by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman*

Where does Tunisia, the unlikely igniter of the Middle Eastern upheavals, stand on the democratic transition scale three months after the overthrow of the long reigning autocrat Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali? And can the country, which stood (mostly by choice) at the margins of Arab political life since achieving independence in 1956, serve as a democratizing exemplar for other Arab states?

Blazing the Democratic Path

The answer to the second question seems fairly clear. As early as 1991, Samuel Huntington identified what he termed one of the most important global political developments of the late twentieth century — a third wave of democratization among thirty previously nondemocratic states.[1] There was no Arab state on his list, yet he identified Tunisia as a prime candidate for future democratization owing to its pace of economic growth, educated middle class, and concurrent liberalization measures undertaken by the country’s new president, Ben Ali.

(more…)

by Lee Smith*

Trailing the wave of revolutions that began sweeping through the Arabic-speaking Middle East this January, I recently traveled in the region, visiting some of the capitals where what we have come to call the “Arab Spring” has hit.

In Cairo, I kept company with the handful of Egyptian political activists from the social media generation who were skeptical of a revolution that had already started to show its populist roots. In Manama, I met with members of the mainstream opposition movement who contended that, contrary to their government’s claims, the Shiites of Bahrain wanted nothing to do with Tehran: In the 1970 U.N. poll about the emirate’s future, Bahrainis expressed the wish to remain part of an independent Arab state under the ruling al-Khalifa family but demanded their political rights — and still do. And from Beirut, I watched another uprising kick off over the anti-Lebanon mountain range in Damascus as many Lebanese quietly hoped that the revolution there would do away with the Assad regime while fearing the repercussions could not help but come back on them.

(more…)

By Barry Rubin

“Please release me let me go
for I don’t love you anymore
To waste our lives would be a sin
Release me and let me love again.”

–”Please Release Me Let Me Go”

Perhaps the most important policymaking development of the last month has been President Barack Obama’s increasingly visible loss of a lot of the foreign policy elite, including considerable segments of the State and Defense departments. Why this is happening is one of the most interested-and highly neglected-stories of this period.

Consider the factors involved:

(more…)

By Gary Gerofsky

Ayn Rand wrote a book which I read long ago called The Virtue of Selfishness which makes clear that altruism has many flaws and that acting in one’s own self-interest benefits not only the individual but, in the end, all society. I was intrigued by the book because it convincingly broke some sacrosanct ethical guidelines that had been drilled into my own moral conscience. Unnaturally and selflessly sacrificing one’s own beliefs and interests to benefit others can sometimes backfire and do damage to both the individual, those whom the person is trying to help and those who are part of his/her life.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

Oriana Fallaci died almost five years ago but her writings live on. She won fame especially for the knowledge, cunning, and feistiness of her interviews with world leaders such as Yasir Arafat, Robert Kennedy, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Ariel Sharon, Lech Walesa, and the Dalai Lama. A collection of some of the best are out this month in a new book in English, Interviews with History and Conversations with Power” (Rizzoli New York).

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu grandiloquently proclaimed a few days ago that, “If the world is on fire, Turkey is the firefighter. Turkey is assuming the leading role for stability in the Middle East.”

(more…)

by Raymond Ibrahim*

President Obama’s recent explanation for militarily engaging Libya is yet another example of how U.S. leaders increasingly rationalize their policies via sentimental and idealistic platitudes, rather than reality or the long view — or just plain common sense.

(more…)

by Steven Shamrak

After many years of advocating for Zionism and the rights of the Jewish people to live on their ancestral land, nobody can say that I am a Qaddafi sympathizer. During decades of his reign in Libya he has proven himself as an egomaniac dictator who has skilfully combined, as all Arab rulers do, brutality with tribal autonomy in order to stay in power. He used terror and Islamic terrorism, as most of the Muslim despots are guilty of this “cultural behaviour” and have been sponsoring Islamic terrorism openly or in stealth, in order to raise his status among Muslim leaders!

(more…)

A briefing by Dirk Vandewalle*

On March 11, before the United States and its allies launched attacks against Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, Dirk Vandewalle, a professor in the department of government at Dartmouth College and author of A History of Modern Libya, spoke to the Middle East Forum via conference call, explaining why it is not in U.S. interest to engage Libya militarily.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

After decades of stasis, the Middle East is in uproar. With too much going on to focus on a single place, here’s a review of developments in four key countries.

(more…)

by Raymond Ibrahim*

Not only does last week’s jihadist rampage against Ethiopia’s Christians highlight the travails Christians encounter wherever Islam has a sizable population, but it offers several insights, including some which should concern faraway, secular nations with Muslim minorities. According to Fox News:

(more…)

by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman*

In recent years, small groups of Moroccan Berber activists, particularly younger people, have challenged the enforced silence regarding Israel, expressing an interest in both the state of Israel and Jewish history, including the Holocaust. They even linked this interest to the alleged historic connections between Jews and Berbers in ancient times, including the initial resistance to Arab conquerors by the Kahina, a supposedly Jewish-Berber queen, and the multilayered, more recent relations existing until the mass departure of Jews for Israel in the 1950s and 1960s from Berber villages and towns.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

The official hymn of the U.S. Marine Corps famously begins with “From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.” The reference to Tripoli alludes to the Battle of Derna of 1805, the first overseas land combat fought by U.S. troops and a decisive American victory.

Recent fighting in Libya prompts a question: Should the marines be sent anew to the shores of Tripoli, this time to protect not the high seas but the rebellious peoples of Libya rising against their government and calling for assistance as they are strafed from the air by troops loyal to Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi?

(more…)

by Raymond Ibrahim*

As with Egypt, American sympathies instinctively side with Libya’s oppositional forces as they seek to overthrow the tyrant Qaddafi — and rightfully so. But where U.S. foreign policy is concerned, prudence is in order. This is especially the case considering that the Obama administration has evinced inconsistency, if not incoherence, regarding the Middle East: vowing not to “meddle” on behalf of Iranian dissidents, while eagerly disavowing onetime U.S. ally Mubarak; confidently stating that Mubarak’s authority was secure at the start of the revolution, even as he was toppled weeks later; and misguidedly being open to talking with existentialist enemies such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

(more…)

by Daniel Pipes*

Unprecedented convulsions across the Middle East, from Morocco to Iran, prompt three reflections:

First, these rebellions fit into the context of a regional chessboard, what I call the Middle East cold war. On one side stands the “resistance” bloc led by Iran and including Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Qatar; it seeks to shake up the existing order with a new one, more piously Islamic and hostile to the West. On the other side stands the status quo bloc led by Saudi Arabia and including most of the rest of the region (implicitly including Israel); it prefers things to stay more or less as they are.

(more…)