As I write this, gun battles are raging in Sanaa between military units loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh and other units that have joined the opposition. Yemen now teeters on the verge of civil war.
During the last nine months, a significant (...)
PRINCETON: Saudi Arabia is widely perceived as leading the counter-revolution against the Arab Spring uprisings. In reality, the Kingdom's response is centered, as its foreign and domestic policy has long been, on “stability.” The Saudis don't want (...)
Many pundits have rushed to the conclusion that the death of Osama Bin Laden and the uprisings of the "Arab spring" spell the end of Islamism and the dawn of a new era of democratic politics in the Arab world.
The Arab spring revolutions have (...)
PRINCETON: The Arab world has entered the most dramatic period in its modern history. Oppressive regimes are being swept away, as Arab people finally take their fate into their own hands.
The excitement of the moment, however, does not tell us (...)
PRINCETON: Although Al-Qaeda's leadership, beliefs, and ideology are rooted in Saudi Arabia, the organization has been all but crushed in the Kingdom by a government policy that combines a big carrot and an even bigger stick. The attempted (...)
In Riyadh last March, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia decorated American Vice President Dick Cheney with the Kingdom's Order of Merit. This gesture elicited hundreds of Internet postings from Arabs condemning the award as treachery and lamenting the (...)