Israel’s rapidly deteriorating relations with Russia contain a message for other Middle Eastern powers: attempting to remain on the sidelines of the conflict in Ukraine risks falling in between the cracks.
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan was a geopolitical watershed. Its shockwaves continue to reverberate and are magnified by the wars in Ukraine and Yemen.
When US Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III declared that Washington wanted to see Russia so “weakened" that it would no longer be able to invade a neighbouring state, he lifted the veil on US goals in Ukraine. He also held out the prospect of a long-term US-Russian contest for power and influence.
Russia and the Nordic countries’ pavilions at this year’s Venice Biennale, the world’s most prestigious art exhibition, project two different concepts of civilisation, nationalism, and sovereignty that have come to blows in Ukraine.
Rather than push for an immediate improvement of strained relations with the United States, Saudi Arabia appears to be looking forward to a time when US President Joe Biden's wings may be clipped.
Middle Eastern states see their ability narrow to walk a fine line in the Ukraine conflict. Israel is a case in point as tensions with Iran in Syria and Palestinians in Jerusalem flare, and both Russia and the United States signal impatience with its attempts to straddle the fence.
Anti-Iranian protests in Afghanistan and the stabbing of three clerics in Iran threaten to cast a shadow over Iranian efforts to capitalise on the fallout in Central Asia of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine spotlights seemingly widening differences between the United States and its closest Middle Eastern allies, sparking eulogies for an era of bygone American regional dominance.
Russia’s suspension from the United Nations Human Rights Council was long overdue, even without the mass killing of innocent civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.A country that poisons or otherwise does away with its critics at home and abroad and stifles freedom of the press, expression, and association should not qualify for a seat on the Council.A quick look at current and past membership in the Council explains why the UN General Assembly vote to suspend Russia, like multiple aspects of the Ukraine war, raises the spectre of double standards.
Two recent publications have fuelled debate about democratic cooperation with autocratic governments in general, and Saudi Arabia in particular, in the wake of the Ukraine war. It is a debate that challenges US President Joe Biden’s framing of the conflict as a struggle between good and evil, democracy and autocracy.
This is Qatar's year to put its best foot forward.A major producer of natural gas, the tiny Gulf state is under the magnifying glass as it enters the final phase of hosting the 2022 World Cup later this year and emerges as a potential part of efforts to reduce European dependence on Russian energy.
A straightforward message emerged from this week’s meeting in the Negev desert of the foreign ministers of four Arab countries, Israel and the United States: Israel is key to the security of Gulf autocracies and continued US engagement in the Middle East.
Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis (Routledge, 2021) goes to key questions of governance at the heart of developments in the Muslim world.Warren looks at the issue through the lens of two of the foremost Middle Eastern religious protagonists and their backers: Egyptian-born Qatari national Yusuf a Qaradawi, widely seen as advocating an Islamic concept of democracy, and UAE-backed Abdullah Bin Bayyah who legitimizes in religious terms autocratic rule in the UAE as well as the Muslim world at large.
Indonesia has emerged as a primary battleground between democratic and autocratic visions of Islam in the 21st century.
Three scantily dressed samba dancers wearing traditional feather headdresses laid bare the limits of social liberalisation in Saud Arabia when they earlier this year danced on the streets of Jizan, a historically conservative city on the border with Yemen.
Short of the war, the destruction, and the massive loss of life, Ukraine is in many ways similar to the Gulf crisis in which the UAE, together with Saudi Arabia, led a 3.5-year-long economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar that, like the Russian invasion, was designed to hollow out the sovereignty of a neighbouring state.
Struggling to remain on the sidelines of the 21st century’s watershed war in Ukraine, Middle Eastern nations are discovering that they may be fighting their battles with an outdated toolkit.
The Russian Orthodox Church blesses rather than fires weapons. In doing so, it has emerged as a powerful weapon in its own right in President Vladimir Putin’s civilisationalist arsenal.
Two diametrically opposed visions of moderate Islam have emerged as major Muslim powers battle to define the soul of their faith in the 21st century in a struggle that is as much about geopolitics as it is about autocratic survival and visualisations of a future civilisation and world order.
Emiratis celebrated their failure to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the United Nations Security Council as the end of an era in which the Gulf state took its foreign policy cues from the United States. However, the Emiratis may be celebrating prematurely.