As we've watched the dramatic events in the Middle East, you would hardly know that we had a thing to do with them. Oh, yes, in the name of its War on Terror, Washington had for years backed most of the thuggish governments now under siege or anxious that they may be...
From his weekly perch at CNN, Fareed Zakaria speculated recently whether George Bush could take credit for the events that were unfolding in Tunisia, whether this was the late fruit of the neoconservative project to bring "democracy" to the Middle East. It is quite...
The death throes of the Mubarak regime in Egypt signal a new level of crisis for a U.S. Middle East strategy that has shown itself over and over again in recent years to be based on nothing more than the illusion of power. The incipient loss of the U.S. client regime...
Among the biggest losers of the Egyptian uprising are, first, the Mubaraks, who are finished, and, next, the United States and Israel. Hosni Mubarak will be out by year's end, if not the end of this month, or week. He will not run again and will not be succeeded by...
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently took a four-day tour of the Middle East, at each stop telling various allies and enemies, in classic American fashion, what they must do. And yet as she spoke, events in Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and even Egypt seemed to spin...
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, especially today in the Maghreb and Middle East. For the ouster of Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has sent shock waves from Rabat to Riyadh. Autocrats, emirs, and kings have to be asking themselves: If rioters can bring down...
Is there a Shia crescent threatening the stability of western Asia and northern Africa? Is there a historically coded Arab-Persian enmity driving the international politics of the region? Does it date back centuries, and is it now viewed as a battle for regional...
While President Barack Obama Monday touted the continuing U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq as a key marker in the success of his regional policies, the latest news from the Greater Middle East, as well as a new public opinion survey, is far less encouraging. Not...
As the Obama administration gears up for additional commitments to Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, it is good to remind ourselves that in spite of the overheated rhetoric of the past few years, the region is of very little, if any, strategic value to the...
