March 13, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Thérèse Postel TOPICS: Foreign Policy, Responding to Upheaval in the Arab World
Since February of 2011, thousands of protestors have hit the streets of Bahrain, demanding democratic change and equality under the law. The Al-Khalifa regime has reponded with shocking force, often using Western weapons, and has shown little desire to engage in dialogue with the opposition or implement reforms.
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March 11, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Thanassis Cambanis TOPICS: Foreign Policy, Responding to Upheaval in the Arab World
For the first time, a couple in Lebanon has defied centuries of law and practice by getting married in their own country under civil law. Their wedding is more than a symbolic act of protest; it’s a carefully constructed legal challenge to the common practice across the Middle East of leaving marriage and all other personal affairs to clerics and their religious code.
If the couple succeeds at forcing the Lebanese government to officially recognize their marriage, the state will have to draft a whole raft of new laws to deal with everything from inheritance and custody to voting rights, since the couple has removed religious sect from their identity cards. It’s a long-overdue initiative from the embattled secularists of the Middle East. All over, clerics have had the momentum. In the Arab world, almost all states leave personal matters for the majority to Islamic law and for minorities to their own sectarian courts. Secular Jews in Israel have long bristled that marriage and conversion solely fall under the authority of the ultra-Orthodox sect, and there is no secular civil marriage. Especially since the Arab uprisings, religious forces have had the momentum. But there’s a secular response, and it hopefully will play a bigger part than it has until now, with secular activists so off balance that they’ve even stopped calling themselves “secular,” preferring the less incendiary term “civil.”
READ MOREFebruary 4, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: The Century Foundation TOPICS: Foreign Policy, Additional Focus, News About TCF
NEW YORK – The Century Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest think tanks, announced a promotion and location change today for two of the organization’s foreign policy experts:
Fellow Michael Wahid Hanna has been named a senior fellow and will continue his research and work on broader Middle East and South Asia.
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January 29, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Morton Abramowitz TOPICS: Foreign Policy, Responding to Upheaval in the Arab World
A version of these comments were delivered at the Migration Policy Institute, January 14, 2013.
Leaving aside the continuing Congo and Sudan atrocities, the two-year Syrian humanitarian disaster—with already about 10–15 percent of the population displaced—is the biggest such crisis since the second Iraq war. There is an irony here. Syria received the brunt of the Iraqi exodus, and did reasonably well in managing that disaster. Indeed, in 2009, I was part of a delegation that visited Assad to discuss the needs of Iraqi refugees, and at that time he was much the humanitarian!
The Syrian situation is fraught with enormous uncertainty, and only short-term response prevails. No one knows when Assad will go away, or where he will flee to; he apparently is not listening to the cognoscenti who tell him that he is finished. The unending fighting is producing an ever-growing number of internally displaced Syrians as well as refugees. The UN now expects that Syrian refugees this year will reach one million—an increase of some 400,000. Millions more will struggle for survival in violence-wracked areas inside Syria, mostly dependent on the help of outside support, delivered by courageous Syrian and foreign organizations.
January 28, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Morton Abramowitz TOPICS: Foreign Policy, Responding to Upheaval in the Arab World
Turkey’s political discussion changes quickly. Yesterday it was mostly Syria. Today it is making peace with Kurds. That has been a boon to prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political standing—at least for the moment.
2012 marked the AKP’s ten-year anniversary as the ruling party, a rare feat in Turkish politics. The party has been one of the few constants in a new, more vital Turkey. But it was a difficult year for Erdogan because of Syria’s unending civil war. After a year of intense criticism over his handling of Syria, including from members of his own party, Erdogan’s political fortunes seemed to be suffering.
READ MOREJanuary 24, 2013 COMMENTARY BY: Thanassis Cambanis TOPICS: Foreign Policy, National Security, Responding to Upheaval in the Arab World
JOIN THANASSIS CAMBANIS and author FRED KAPLAN in a LIVE TWITTER CHAT on WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30 at 1:00PM EST - Use #TheInsurgents to join, ask questions, follow the conversation.
The Pentagon finally learned to embrace new ideas. Can its short-lived revolution in thinking survive the coming period of austerity and retrenchment?
The American military has maintained global dominance in part by being all things to all people. Blessed with a Brobdingnagian budget, it has been able to prepare for all kinds of war, all at the same time. Faced now with cuts after a decade of open-handed war funding, the Pentagon has raised the alarm about readiness. The joint chiefs in a unanimous letter in January complained to the president that “we are on the brink of creating a hollow force.”
The debate over the size and mission of the military often obsesses about questions of degree: should the US be able to fight two major wars at the same time? Should it design a force that can fight many small wars?
(Cambanis's New York Times review of The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War)
(Cambanis and TCF fellow Michael Cohen debate The Insurgents and post-invasion Iraq)
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In the first years of the new century, an assertive foreign policy took a toll on the cultivated role of the U.S. as a responsible global leader. The Century Foundation's work in this area provides perspective on the international difficulties the U.S. is facing today, while providing policy recommendations to promote the nation's security interests. Our research and analysis focuses on effectively responding to challenges in the Middle East and Pakistan, as well as responding to international crime.
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Amy B. Dean is a social entrepreneur, author, and progressive activist, with roots in the American labor movement.
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