PSC 663-2 Fall 2022 Policy and Planning in the Middle East (original) (raw)

"America’s Policy Challenges in the Contemporary Middle East"

Thinking Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Challenges to U.S. Foreign Policy, 2014

Co-authored chapter in: Thinking Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Challenges to U.S. Foreign Policy. Published in 2014 by Johns Hopkins University Press (ISBN: 9781421415291), pp. 93-107.

PSPA 311 International Politics and the Middle East (readings)

This seminar explores how the politics of the Middle East, US policy in the Middle East, and the Middle East as a regional system have been understood and represented through the lens of international relations theory and scholarship. The seminar develops a multilayered approach to understanding the politics of security/insecurity and the shifting regional (dis)order by integrating the role of system-level global powers, regional and transnational actors, and domestic socio- economic and ideological forces to traces shifting patterns since the end of World War II.

It's Complicated: Geopolitical and Strategic Dynamics in the Contemporary Middle East

Orbis, 2018

The Middle East is a complex system, not comprehensible through simplistic, "single factor" thinking. Global dynamics-a re-emergent multipolar power system, anti-globalism and xenophobia, the decline in U.S. willingness to lead and engage-interact corrosively with deep regional trends. The West has given up on engaging or changing the Middle East, and now wants to quarantine and wall it off. The important actors in the region today sit on its margins: Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Israel. With Egypt and Iraq sidelined, Arab leadership is left to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who struggle with it. Washington avoids the burden of leadership, which its rivals assume, while on Palestine and Iran, has been activist and even disruptive. American policy is too focused on Iran and the Islamic State; Russia and Turkey, which may be greater challenges over the long term, are more significant and influential players in the region than the United States. good part of the punditry and policy advocacy on the Middle East belongs to the school which author Philip Tetlock calls (after Isaiah Berlin) "hedgehogs": those who "know one big thing," aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that "one big thing" into new domains, and reach for formulaic solutions to ill-defined problems. 1 The current situation in the Middle East has been attributed variously to the influence of single actors or trends. The list of "big things" includes: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Picot, Iran, Israel and the Occupation, Vladimir Putin, the Muslim Brotherhood, the religion of Islam, the Islamic State (IS), the Shi'i-Sunni split, or democratization-just to name the most popular. While this strategy is analytically handy and neat, it is onedimensional, and does not advance a deeper understanding of what is going on in the Middle East nor does it act as a guide for effective policy. To use a Star Trek metaphor, the Middle East can be best visualized as a game of multi-dimensional chess: there are many things going on simultaneously, all of which

America's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East

2010

Since the end of the Cold War, we're had a lot of very instructive experience in the Middle East. Back in 2010, I compiled the real-time analyses I had made of our policies and their results in a book titled America's Misadventures in the Middle East. The book holds up well as an explanation for the origins and evolution of most of our difficulties in the region. Unfortunately, both the situation in the Middle East and our position there have continued to deteriorate. This has led me to write to a new book, America's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East, which picks up where the first book left off. I'd like to thank everyone who has said nice things about it. What we're up to now in the region raises the question of how much, if anything, we have learned from all the things that have gone wrong. But it does seem to me that we can confidently draw at least five conclusions: (1) when people in high places twist intelligence to confirm their political convic...

Symposium: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Future of the Middle East

Middle East Policy, 2014

The U.S is one of the foreign nations that have been deeply involved in the affairs of the Middle East region, particularly in Iran. The threat posed by terrorism to international peace and stability was one of the reasons why the U.S thought it wise to be involved in the affairs of the Middle East. Besides the insecurity concerns, laid the interests of the U.S in the region that is known to have vast reservoirs of oil and the leading producers of the source of energy in the world. According to the U.S, it would have been foolhardy to let the region slip into an era of political unrest as the rest of the world watched, yet the region is a source of livelihood and economies of different nations the world over because of their vast oil deposits. Consequently, the U.S drafted several measures and policies that, according to them, were aimed at restoring peace and political stability in the region. These included coalition building, supporting peace ventures, and provision of humanitarian aid. In their policies, they believed that a stable Middle East region would ensure a more stable world than was witnessed before their involvement. Despite their involvement in trying to find lasting peace in the region, the U.S has also encountered several challenges along their way that made their peace efforts slip every moment they thought they were close to finding lasting peace in the region.

PSC 449 International Relations of the Middle East Fall 2022 Syllabus

2022

What role should the US play in the Middle East? For over two decades the US has sought to forge, through diplomatic and military means, regional order in the Middle East. The legacies of this effort are unclear as scholars and policymakers still debate what interests were at stake and what goals were achieved. Regardless, today US policymakers and citizens face the pressing question of what the future role of the US should be in the region. Should it withdraw commitments from a region of declining strategic importance (and maybe refocus on great power rivalry), or should it, instead, strengthen ties with regional allies (like Saudi Arabia and Israel) to contain remaining threats and the influence of rival external powers? To better understand the stakes and challenges, this seminar examines US efforts at ordering the region and explores the impact of past and ongoing conflicts on both the security interests of regional states as well as the “human security” of societies across the region. It then considers the changing dynamics of regional politics and considers alternative options for the US policy towards the region.