In the Current Journal
Editorial
Now that it is unlikely a two-state arrangement will be the "solution" to the conflict in Israel/Palestine, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is talking it up. And the Arab League has helpfully offered to adjust its 2002 peace proposal to allow for flexibility on the 1967 boundaries. Ironically, however, Haaretz reports that Fatah leaders are now backing one state ...
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The Future of Israel and Palestine: Expanding the Debate
STEPHEN M. WALT, professor of International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
In his essay on democracy, John Stuart Mill famously argued that the liberty of ...
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Israel Needs a New Map
In November 2010, I spent a long and fascinating evening with a dozen veteran settlers from the ideological core of the movement previously known as Gush Emunim. I ...
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Turkey / the Kurds / Iran
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Reopening Turkey's Closed Kurdish Opening?
The effort to find a solution to the Kurdish problem in Turkey is nothing new. It has been continuing ever since the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers' ...
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The Kurdish Mirage: A Success Story in Doubt
The controversy surrounding the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 will continue for years to come, not only over its justification but also over its outcomes. The idealistic ...
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Turkish-Israeli Reset: Business As Usual?
In his studies on alliances, Stephen Walt provided a list of variables that can lead to the endurance or collapse of alliances in the international system. Walt's variables ...
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Turkey's Graduation from the International Monetary Fund
The Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund (IMF, or the Fund) underline the "temporary" nature of its financial assistance to its members. Nevertheless, repeat lending became ...
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Revolutionary Iran's 1979 Endeavor in Lebanon
No sooner had the ancien régime fallen in Iran in 1979, than cracks began to appear in the revolutionary unity that had brought it down. Questions over the ...
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Syria and the Spring
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Russia and the Conflict in Syria: Four Myths
Russia has played little or no active role in the Arab uprisings that began in 2011, with one notable exception: Syria. In this one case, Moscow ...
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Order, Freedom and Chaos: Sovereignties in Syria
My pseudonymous friend Musa al-Gharbi argued in these pages that without perfect knowledge of the definitive demographics of the deaths and politics of the Syrian rebellion, well-intentioned outsiders ...
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Creating Democrats? Testing the Arab Spring
This study examines the relationship between U.S. democracy promotion (DP) and democratization in the Arab world. DP has been an important U.S. policy in the Arab Middle East ...
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The Arab Cold War Revisited: The Regional Impact of the Arab Uprising
Starting in 2011, a series of uprisings triggered domestic changes in several countries in the Arab world that affected regional and international politics. The aim of this ...
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Book Reviews
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Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
During the administration of George W. Bush, Elliott Abrams served as deputy national security advisor and as the National Security Council (NSC) staff member handling Israeli-Palestinian issues daily. ...
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After Bin Laden: Al-Qaeda, the Next Generation
With Osama bin Laden's death in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011, al-Qaeda lost not only its figurehead and once-useful recruiting tool, but also a sense of direction born ...
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An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban / Al-Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010
October 7, 2001, marks the beginning of a seemingly endless war of attrition between U.S. forces and the Afghan Taliban. The World Trade Center attacks that shook the ...
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Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gulen Movement
Ten years after co-editing his first book on the Gülen movement, Hakan Yavuz, a leading scholar on Turkish society, brings his academic prowess and careful observations to bear ...
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