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Expert Bio
Steven A. Cook is Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies and director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy. Cook is the author of False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East; The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square, which won the 2012 gold medal from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Ruling but Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey. Oxford University Press is publishing his next book, The End Of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East in 2023.
Cook is a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine. He has also published widely in international affairs journals, opinion magazines, and newspapers, and is a frequent commentator on radio and television. His work can also be found on CFR.org.
Prior to joining CFR, Cook was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (2001–02) and a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1995–96).
Cook holds a BA in international studies from Vassar College, an MA in international relations from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and an MA and a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Arabic and Turkish and reads French.
Affiliations:
- Foreign Policy, columnist
- International Capital Strategies, senior advisor
Featured
Current Projects
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There’s a single thread connecting the White House approach to the region, from Syria to Saudi Arabia.
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Did Erdogan break Turkish politics by empowering the presidency—or was it broken already?
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There’s something farcical—but entirely rational—about the way authoritarians such as Egypt’s Sisi invoke legal justifications for repression.
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Surrounded by rivals amid a collapsing economy, the Turkish president is facing the longest odds of his life.
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Iraq and Egypt show how hard it is to get rid of a militarized security force.
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An imprisoned opponent, dire economic conditions, and ongoing tensions with the United States all pose challenges to President Erdogan’s increasingly erratic leadership.
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Evidence is growing that Turkey’s president is ailing—and that could be bad news for the country’s politics.
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Twenty years after 9/11, U.S. policy in the Middle East is still based on a fundamental mistake.
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When it comes to policies Washington cares about, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his predecessor are practically the same.
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Members of Egypt’s jihadi movement played important roles in inspiring and plotting the 9/11 attacks. Egypt still struggles with some of the factors that gave rise to such extremism.
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After decades of offering only chaos, Baghdad is trying to become a leading force in the region.
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Turkey is more politically unstable today than at any other point in recent years.
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If Westerners are shocked at political developments in Tunisia, it’s because they described it as a straightforward success for too long.
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Ben Rhodes’s new book about global politics reveals the limits of the Obama administration’s worldview.
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Egypt is again proving useful to the United States—for now.
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The dispute is complicated in ways that extend far beyond political and legal solutions.
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For Israelis and Palestinians, ethnic violence isn't a temporary problem. It’s a lasting identity.
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The war in Afghanistan needed to wind down. But Washington is learning the wrong lesson.
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Tensions over Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Jerusalem have spurred the worst violence between the two sides in years, but the eruption seems unlikely to prompt a strong international reaction.
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A new report about the Israel-Palestine conflict is morally damning—and politically irrelevant.
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It’s been a difficult and dizzying few months for Turkey—which is just the way the president likes it.
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Why is the United States still struggling to figure out what to do about the Assad regime?
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Great power competition is altering the prospects for managing conflicts in the Middle East. As policymakers rethink the United States’ role in the region, they should avoid the kind of strategic errors that have provided opportunities for other major powers, notably China and Russia, to undermine U.S. policy.
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The pontiff’s Middle Eastern diplomacy may seem superficial, but it could make a huge practical impact.
