مقالات مختارة - Chosen Articles

How New Rivalries Are Transforming the Strategic Landscape   S ince the middle of the twentieth century, the Middle East has seen regional hegemons come and go. The 1950s and 1960s were Egypt’s era: Cairo was the Arab World’s capital and the home of its charismatic postcolonial leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. But Israel’s victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the 1967 war; Nasser’s death, in 1970; and the spike in oil prices after the 1973 war brought that era to an end. As millions of Egyptians and other Arabs left home for the oil-wealthy Gulf, the gravity of Arab politics went with them. As the Gulf’s fortunes rose, especially in Saudi Arabia, so too did Riyadh’s political clout. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, however, and the subsequent U.S.-led war, which was launched from Saudi soil, made clear that oil could buy Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, a lot of influence, but they still needed American protection. After the Gu...

Despite having signed a peace treaty with Israel, Egypt's armed forces continue to receive thousands of tanks and hundreds of planes from Washington. "There's no conceivable scenario in which they'd need all those tanks short of an alien invasion," declares Shana Marshall of George Washington University. Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the attendant weakening of the radical Arab camp, and three-and-a-half decades after the conclusion of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the removal of the foremost threat to Egyptian security, Cairo's continued acquisition of thousands of tanks and hundreds of fighting aircraft seems to make no sense. Yet Washington's withholding of $1.3 billion in annual military aid following the Egyptian army's July 2013 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi sparked an angry retort, with the military regime threatening to turn to its former Russian patron. Why does Cairo continue to adhere...

مدخل حينما تنتهي مباراة في كرة القدم بين أحد فرق القمة وأحد فرق القاع في الدوري المصري بالتعادل غالباً ما يصف المعلق النتيجة بأنها تعادل بطعم الهزيمة لفريق القمة وبطعم الفوز لفريق القاع. ذلك أن المنافسة/المعركة لا تدور في الفراغ بل في واقع يخص الفريقين وأهدافهما من المعركة وبالتالي فإن الفوز والهزيمة يتم تحديدهما طبقاً لأهداف كل فريق قبل المعركة وما أسفرت عنه المعركة. فإن كان هدف فريق القاع من الدخول في المباراة مع فريق القمة هو التعادل فإن نهاية المباراة بالتعادل يُعد فوزا والعكس بالنسبة  لفريق القمة، الذي يّعد التعادل بالنسبة له هزيمة. حين نتفاعل إذن مع ما يعتبره الجمهور الأعظم لثورة يناير هزيمة لهم وللثورة لابد أولاً أن نفهم سياق المعركة التي أسفرت عن تلك الهزيمة، أي أن نفهم طبيعة الفرق المتصارعة في تلك المعركة وأهدافها، وهو ما سيفضي إلى أن ثورة يناير لم تنهزم حيث أنها لم تكن تخطط للانتصار وهو ما سأحاول أن أصل إليه من خلال هذا المقال. السياسة كصراع يعرّف الفيلسوف الإيطالي ماكيافيللي – أحد آباء النظرية السياسية الحديثة – السياسة على أنها تحصيل القوة، وا...

A 2006 photograph shows Egyptian Brig. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (center) in a group picture of the International Fellows class of 2006 of the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. His 5,000-word English- language term paper, "Democracy in the Middle East," provides candid views of the man who would soon and unexpectedly become the president of Egypt. Former air marshal Husni Mubarak, now 86, had ruled Egypt for thirty years when his military colleagues forced him from office in 2011. Three years and many upheavals later, those same colleagues replaced his successor with retired field marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, 59. The country, in short, made a grand round-trip, going from military ruler to military ruler, simply dropping down a generation. This return raises basic questions: After all the hubbub, how much has actually changed? Does Sisi differ from Mubarak, for example, in such crucial matters as attitudes toward democracy and Islam, or is ...

Abdel Fattah Sisi, center, has taken serious steps toward reforming the ailing Egyptian economy. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)   By Ahmed H. Zewail Some members of Congress have criticized Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi lately and called for a reduction in or elimination of U.S. military aid as a way of punishing his administration. After meeting with Sisi in Cairo recently and talking to a wide range of citizens there, I have come to understand why most Egyptians now support him. And I believe that cutting foreign aid to Egypt at this point would harm the U.S.-Egypt relationship and have serious consequences for the Middle East. History illustrates the danger. In 1955, in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the United States agreed to provide funding to help build the Aswan Dam and create a source of hydroelectric power considered pivotal to Egypt's industrialization. Then, just months later, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles became...