The reasons for U.S. involvement in the Middle East are becoming obsolete, but policy and strategy aren’t keeping pace. Find out more with your subscription to World Politics Review (WPR). The security environment in the Middle East may be the most complex on earth, with an intricate, volatile and sometimes shifting mixture of destabilizing forces and hostilities. There are deadly power struggles within and between nations. And behind it all is the Middle East’s massive oil production, on which the global economy depends. The United States first ventured into the Middle East early in the Cold War and has remained [...]
Five years after the U.S. first imposed sanctions against Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea, Moscow continues to defy Western efforts to rein in its behavior. As the Russia sanctions risk becoming a permanent fixture in U.S.-Russia relations, three principal long-term trends are worth further examination. In March 2014, then-President Barack Obama signed the first tranche of executive orders imposing sanctions against the Russian Federation for its illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea. Five years later, the confrontation between the United States and Russia has come to dominate the national security conversation, driving unprecedented tensions in the trans-Atlantic relationship. [...]
In any other country, the news that peaceful demonstrations had forced the incumbent president to drop his unpopular re-election bid would have been a startling announcement. But given Algeria’s political system, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s move to withdraw his candidacy for a fifth presidential term and postpone April’s elections, made public on Monday, was welcomed by protesters as only a good start. Amid a growing protest movement, Algerians are being cautious about Bouteflika’s announcement because of what they call le pouvoir—the shadowy “power” that rules Algeria, made up of an assortment of aging army generals, secret service operatives and party apparatchiks. [...]
