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Elliott Abrams
Steven Cook
Mohamad Bazzi
Noah Feldman
Thomas Lippman
Daniel Senor
Steven Simon
Lydia KhalilThe Middle East remains a source of tension and unrest, a region where some of the globe’s most intractable foreign-policy issues are fiercely contested. Insurgent violence threatens Iraq’s new government and tests the Bush administration’s strategy to plant the seeds of Arab democracy. Iran’s nuclear ambitions raise questions about proliferation of the world’s most destructive weapons, while its theocratic government keeps a tight grip on the electoral process and ponders relations with a transformed Iraq. Israeli-Palestinian relations improved after the death of Yasir Arafat, but it is an open question whether the peace process will go forward amid Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and Palestinian maneuvering for power in the post-Arafat era. In the Gulf region, authoritarian regimes are buoyed by high energy prices, but buffeted by threats from Islamic fundamentalists and calls for political liberalization.
Featured Projects
July 1, 2004—Present
| Staff: | Steven A. Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies |
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Since September 11, 2001, U.S.-Middle East policy has sought to promote reform in the Arab and Islamic World as a U.S. national security priority. This roundtable series sheds light on the complex issues that the countries of the Middle East present and explores the different avenues available to U.S. policymakers seeking to promote change in that region. By drawing on the experience of a variety of speakers with particular expertise on social, political, and economic reform, women’s issues, education, and the media, this roundtable series intends to enrich the current debate on reform promotion in the Arab world with a range of top-tier perspectives and policy recommendations in an informal discussion setting.
July 1, 2005—Present
| Staff: | Steven A. Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies |
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January 1, 2006—Present
| Staff: | Vali R. Nasr, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies |
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October 2006—Present
| Staff: | Noah Feldman, Adjunct Senior Fellow |
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February 1, 2007—Present
| Staff: | |
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| Director: | Steven Simon, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies |
The United States is faced with an array of serious challenges in the Middle East, perhaps unprecedented in the past fifty years. An attempt to provoke a revolutionary change in the Middle East has collapsed with a large U.S. land army lodged in the heart of the region. The United States now confronts a Middle East that features an imploding Iraqi state, an aggressive Islamic Republic about to cross the nuclear threshold and a Palestinian state broken into two failed entities.
The Roundtable on the U.S. and Middle East will seek to develop strategies for the next administration. Should the United States attempt to recoup its position by pressing forward, albeit more prudently and with international cooperation, or should the United States go "back to the future," and place "stability over freedom," to use President Bush's phrase? Is it time to create an alliance with Sunnis to stave off the immediate threat of Iranian encroachment? What should the United States' grand strategy be in the Middle East? These and other questions will be the focus of monthly discussions.
November 2007—June 2009
| Staff: | Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution Martin S. Indyk, Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution Daniel L. Byman, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution |
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| Director: | Gary Samore, Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair |
| Fellows: | Stephen Biddle, Senior Fellow for Defense Policy Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy Steven A. Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies Kenneth M. Pollack, Director of Research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy Michael E. O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution, Brookings Institution Bruce O. Riedel, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution Steven Simon, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies Shibley Telhami, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution |
| Advisory Board: | Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations Samuel R. Berger, Chairman, Albright Stonebridge Group Odeh F. Aburdene, President, OAI Advisors Timothy C. Collins, Founder, Senior Managing Director, and Chief Executive Officer, Ripplewood Holdings LLC Rita E. Hauser, President, The Hauser Foundation Robert K. Lifton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medis Technologies Jami Miscik, President and Vice Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc. Brent Scowcroft, Resident Trustee, The Forum for International Policy Hassan Nemazee, Chairman and CEO, Nemazee Capital Corporation Joan E. Spero, Visiting Fellow, Foundation Center Strobe Talbott, President, Brookings Institution Ezra K. Zilkha, President, Zilkha & Sons, Inc. |
| Staff: | Ariel Kastner, Senior Research Assistant, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution |
| Advisory Board: | Roy Zuckerberg, Chairman and Founding Principal, Samson Capital Advisors LLC |
| Staff: | Katie Ivanick |
Toward A New U.S.-Middle East Strategy is a joint Saban Center at Brookings–Council on Foreign Relations project staffed by Middle East experts from both policy establishments. After an eighteen-month period that includes trips to the region, research, and consultation with government officials in the United States and the Middle East, the strategy group will publish a final report, brief members of the incoming administration, and present its recommendations for constructing a new Middle East policy framework to the public.
Featured Publications
September 8, 2009
Elliot Abrams counteracts arguments that portray life among the Palestinians as unbearable and getting worse.
September 3, 2009
Regarding the war in Afghanistan, Daniel Senor and Peter Wehner argue, "Republicans should never do to President Obama what many Democrats did to President Bush."
August 26, 2009
Elliott Abrams observes that in the current human rights debate, "Hillary Clinton mouths an old Communist bromide."
August 23, 2009
Mohamad Bazzi argues, "Internal problems won't stop Tehran from stirring up trouble abroad."
August 19, 2009
Elliott Abrams argues that support for democracy and human rights should be present in U.S. foreign policy toward Egypt.
August 1, 2009
Elliott Abrams comments, "The [Obama] administration views the Israeli-Palestinian issue as the root of all problems, while Israel is focused on Iran's nuclear threat."
July 13, 2009
Steven Simon discusses the investigation into twenty Americans who are believed to have joined a militant Islamist group in Somalia.
June 29, 2009
Lydia Khalil argues, "Reformers hope to fulfill the work they began 30 years ago."
June 25, 2009
Elliott Abrams argues that the Obama administration is not acknowledging prior understandings about settlements in the West Bank.
June 9, 2009
Steven A. Cook explores the question, "Why haven't the Israelis attacked Iran's nuclear facilities?"
June 1, 2009
Elliott Abrams suggests that President Obama's speech in Cairo should focus on "freedom and the future."
May 26, 2009
Thomas W. Lippman argues that Cairo's Al Azhar mosque would be the ideal location for President Obama's speech in Egypt.
May 9, 2009
Elliott Abrams discusses the upcoming meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
May 2009
Iraq is currently in the early stages of a negotiated end to an intense ethnosectarian war. As such, there are several contingencies in which recent, mostly positive trends in Iraq could be reversed, threatening U.S. national interests. This Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum by Stephen Biddle assesses four interrelated scenarios in Iraq that could derail the prospects for peace and stability in the short to medium term and posits concrete policy options to limit U.S. vulnerability to the possibility of such reversals.
April 14, 2009
Lydia Khalil argues that President Obama need not lecture Iraqi leaders in order to convey U.S. support for Iraq's independence and sovereignty.
April 8, 2009
Elliott Abrams argues that calls for a freeze on settlement activity beyond the Israeli border are counterproductive to laying the foundation for a future Palestinian entity.
April 2, 2009
Steven A. Cook examines the decline in popular support for Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's Justice and Development Party.
February 2007 (updated September 2007)
Council Special Report No. 23
This Council Special Report concludes that only if the United States disengages militarily will it minimize the strategic costs of its failure in Iraq.
August 2006
As nations around the world struggle with the threat of militant Islam, Vali Nasr, one of the leading scholars on the Middle East, provides us with the rare opportunity to understand the political and theological antagonisms within Islam itself.
June 2006
Council Special Report No. 15
This Council Special Report makes the case that Turkey’s strategic importance to the United States is greater than ever, and that a major effort needs to be undertaken to renew and revitalize the relationship.
May 2006
The first full history of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, revealing why the alliance was formed and what we stand to lose if it collapses.
March 2, 2006
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, CFR's Ray Takeyh says "more imaginative U.S. diplomacy" with Tehran can still prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threat.
June 2005
Task Force Report No. 54
A Council-sponsored Task Force argues that the United States should support the evolutionary development of democracy consistently throughout the Middle East. It points out that a strategy to promote democracy entails inherent risks, but that “the denial of freedom carries much more significant long-term dangers.” This report is also available in Arabic.
Further Readings
May 2007
| Author: |
Steven A. Cook, Douglas Dillon Fellow
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This book critically examines how the legacies of military control in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey affect political development in these countries, highlighting the often-overlooked difficulties of promoting democratic change in military- dominated political systems. Using Turkey's recent reforms as a point of departure, Steven Cook offers novel policy prescriptions for encouraging political change in Egypt and Algeria.
See more in Egypt, Defense/Homeland Security, Democracy and Human Rights
October 2006
| Author: |
Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies
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Book
A groundbreaking book that reveals how the underappreciated domestic political rivalries within Iran serve to explain the country’s behavior on the world stage. A leading expert explains why we fail to understand Iran and offers a new strategy for redefining this crucial relationship.
See more in Iran, Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Public Diplomacy
Explore the international finance regime with a new interactive from CFR's program on International Institutions and Global Governance.
Identifying international threats and acting on them may be the most difficult job for U.S. policymakers. This report
provides an actionable road map for managing international threats before they erupt into crises and makes a strong case that preventive action is not a luxury but a necessity.
For more than a decade, the United States has mostly watched from the sidelines as Asian countries organize themselves into an alphabet soup of new multilateral groups. In this report, the authors review the relationship between pan-Asian and trans-Pacific institutions and suggest policy guidelines for a new U.S. approach to this new Asian landscape.
Complete list of Council Special Reports
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
Complete list of CFR Books
For more information on the David Rockefeller Studies Program, contact:
James M. Lindsay
Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair
+1.212.434.9626 (NY); +1.202.509.8405 (DC)
jlindsay@cfr.org
Janine Hill
Deputy Director of Studies Administration
+1.212.434.9753
jhill@cfr.org
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