MENA
Choosing Orbits: China’s Space Diplomacy in the Middle East
China’s engagement with Africa, Asia, and the Middle East has drawn significant attention from the international community and American policymakers. One understudied dimension of this engagement is China’s expanding space diplomacy in the Middle East.…
Iran’s Nuclear Tightrope: Between Power and Peril
The article discussed is “What Good Is a Nuclear Threshold Capability? Lessons from Iran’s Nuclear Program and Recent Regional Conflict.” YouTube · Spotify · Apple Podcasts · Amazon Music Hosts: Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Ryan Vest…
What Good Is a Nuclear Threshold Capability? Lessons from Iran’s Nuclear Program and Recent Regional Conflict
The 2023–25 conflict in the Middle East was the first regional conflagration in which Iran was a nuclear threshold state. In theory, nuclear latency can confer strategic benefits, as Iran’s adversaries could be deterred from escalation or pressure by the…
The Democratization of Violence in the Greater Middle East
Dr. Carter Malkasian joins us to explore how the "democratization of violence"—driven by the availability of assault rifles and explosives—empowered non-state actors and challenged state authority throughout the Cold War. The conversation also addresses…
Wars of the Greater Middle East, 1945–92
This article examines the history of war and society during the Cold War in the Middle East and parts of South Asia—two regions linked by geography, history, and culture. Few other regions have been so touched by war, or so fixed the attention of world…
Bringing Politics Back In: The Neglected Explanation of the Oct. 7 Surprise Attack
Civil-military relations are a neglected dimension in the explanation of surprise. I integrate the worldviews and political priorities of civilian leaders with the psychological processes and organizational pathologies within the military and intelligence…
Book Review Roundtable: Lost Opportunities for Peace in the Middle East
Debates in Washington over how to respond to wars involving Israel have a long history. In this review, our contributors consider what lessons to learn from Galen Jackson's book "A Lost Peace: Great Power Politics and the Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1967–1979."
Restrained Insurgents: Why Competition Between Armed Groups Doesn’t Always Produce Outbidding
Contemporary civil wars frequently involve numerous armed groups. How do armed groups compete with rival organizations for popular support? Existing research posits that militant organizations operating in the same conflict will often compete for support by…
The Origins of the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait Reconsidered
For over 30 years, policymakers and scholars have taken for granted that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait simply to seize its oil. That narrative misleadingly suggests that the Iraqi invasion happened to coincide with, but was unrelated to, the dawn of the…
Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? The Debate at 20 Years
Twenty years after the Iraq War began, scholarship on its causes can be usefully divided into the security school and the hegemony school. Security school scholars argue that the main reason the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq was to safeguard the…
Oil for Atoms: The 1970s Energy Crisis and Nuclear Proliferation in the Persian Gulf
The 1970s energy crisis, which rocked global markets and caused oil prices to skyrocket, had a number of far-reaching and unexpected consequences, many of which have become the focus of academic study in recent years. However, one topic that has eluded…
Book Review Roundtable: The Muslim Brotherhood and the West
In this book review roundtable, our reviewers discuss Martyn Frampton's "The Muslim Brotherhood and the West," in which Frampton gives a comprehensive history of the organization through the lens of the West.