ministry. This canonical policy derives from the commonly held belief that listed buildings should stand apart from their urban context -one which constitutes an ahistorical approach to urban planning, as historical mosques and places of worship, for example, have historically been vibrant community centers. 

Besides its historical inaccuracy, the prohibition also hinders development efforts in dilapidated areas, like the Hattaba neighborhood. The area is home to 500 families, who have been strictly forbidden from making renovations to their homes since the 1970s. The prohibition, intended as a conservation measure for the area’s historical and architectural heritage, has had unintended but nefarious impacts on inhabitants’ quality of life. Structural deficiencies were further exacerbated in the wake of the 1992 earthquake, which wrought severe damages to Al Khalifa district and Historic Cairo at large. 

Implementing legislation in a way that benefits local communities in Historic Cairo requires, plainly, more vocal participation from community members in decision-making processes. As previously mentioned, the fourth section of Law 119/2008 concerns tenant unions, while Law 43/1979 stipulates the establishment of elected municipal councils, meant to serve as a medium between residents and local authorities. Yet, as Mansour duly noted, these laws are scarcely implemented in Historic Cairo or other parts of the city. 

Due to the relative scarcity of citizen involvement in urban planning, many development projects are launched without consulting local communities or having the necessary, transparent conversations about these projects’ timelines and objectives – because the mechanisms needed to carry out these conversations are largely absent. In parts of Historic Cairo, development projects may have the unwanted effect of gentrifying working class areas, a form of displacement which does not necessitate demolitions, but naturally arises when residents’ economic statuses do not rise to meet the growing cost of living. 

The exclusion of community members from decision-making processes is a disservice both to community members and to heritage conservation at large. As Al Athar Lina’s work aims to show, tenants and local residents have more vested interest than anyone else in preserving historical sites in their neighborhoods. 

“Managing the city is about regulating change, and this is a complicated affair,” said Ibrashy. “We need greater community inclusion in drafting laws that regulate developments in Historic Cairo. We need to include residents and community members in decision-making processes, and take their interests into account when carrying out heritage preservation or development projects,” she concluded.