Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From MESH Admin Walter Laqueur contributes a new paper to MESH’s Middle East Papers series, on Russia’s Muslim strategy. That strategy, barely coherent, is riddled with contradictions, as Russia vacillates between resentment of the American-led world order and fear of an ascendant Islam. For now, it’s the resentment against the West that dominates the Russian [...]

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From Michael Reynolds The other week over at ForeignPolicy.com, in a post titled “The ‘safe haven’ myth,” Stephen M. Walt offered six reasons to be skeptical of the argument that a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan would pose a significant threat to the United States. On the same website, Peter Bergen rebutted Walt. Running through Walt’s six reasons [...]

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From Mark N. Katz The recent Russian intervention in Georgia has made an American rapprochement with Iran highly desirable both for the United States and for the West as a whole. Israel has long opposed such a rapprochement, but this would also serve its interests too. Here’s why: Europe has become increasingly dependent on Russia [...]

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From Michael Reynolds The outbreak of the Russian-Georgian War earlier this month apparently caught Ankara as poorly prepared as it caught Washington. The Turkish Foreign Ministry’s section dealing with the Caucasus reportedly was virtually unstaffed. The head of the section was in Mosul on temporary assignment, the section’s number-two spot is empty and has been [...]

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From Malik Mufti Georgia’s attempt to gain control of South Ossetia by force on August 8 was ill-considered for several reasons. First, it led to a punishing Russian counter-attack that has crippled Georgia’s military capability. Second, it reduced to virtually nil Georgia’s chances of restoring its sovereignty over South Ossetia and the other breakaway region [...]

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