Middle East Policy最新文献

Russia has been the Kurds’ patron for more than two centuries, motivated primarily by the cynical desire to use them against adversaries in broader great-power games while casting itself as a champion of the Kurdish cause. Russia's longstanding and multifaceted relationship with the Kurds demonstrates that when it comes to geopolitics, the United States has more than brute force to contend with. The Russian state also utilizes soft power as an authoritarian state defines it: a tool of pragmatic leverage. While the Kurds are not a monolith, they are anxious about the trajectory of US politics and feel they cannot rely on anyone. The Russian state has opportunities to undermine American interests in places such as Syria and Iraq through its connections with Kurdish groups. This article reviews tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet policies toward the Kurds, including Kurdish communities in Russia. It concludes with a discussion about implications for the United States, given that Moscow will not let go of its Kurdish card, including in the context of the Ukraine invasion.

Saudi-Turkey relations hit one of their lowest points due to the Arab uprisings and the regional shock of the Gulf crisis. The tension resulted from, and in turn exacerbated, a process of securitization of Saudi discourse, whereby officials labeled Turkey as a threat. But after three and a half years of the Gulf crisis, the Al-Ula accords allowed reconciliation among the regional states and opened the way for the construction of new understandings based on diplomacy, tolerance of differences on regional and domestic security, and respect of sovereignty. This spurred Saudi policy makers to de-securitize their discourse concerning Turkey—that is, to talk of it not as a threat, but as a potential partner. This process continues to develop gradually through cooperation on economics and investment, but it has required time to re-establish confidence among Saudi decision makers. This article analyzes the discourses of Saudi leaders and policy makers and shows how they affected Saudi Arabia's relations with Turkey, both negatively and positively.

This article analyzes Israel's motives in annexing the Jordan Valley—a plan that, if approved, will eliminate any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state, even on a small part of historic Palestine. This promises to be one of the most critical strategic turning points in the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The analysis reveals that the Israeli annexation decision, even if postponed, has become a reality imposed by Israel on the international community, insinuated into formal and official government announcements and declarations. In addition, the article highlights the danger of imposing Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley since it carries with it a threat to regional stability. As part of this examination, the study traces the development of the positions of successive Israeli governments toward the issue of annexing this region, from 1967 through the dissolution of the Netanyahu government in 2021.

Iran's enmity with Israel is ideological in the first place and strategic in the second. Iran intends through anti-Israel actions and messaging to internally mobilize its populace and, externally, to claim the leadership of the Muslim world and strike a balance against a regional nuclear power. This article uses a critique based on constructivism and realism to reveal how Iran's confrontation with Israel has evolved historically from “identity-ideological” to “politico-strategic.” I argue that Iran's adoption of this approach without taking its internal and external capacities into consideration has ironically bolstered the Israeli far right, increased global sympathies for Israel, escalated Iranophobia, aligned conservative Arab states with Israel, and marginalized the issue of Palestine. To preserve its national interests and regional security, Iran needs to overcome this politico-historical stage and replace conflict with competition.

The 2011 Libyan uprising transformed into a civil war in a matter of days—and it has lasted more than a decade. What made this uprising different from others? This article argues that the type of system determined the outcome of the revolt. It posits a relationship between Muammar Qadhafi's sultanistic regime and the fragile political institutions that have allowed the chaos and rivalry to persist without resolution. To demonstrate this, Libyan citizens were surveyed about their perceptions of how Qadhafi shaped the political order responsible for today's institutional vacuum. While the revolution revealed the Qadhafi regime's lack of popular and foreign support, as well as the inadequacies of state institutions, it could not use institutional channels to mobilize the public and organize authority, as in Tunisia and Egypt. The civil war, coupled with the interventions of regional and international powers in support of local actors and militias, has made the Libyan case different. The article also explains how the passive stances of the League of Arab States and the United Nations paved the way for external rivalries.

Researchers and policy makers appear to hold a deeply rooted reluctance to acknowledge, let alone address, the significance of ISIS's state building. Those who have engaged with this issue have tended to traverse the analytical dead end of legalistic questions and themes, inevitably concluding that ISIS's efforts fell short of the threshold of statehood. This article sharply diverges from this reasoning and instead focuses on the political extent of ISIS's state building, which was a reaction to the collapse of authority in Iraq and Syria, and the concomitant failure to protect peoples at risk. The study examines the Islamic State on four dimensions: the stabilization of society, the extraction of income, the politicization of religion, and the use of sectarian divisions. It finds that ISIS's efforts were internally contradictory and contained a number of elements that impeded its establishing a conventionally defined state and its carrying out of actions expected of such a state.

For the past 15 years, there have been increasing calls for the United States to reduce its overseas force structure and to bring troops home. Such discussion accelerated during the Trump administration, and perceptions of American retrenchment were heightened by President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. This article asks the key question: Is Washington really engaging in a systematic pullout from the Middle East? Based on publicly available evidence, I argue that, contrary to common perceptions, the American military is actually increasing its forward presence in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region. In addition, I contend that the two other states that have the potential to replace the United States in the Middle East, Russia and China, are for multiple reasons incapable of doing so. In addition to puncturing the myths, the article contributes to the ongoing policy debates and theoretical literatures regarding Middle East security and great-power competition.

The decline of US-Turkey relations has been one of the most striking developments within NATO and the broader Western alliance. This article sheds light on this distrusted partnership by studying anti-American sentiment in Turkish public opinion since the Arab uprisings of the 2010s. Employing a typology of anti-Americanisms introduced by Keohane and Katzenstein, it examines views of the United States and US-Turkey relations in the Turkish media and among the public, and it explores the conditions under which the declining relations could be reset. In particular, it shows how the ruling Justice and Development Party exploits anti-US opinion, the Turkish media's role, the stances of Turkish opposition groups, and the long-term consequences for the strained bilateral relationship.