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Book Review Roundtable: Lost Opportunities for Peace in the Middle East

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Gulf War’s Afterlife: Dilemmas, Missed Opportunities, and the Post-Cold War Order Undone

The Gulf War’s Afterlife: Dilemmas, Missed Opportunities, and the Post-Cold War Order Undone

The Gulf War is often remembered as a “good war,” a high-tech conflict that quickly and cleanly achieved its objectives. Yet, new archival evidence sheds light on the extended fallout from the war and challenges this neat narrative. The Gulf War left…

Book Review Roundtable: Iran Reframed

Book Review Roundtable: Iran Reframed

1. Introduction: Selling a Revolution Gregory Brew On Aug. 19, 1978, hundreds of people packed into the Cinema Rex theater in Abadan, Iran. The movie that night was The Deer, a 1974 film by acclaimed Iranian director Masoud Kimiai. Twenty minutes into the…

The Simulation of Scandal: Hack-and-Leak Operations, the Gulf States, and U.S. Politics

The Simulation of Scandal: Hack-and-Leak Operations, the Gulf States, and U.S. Politics

Four hack-and-leak operations in U.S. politics between 2016 and 2019, publicly attributed to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, should be seen as the “simulation of scandal" — deliberate attempts to direct moral judgment against their…

Policy Roundtable: The Future of the Middle East

Policy Roundtable: The Future of the Middle East

What does the future hold for the Middle East and U.S. policy in the region? We asked a group of scholars and practitioners to weigh in and discuss.

Book Review Roundtable: Arab-Israeli Diplomacy Under Carter

Book Review Roundtable: Arab-Israeli Diplomacy Under Carter

We asked a group of experts to review Jørgen Jensehaugen's book, "Arab-Israeli Diplomacy Under Carter: The US, Israel, and the Palestinians," which asks whether President Jimmy Carter could have done more.

Book Review Roundtable: What to Make of the Suez Canal Crisis

Book Review Roundtable: What to Make of the Suez Canal Crisis

What lessons does the Suez Canal crisis hold for policymakers today? We assembled a roundtable to review the recently published book "Suez Deconstructed" to tackle that question.