Middle East & North Africa Archive

Days after demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a wave of anti-American protests has swept through the region. For now, the demonstrations targeting U.S. embassies remain limited in size and scope, and if previous episodes of similar reactions to perceived slights against Islam are any indication, they are likely to fade relatively quickly. Nevertheless, as expressions of the anti-American sentiment that pervades the region, the protests highlight the challenges facing Washington as it tries to navigate the changing political landscape of the Middle East. Before examining those challenges further, however, it […]

Three separate incidents this week have all highlighted how the growing distraction in Washington over the upcoming U.S. presidential election is undermining U.S. diplomacy. The first has to do with the territorial dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands, possession of which confers exploitation rights to the lucrative fishing grounds and vast offshore hydrocarbon fields in the exclusive economic zone that surrounds them. The Japanese government earlier this week announced that it would buy the islands from the family that holds the deed to the property, raising tensions with China, which also claims the islands as the Diaoyou. […]

Anti-American demonstrations turned violent Tuesday at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where attacks killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. With similar protests now spreading throughout the region, the Defense Department, State Department and White House are working to step up security at embassies in the Middle East and around the world. While the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations holds the host country responsible for embassy security, the U.S. has established its own complex security bureaucracy to respond to ongoing threats. But in light of this week’s security breaches, diplomatic posts […]

The ongoing Shiite-Sunni cold war that is manifesting itself throughout the Middle East may be beginning to spill over into India. Home to a large Muslim minority consisting of both major sects of Islam, India has recently found itself forced to deal with increasing fallout from the intra-Islamic struggle. At one of the end of the spectrum was the attack against an Israeli diplomat possibly orchestrated by Iranian proxies; at the other were the recent violent protests by a Saudi-funded seminary in the heart of Mumbai. Given India’s dependence on energy exports from the wider Islamic world and the nation’s […]

The 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran late last month brought the group back into the international spotlight, years after the end of the Cold War called its very existence into question. With the fall of the Soviet Union, nonaligned nations suddenly found themselves unable to leverage superpower rivalry to achieve their domestic and foreign policy objectives. Moreover, in the post-Cold War unipolar world, Washington’s preponderant influence meant that nonaligned nations needed to drastically alter their foreign policy to accommodate American interests. The rapid liberalization of national economies in countries such as India, Indonesia and Brazil is […]

At last week’s Moscow Nonproliferation Conference, organized by the Center for Energy and Security Studies, some 200 people, including a number of prominent Russian and Western experts, gathered to discuss a wide range of nonproliferation issues. Given the statements of the Russian speakers at the conference, Moscow is laying down some tough, albeit often understandable, conditions for making further progress in nuclear arms control. Sergey Ryabkov, the Russian deputy foreign minister who keynoted the conference, stressed the importance of strengthening the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Ryabkov insisted that what he called the treaty’s three core principles — nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament […]

Deadly bombings rip through mainly Shi’ite districts of Baghdad on Sunday, on one of the bloodiest days of the year with more than 100 killed across the country. Video News by NewsLook

Syrian warplanes have bombed a residential area of Aleppo after rebels overran an army barracks in the area. Video News by NewsLook

Talk of a U.S. attack on Iran is like a late-summer thunderstorm that rumbles ominously in the distance without ever drifting further away. Few American observers advocate an immediate attack, but a growing number hint that the question is when, not if, a strike takes place. The distance from saber-rattling to war is narrowing. As is often the case in the prelude to war, the discussion has so far been informed more by passion than by analysis, stoked by popular distrust of the Iranian regime. As the United States found when contemplating the invasion of Iraq in 2002, such an […]

Australia recently signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates to provide uranium for the Persian Gulf country’s planned nuclear power plants. In an email interview, Fethi Mansouri, the director of the Center for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University, Australia, and the author of “Australia and the Middle East: a Frontline Relationship,” discussed Australia-Middle East relations. WPR: What is the recent history of Australia’s diplomatic and trade relations with the Middle East? Fethi Mansouri: Australia’s interest in and relationship with the Middle East was initially shaped by its early involvement in the imperial defense system led by Britain, which […]

The Arab Spring has focused attention on democracy’s prospects in the Middle East. But the Arab world is not the only region at a democratic crossroads. In Africa and Asia, young democracies are coming under pressure to consolidate gains. In Europe, the financial crisis is putting postcommunist democratic institutions under strain. And in Latin America, a diverse variety of democratic governance remains healthy, but fragile. This WPR special report examines the state of democracy. Below are links to each article in this special report, which subscribers can read in full. Not a subscriber?Try our subscription service free for two weeks. […]