The new draft constitution whose fate Egyptian voters will decide in a few days is a relatively better document than its short-lived predecessor, but is ultimately disappointing and less than what could have been realistically achieved to enhance (...)
When Barack Obama addressed the National Defense University in March 2011 to justify the attacks that the US led on Gaddafi troops, he made a reference to US values and responsibilities “to our fellow human beings under such circumstances.” To (...)
In his final days before he left the US State Department as assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs in November 1999, Martin Indyk told Arab journalists that human rights concerns were usually on the agenda in meetings with senior (...)
Secretary Hillary Clinton made the argument in early February “that the right path was to pressure Mubarak for change ... but not to pull the rug from beneath him.” She tried to balance strategic security interests in the one hand and soft human (...)
President Obama made it clear that, unlike Bush, he was not interested in imposing a change in governance systems from outside. Obama's senior Middle East adviser was Dennis Ross, a staunch realist. Even those who have a strong position on human (...)
It has been a truism for decades to attribute the drivers of US foreign policy in the Middle East to two realist drivers; free flow of oil from the major Gulf producers and Israel's security, with the latter seen as part of the US power projection (...)
Before we jump into the horse-trading that marked the making of the US foreign policy on the Arab Spring in 2011-2013, it helps to scan and present the chief actors in Washington DC, even if quickly
The authority to formulate the US foreign policy (...)
I spent a few months this year studying how the US foreign policy machine has been responding to the avalanche of developments in the Middle East since December 2010 when the ostensibly stable region erupted into turmoil that brought its peoples to (...)
The ground I was standing on was littered with broken glass, which less than two hours earlier had been the windows of the cafeteria where we had drunk our morning coffee. I couldn't take my eyes off a silver watch lying about two yards away from (...)
When a cruel patriarch who lacks genuine fatherly feeling despite a deceptive façade departs, his children feel lost.
They look around for a father figure to adopt them and issue the orders they are accustomed to receiving – even if grudgingly. (...)