Response: International Affairs Forum: Strong Western world powers have historically had difficulty in the Middle East. Do you see a common thread?

Aaron David Miller: In large part, Western powers are distant to the neighborhood. Their capacity to assert leverage and endure in the face of determined efforts by smaller powers to resist them there usually ends badly. That, combined with ... more

Response: International Affairs Forum: The U.S. State Department recently released its 2007 Country Report on Human Rights Practices. It considered Iran and Syria to be the biggest offenders in the Middle East. Do you agree with their assessment? Which Middle East countries do you consider to be the biggest offenders?

Ms. Sarah Leah Whitson: As a preliminary matter, it’s extremely disapp... more

Response: In the months preceding the war on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the spring of 2003, I was in a small, largely academic team that gathered once a week at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, the University of London, that tried to predict what might happen if an invasion really did take place. At the other side of the table were some of the senior British military who prepared for the polit... more

Response: The unstated big fear of globalization in the Middle East is of international economic marginalization on the one hand, and domination on the other. These are sentiments shared by countless others across the continents. It is in the sense of powerlessness which accompanies globalization that the real fear of many millions of communities in the developing world lie. Where some countries and regions... more