Once upon a time, the Middle Eastern media environment was predictable and staid, dominated by a few prominent outlets that in Arab countries were often owned and operated by the governments’ information ministries. No longer.
“Who controls the Rimland rules Eurasia [and] who rules Eurasia controls the destinies of the world.”
UN’s Human Rights Council set to mock itself – The United Nations Human Rights Council is expected to reappoint its special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, to a second three-year term on Friday, mocking its own mandate to fairly and seriously investigate human rights problems around the world.
On March 20, Iranians in Iran and in the diaspora commemorated Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Typically, U.S. administrations have used the occasion to practice some soft power diplomacy. In the past, America's Nowruz greetings have taken pains to highlight Iran's proud pre-Islamic heritage, underscore its immense civilizational potential, and draw a distinction between the country's historic greatness and its current repressive clerical regime.
Now, as Hamas retakes control of Gaza after a two-month ceasefire with Israel and reconstitutes its capacity to resume its terror, classified documents published in recent days by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center highlight Israel’s desperate need to restore a sense of deterrence in the minds of its bitterest enemies.
Meanwhile, the new White House's penchant for deal-making is providing an opportunity for Russia to improve its position still further—by offering itself up as a diplomatic intermediary between Washington and Tehran.
A desire to end conflict will not suffice in achieving an actual end to hostilities in either Ukraine or Gaza.
When the Soviet Union collapsed nearly a quarter-century ago, it led to triumphalism about the "end of history" and the ultimate victory of liberal democracy over other forms of government. Since then, it's been a difficult couple of decades for global freedom.
It might be too much for the Trump administration to expect that Europe will guarantee a Ukraine peace settlement they had no part in making.
A Central Asia-Caucasus-European Corridor (CACE) would reinvigorate historic trade routes and improve regional energy security.
For all of its public rhetoric to the contrary, Europe has failed to meaningfully wean itself off Russian energy, a key strategic vulnerability. In fact, the continent's dependence on Moscow has grown...
But lest anyone believe that Israel’s detractors in the region and across the world really care about innocent Gazans, events on the ground since the ceasefire took effect show that’s truly a farcical notion.
When scholars look back at the foreign policy of the last administration, they’re liable to conclude that the “Biden Doctrine,” to the extent that there was one, wasn’t an elaborate, ambitious and well-thought-out affair, the way some pundits have suggested. Rather, it was a series of tactical responses to world events — responses that were ultimately undermined by the White House’s fear of adverse consequences.
As strife abates, countries are remembering why ties to Israel are a good bet.
As he prepares to enter the White House, Donald Trump should recognize that even a weakened Tehran is still dangerous.
Prioritizing the Americas after decades of neglect marks a return to traditional U.S. strategy.
Suddenly, Israel has a Syria problem. For years, officials in Jerusalem had banked on a relatively predictable balance of power with the neighboring regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Despite Assad's enduring hostility toward the Jewish state and the inherent weakness of his regime, a tenuous status quo had been struck between the two countries, making it generally possible to anticipate how the Syrian dictator would behave. This has served as a perverse source of comfort over the past 14 months, as Israel has found itself preoccupied with the threat of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and more recently, that of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
When might meaningful change come to Iran, and how? Nearly 50 years after the country's last major political transformation – the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's radical Islamist revolt against the monarchy of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi – that question continues to bedevil policymakers, both in Washington and far beyond the Capital Beltway.
For years, Russia’s main tactic to compete with Western news media has been to create alternative outlets, like its television channel RT (previously Russia Today) and the Sputnik multimedia news agency. Now, however, Moscow is stepping up its efforts in two areas where Western media and foundations have long enjoyed an advantage: journalism training and fact-checking.
What if Russia loses its war on Ukraine? Some consider the question frivolous because, as President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan has asserted, “Russia cannot be defeated in a military sense.” Such thinking has prompted Tokayev, as well as many in the West, to advocate for a deal with Putin, one that would more than likely result in Kyiv’s loss of land that the United Nations, the United States, and Europe all consider Ukraine’s sovereign territory.
The U.S. Congress still has a month of legislating ahead. If current conditions hold, China policy appears poised to dominate a significant portion of Capitol Hill’s time. In September, House Speaker Mike Johnson telegraphed his desire to restrict U.S. outbound investment to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and moves in this direction are expected this fall.
On November 28, 2024, the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party explicitly announced a change in Georgia's foreign policy trajectory, despite overwhelming public opposition to turning away from European integration.
As Georgia approaches parliamentary elections in October 2024, the South Caucasus state stands at a pivotal juncture.
When the second Trump administration takes office next month, it will face a thoroughly crowded Mideast agenda. Near-term priorities for the new White House include helping Israel to wind down its war in Gaza, resuscitating the Abraham Accords, and reviving a policy of "maximum pressure" against Iran. But arguably the most pressing item confronting Team Trump will be changing the status quo in the Red Sea.
Western observers are neglecting important developments: Judging by what is being said on Russia’s home front, Putin has already lost the war and the only question is what face-saving measures can be extracted through a settlement.
The Biden administration has loosened some restrictions on how Ukraine can use U.S.-supplied missiles in its ongoing war with Russia. But this move is too little, too late.
President-elect Trump will likely transform U.S.-Israeli relations — and U.S. relations across the Middle East — by providing more military and diplomatic support for Israel, working to weaken Israel’s adversaries and pursuing more Arab-Israeli peacemaking.
America is often called a nation of problem-solvers. So it's not surprising that, virtually from the start of Israel's war with Hamas last fall, U.S. officials have been pressing Israel to lay out a plan for a "day after" in the Gaza Strip.
The incoming administration has a unique opportunity to cultivate a dynamic partnership with Africa that transcends conventional diplomacy, intensifies economic ties, balances security commitments, and revitalizes development efforts
The campaign of terror carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, succeeded in denting Israel's aura of military invincibility, while the resulting conflict in Gaza helped isolate Jerusalem on the world stage. Israel's normalization with the Gulf States, which had started to profoundly marginalize the Islamic Republic, also seemed to be a casualty of the new war. Meanwhile, timid American regional policy, and the Biden administration's overriding fear of a wider Mideast war, led to a persistent failure on Washington's part to hold Tehran accountable for its regional troublemaking.
In recent years, the Biden administration has promoted the need for “resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains” and urged the identification of vulnerabilities that could affect the country’s national security. Interestingly, one of the most visible components in the nation’s supply chain—ocean shipping—matches this description yet is rarely afforded the attention it deserves. That’s a costly mistake because Chinese state-owned shipping is thoroughly embedded in and integrated within the logistics infrastructure of the United States and the West more broadly.
These are decisive days in Tbilisi. On October 26th, voters in the country of Georgiawent to the polls to cast their ballots in a pivotal parliamentary vote. The results of that contest have sent shockwaves through the country and beyond, and raised profound concerns about Georgia’s democratic future.
All eyes are now on next week’s highly-anticipated, and hotly contested, national election. In recent days, we’ve witnessed a flurry of media reports about how malign actors like Russia, China and Iran are seeking to shape U.S. political discourse ahead of that pivotal vote.
In early October, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov declared a blood feud against three North Caucasian federal lawmakers, accusing them of plotting his assassination amid a power struggle over the Wildberries e-commerce platform.
For almost a year, Israel has been actively at war against terrorists on several fronts. And despite international pressure, adversary propaganda, and the sheer difficulty of the fight, Israel is gradually winning.
In order for the US to proactively shape the contours of the debate within the Iranian opposition it needs to lay out what sort of government it wants in Tehran, and its expectations of the actors that will play a part in bringing about this change. And, given the growing indicators that the Islamic Republic is approaching a fundamental political and social transition, the sooner Washington does so, the better.
At present, Chinese coercion is met largely with a playbook of defensive measures. The Chinese are able to choose the time and location of their action, and the recipient country busies itself scrambling to contain the fallout. China therefore has the initiative, while the targeted country — often in conjunction with the U.S. — mostly tries to mitigate the impact. As a result, it’s tempting to assume that China holds more cards than it actually does. And it’s equally easy for the U.S. to forget the extent of its own leverage over China in the exact same manner.
It is hard to think of a United Nations agency with a more glaring failure in its core mission than the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, more commonly known as UNIFIL — and there has certainly been no shortage of contenders this year.
While global leaders pressure Israel to explain its plans for Gaza after its war with Hamas ends, Palestinian leaders are doing their own planning for that day – and recent developments on that front should raise concerns about prospects for long-term peace between Israel and a future government in Gaza.
Israel Mulls Its Iran Options: With considerable trepidation, the Middle East, and indeed the wider world, is awaiting Israel’s response to Iran’s massive October 1st missile barrage on the Jewish state. The White House, fearful of a wider regional war, is exerting massive (albeit mostly quiet) pressure for Jerusalem to limit its retaliation to something “proportionate” that doesn’t target either Iran’s nuclear program or its energy sites.
As the war in Ukraine heads toward its third anniversary, the question on the minds of many Americans is, why do the Ukrainians keep fighting? The conventional wisdom argues that after nearly three years of killing, the war must end — something possible only through the surrender of Ukrainian land occupied by Russian forces. Yet polls consistently find that nearly 70% of Ukrainians oppose ceding land for peace. Why? Because giving up land means surrendering to life under Russian occupation. Ukrainians know from history what that means; to prevent it, they are willing to endure the deaths of thousands more of their soldiers and the destruction of many of their cities and towns.
It is now – even amid a bitter presidential campaign – that U.S. leaders should stand four-square behind Israel, giving it the leeway to protect itself as it sees fit rather than adding to the morally confused carping from abroad.
Whoever ends up winning the White House next month will need to reframe the way America thinks about Great Power Competition in order to adequately respond to the collective threat now posed by Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. Doing so will begin by answering a fateful question—Is the United States still prepared to serve as the "arsenal of democracy"?
During the vice presidential debate between Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), viewers in the People’s Republic of China experienced a broadcast interruption. When the CBS moderators asked Gov. Walz about discrepancies regarding his story of being in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the video feed throughout China cut to an error screen. This “error” was, of course, the latest instance of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censors silencing speech about sensitive topics within China.
On Sept. 4, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that China would no longer carry out foreign adoption work, except for a few narrow exceptions. In turn, the U.S. Department of State notified American families, many of whom had already been matched with children in China years ago and were just waiting to bring their kids home.
With this devastating announcement, China has nullified the bond that American families had with their waiting children. For the families affected, it is a waking nightmare. For the U.S., it is the latest failure of Washington to tame the worst impulses of the Chinese Communist Party.
President Biden recently declared that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to reach a deal with Hamas to free the hostages the terrorist organization has been holding since last Oct. 7. This pronouncement was both ill-targeted and ill-timed, proving once again that Washington often doesn’t know when and when not to meddle in the affairs of other nations.
As Georgia approaches parliamentary elections in October 2024, the South Caucasus state stands at a pivotal juncture. The growing authoritarian tendencies of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party threaten to derail the nation’s democratic progress, and its aspirations for Euro-Atlantic integration. In this critical moment, the United States needs to act decisively by leveraging congressional measures to support Georgia’s democratic institutions and counter authoritarian influences there.