On the eve of the US presidential elections, Chatham House, Britain’s leading analytical center on international relations, published an article by Flynt Leverett, professor of the University of Pennsylvania, titled
US Election Note Middle East Policy After 2016
. Leverett dwells on the future of the US Middle East policies. Leverett, a former member of the National Security Council and of the CIA, paints a fairly worrying picture of Washington soon reconsidering its policies in ...
... that has recently become woefully deficient. Even more intriguing, some of the most vivid recent examples of that degrading relationship have been exhibited within the UNSC itself. On the general business front, Russia will see issues dominating the Middle East and Africa at the top of the schedule: · developments in Syria; · settlements and their legality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; · implementation of resolution 1559 in Lebanon; · ongoing hostilities in Yemen; ...
A year ago Russia announced the beginning of its military campaign in Syria which has become the first military operation of the Russian Armed Force in the Middle East. Being one of the major external actors in the Syrian conflict Russia has been staying away from direct involvement for four years. Interfering in the Syrian civil war upon the request of Bashar Assad’s government on September 30, 2015 Moscow ...
... 2016
Rating
Country
Points
Change on previous year
1
Hong Kong
88,6
-1,0
2
Singapore
87,8
-1,6
3
New Zealand
81,6
-0,5
18
Bahrain
74,3
+0,9
153
Russia
50,6
-1,5
Source
:
www.heritage.org/index/Country/Bahrain
Bahrain is the highest ranked of the 17 Middle East countries in terms of economic freedom (
Table 2
).
Table 2.
Regional Economic Freedom Ratings in 2016
Rating
Country
Points
∆ compared with 2015
1
Bahrain
74,3
0,9
2
UAE
72,6
0,2
3
Qatar
70,7
-0,1
3
Israel
70,7
0,2
5
Jordan
68,3
-1,0
Source
...
On September 23-24, 2016 Muscat (Oman) hosted a meeting of the “Middle East Dialogue” group – an international expert forum to discuss the pressing issues of security and development in the Arab world. The event was organized by the Washington Middle East Institute.
The meeting was attended by experts,...
... the Democratic candidate, and the most conservative part of the Republic establishment are in the way), isolationist moods in the US will grow.
A long way uphill
REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
Igor Ivanov:
Is a Collective Security System Possible in
the Middle East?
Summarizing the results of the antiterrorist campaign that started on September 11, 2001, we can draw the following conclusions.
1. Terrorism is on the rise; the number of local Islamist groups fighting (sometimes successfully) against their ...
Review: “Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari’a Law” by Sadakat Kadri’
At a time when extremist groups such as the Islamic State that claim to be seeking Islamic rule in the Middle East threaten global stability, the world is becoming more and more suspicious of Islam itself. Some have gone as far as to suggest that the Shari'a law which extremists seem to have instrumentalized is a malicious legal system that has no right ...
Longstanding relations between Moscow and the Kurds has provided Russia with a “Kurdish card”, that is, the ability to modulate its support to various Kurdish national ambitions throughout the Middle East, depending on what the Kremlin was seeking to obtain from Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The current Syrian crisis is no exception and has promoted the Russian-Kurdish (PYD[1]) partnership, especially during the period of harsh tensions between ...
... and RIAC. The event was moderated by Director of Arab and Islamic Studies at RAS Institute for Oriental Studies Vasily Kuznetsov.
The discussants focused on interaction between Russia and the Gulf States in settlement of the statehood crises in the Middle East. In his opening remarks RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov underlined that relations between Russia and Gulf States should go beyond tactical limits and become strategic. In his turn, Director of the Saudi Center for Media and Arab-Russian ...
... representatives, Britain’s Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot of France went down in history as the authors of the first hastily put together version to colonially divide the Asian part of Ottoman Turkey.
Sykes started travelling in the Middle East at the age of 11 with his parents, the eccentric Sir Tatton Sykes, who, according to his biographers, was only interested in church architecture, maintaining a constant body temperature and milk pudding, as well as the alcoholic Lady Jessica....
