Middle East

The Quandaries of Anti-Interventionist Advocacy

By Dan Trombly

For those seeking to limit the role of military interventions in American foreign policy, making arguments convincing for a policymaking audience has been a persistent difficulty. Despite the existence of a significant popular aversion to intervention, mobilizing members of the policymaking elite behind anti-interventionist policy choices has always been difficult, and anti-interventionist stances, at least […]

New Militia Clashes Endanger Transition in Libya

By Karim Mezran

This morning’s clashes between members of the Tarhouna militia and the Zintani militia at Tripoli’s main airport demonstrate just how unstable Libya’s security situation really is.

Syrian Intervention Risks Upsetting Global Order

By Henry Kissinger

The Arab Spring is generally discussed in terms of the prospects for democracy. Equally significant is the increasing appeal — most recently in Syria — of outside intervention to bring about regime change, overturning prevalent notions of international order.

Operation Unified Protector: The Libya Air Campaign Revisited

On June 4, the Atlantic Council hosted Lieutenant General Ralph Jodice, commander of air operations for Operation Unified Protector, the NATO campaign in Libya in 2011.

Stuxnets are Not in the US National Interest: An Arsonist Calling for Better Fire Codes

By Jason Healey

The United States government has apparently struck a blow against the Iranian nuclear enrichment capability by using Stuxnet to disable centrifuges.   While this cyber weapon destroyed centrifuges and seized up the enrichment process, the cost in American cyber power ultimately will not have been worth these limited gains.

Egypt’s Prospects for Democracy

By Michele Dunne

Michele Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council‘s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, sat down with Reza Akhlaghi, senior writer at Foreign Policy Association Blogs, to discuss the Egyptian elections. What, in your opinion, were the key driving factors behind the mass revolt against Hosni Mubarak’s regime? Egyptians were disappointed by the fact that […]

On American Military Intervention in Syria

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

The massacre in Houla and other regime atrocities that have been unearthed do not change American strategic interests with respect to Syria. Horrible as they are, they don’t tell us anything new about the nature of this odious regime. If it was a bad idea to intervene prior to the latest revelations, then it remains […]