Middle East

Russia and China are often mischaracterized as allies. There is a perception that their revisionist preferences for international order align, and that their desires for a less US-centered international order mean they are collaborating toward this end. The challenge they pose to the United States has been acknowledged by the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, and “great power competition”’ (GPC) or “strategic competition” has replaced counterterrorism at the center of US strategy. The Biden administration’s 2021 Interim National Security Strategy Guidance states that “we face . . . growing rivalry with China, Russia, and other authoritarian states.” It describes China as “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system,” and Russia as “determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.” The Pentagon’s “2+3” framework for GPC has China and Russia as the two primary threats, and North Korea, Iran, and terrorism as the three secondary threats, reinforcing a two-tiered system that implies that “China and Russia are similar threats while the others are lower in priority.” In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), their behavior-tandem vetoes on Syria at the United Nations, mutual anger about Libya, arms exports to traditional US allies, and cooperating with Iran despite multilateral sanctions5—feeds into the perception that they have a coordinated agenda to push out the United States, or at least to challenge its preponderance there. In a February 2021 speech by General Kenneth F. McKenzie, commander of the US Central Command overseeing MENA and Central Asia, he noted that “the United States faces increasing competition in the region from Russia and China, both vying for power and influence through a combination of diplomatic, military, and economic means. This adds another layer of tension and instability to an already complex and challenging region.” This report provides a comparative analysis of the approaches that China and Russia have adopted to develop their regional presence in MENA across four realms of influence: political, economic, security, and public diplomacy.

The Agricultural Outlook 2018-2027 is a collaborative effort of the OECD and FAO prepared with input from the experts of their member governments and from specialist commodity organisations. It provides a consensus assessment of the ten-year prospects for agricultural and fish commodity markets at national, regional and global levels. This year’s edition contains a special chapter on the prospects and challenges of agriculture and fisheries in the Middle East and North Africa.

“The U.S.-Israel relationship is in trouble,” warn Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellows Robert D. Blackwill and Philip H. Gordon in a new Council Special Report, Repairing the U.S.-Israel Relationship. Significant policy differences over issues in the Middle East, as well as changing demographics and politics within both the United States and Israel, have pushed the two countries apart. Blackwill, a former senior official in the Bush administration, and Gordon, a former senior official in the Obama administration, call for “a deliberate and sustained effort by policymakers and opinion leaders in both countries” to repair the relationship and to avoid divisions “that no one who cares about Israel’s security or America’s values and interests in the Middle East should want.”

The security situation facing the Middle East is grave and appears to be trending toward greater violence and instability. The Middle East Strategy Task Force's Security and Public Order report, published in cooperation with the Brookings Institution, demonstrates that states of the region have tended to focus on traditional, external threats but the internal threats they face—from domestic unrest, state failure, and civil war—have become both more common and dangerous.

It is highly unlikely that these security problems will solve themselves or that regional states will be able to resolve them on their own. Given the ongoing importance of Middle Eastern energy resources to the international economy, the region’s central geographic location, its multiplicity of terrorist groups, and the extent of regional anger at numerous other countries for their predicament, it would be a mistake to assume that these security problems will not affect the wider world. Already the problems of terrorism and refugees generated by Middle Eastern upheaval have made many Americans, Europeans, Russians, and Middle Easterners want to take action themselves.

this report described in the press release as "an annual digest on critical questions and important trends in the field of international security policy." The first section of the report focuses on the roles of international actors, Germany, United States, Europe, NATO, Russia, and emerging powers. The second section discusses three "hot spots"-- Ukraine, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. The third section reviews major issues such as terrorism, energy security, and refugee crises, and the fourth section suggests additional reading and research materials.

This paper gives a snapshot of Africa’s conflict burden within a global context based on various prominent data providers. The analysis finds that armed conflict in Africa follows the general global pattern of declining levels if measured in relation to population size and population growth. The impact of the Cold War temporarily disrupted this pattern, leading to higher levels of armed violence than could be expected during the 1970s and 1980s. Recent trends point to an increase in armed violence from around 2010, potentially reversing the gains made immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Different to other regions, Africa shows a high level of so-called ‘non-state conflict’: conflict between various armed groups and factions that are fighting one another, and not the government. This is almost certainly due to weak and unconsolidated governance in many African countries. The Middle East, not Africa, is the region with the fastest growth in terrorism.

This paper presents an overview of large-scale violence by Islamist extremists in key African countries. The paper builds on previous publications of the Institute for Security Studies on the nexus between development and conflict trends, and it seeks to provide an overview of the evolution of the associated terrorism through quantitative and contextual analysis using various large datasets. The focus is on the development and links among countries experiencing the worst of this phenomenon, especially Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria and Somalia, as well as the impact of events in the Middle East on these African countries.

The central challenge for sub-Saharan Africa is to build accountable, capable governments that can deliver security and inclusive growth. Research into the drivers, trends and characteristics of violence in Africa may help achieve these goals. This paper firstly presents global and African trends in armed conflict since 1960, while looking at armed conflict within the broader context of political violence using recent event data. The fatality burden between key affected countries is also discussed. The paper then turns to an examination of the high levels of non-state conflict in the Middle East and Africa compared to the rest of the world and the systemic imbalances that drive instability. Finally, challenges in measuring the relative contribution of violent Islamist extremism to political violence are presented.