The CSS Blog Network

14 March 2017 Foreign policy, Conflict

How Will Trump Wage War? What Early Signs of a Risk-Acceptant President Mean for US Military Operations

By Julia Macdonald and Jacquelyn Schneider

Courtesy of Valary/Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

This article was originally published by Political Violence @ a Glance on 7 March 2017.

Since inauguration, President Trump has signaled a strong commitment to the use of force – especially to secure U.S. interests in the Middle East and to protect against the threat of terrorism. In his inaugural address, Trump promised to eradicate Islamic terrorism “from the face of the earth” and he reiterated this policy objective during his speech to Congress last Tuesday. Yet the question remains – how will Trump use military operations to accomplish these objectives?  Trump has at various times promised to “bomb the hell out of ISIS” and commit 20,000 to 30,000 troops to a ground campaign, all the while sending “very few troops” to the Middle East. Given these contradictory statements, it is difficult to discern a coherent military strategy. Will Trump keep the U.S. footprint small by relying – like Obama did – on drone strikes and arming partner militaries? Or will he be more willing to send U.S. ground troops to the Middle East?

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30 January 2017 International Relations, Conflict

The New Arab–Israeli Alliance

By Michael Totten

Courtesy of blessed faun/Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

This article was originally published by World Affairs on 20 January 2017.

During the early years of the Obama administration, conventional wisdom in Washington held that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict trumped everything else in the Middle East, that no problem could be resolved until that one was out of the way. “Without doubt,” former president Jimmy Carter said, “the path to peace in the Middle East goes through Jerusalem.” The reason, said his former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, now a professor of foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University, is because, “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the single most combustible and galvanizing issue in the Arab world”.

Similar views were expressed across the political spectrum, from President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Defense Secretary Chuck Hegel and General David Petraeus.

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26 July 2016 International Relations, Humanitarian Issues, Conflict, Politics

Interview – Stacey Philbrick Yadav

By Stacey Philbrick Yadav

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Courtesy Surian Soosay/Flickr

This interview transcript was originally published by the E-International Relations (E-IR) on 17 July 2016.

Stacey Philbrick Yadav is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges where she contributes to interdisciplinary programs in International Relations, Middle Eastern Studies, Developmental Studies, and Social Justice Studies. Her specialization is in the comparative politics of the Middle East. She currently serves on the board of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies, where she is involved in initiatives to link academic research to public policies. She has written widely on Yemeni and Lebanese politics over the past several years and published her book Islamists and the State: Legitimacy and Institutions in Yemen and Lebanon in 2013.

Where do you see the most significant research occurring in the political science of the Middle East?

I’m excited to see increasing attention to the intersection of the formal and the informal in analysis of Middle East politics. For a long time, it was rather “either/or,” but more recently there has been some great mapping of the ways in which informal political practices and discourses shape and are shaped by formal institutions and international agreements. The role of unprecedented mass mobilization during and after the 2011 uprisings was taken by some as evidence of the “irrelevance” of formal institutions, but on the contrary, careful scholarship on specific uprisings has shown the iterative relationship between the informal and the formal in creative and theoretically significant ways. Even before the uprisings, some scholars were doing this in critical political economy, but I see early lessons developed in that literature carried into analysis of social movements and other research traditions and it’s exciting.

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24 June 2016 Environment, Humanitarian Issues, Diplomacy

Disaster Diplomacy for Asia and the Middle East

By Ilan Kelman, JC Gaillard and Martina Klimesova

Cyclone Pam nears Vanuatu

Courtesy Harrison Tran/flickr

This article was originally published by the Middle East Institute (MEI) on 16 June 2016.

What is Disaster Diplomacy?

Disaster diplomacy investigates how and why disaster-related activities (pre-disaster and post-disaster) influence conflict and cooperation. [1]

Planning, preparation, and damage reduction are part of pre-disaster activities, which are termed ‘disaster risk reduction,’ focusing on addressing the root causes of disasters. Those root causes are, fundamentally, power and politics (particularly as related to resource allocation), societal sectors gaining from others’ vulnerability, and preference for short-term profit over long-term safety. Post-disaster activities refer to response, reconstruction, and recovery.

There have been numerous case studies of disaster diplomacy, covering various countries, regions and time periods, as well as a wide array of hazards—from environmental phenomena, such as earthquakes and floods, to technology-related incidences, such as train crashes and poisonings. The case studies have investigated many types of diplomacy: bilateralism, multilateralism, intergovernmental and international organizations, nongovernmental entities, and international relations conducted by non-sovereign jurisdictions such as provinces or cities (often called para-diplomacy, proto-diplomacy, and micro-diplomacy). The case studies also encompass many forms of conflict, ranging from interstate war and internal insurrections to the absence of diplomatic relations, frosty interactions, and political disagreements.

Across all case studies, no examples have been found where disaster-related activities have created new diplomatic initiatives. To be sure, disaster-related activities can serve as a catalyst for pre-existing diplomatic endeavors. In such instances, cultural links, informal or secret diplomatic negotiations, interactions in multilateral organizations, trade connections, or business and economic development can provide the conditions conducive to spurring disaster diplomacy.

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14 April 2016 Security, Foreign policy, Politics

The U.S. Presidential Election and its Implications on Middle East Policy

By Sigurd Neubauer

Individuals casting their vote at the ballot box, courtesy Prachatai/Flickr

This article was originally published by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in March 2016.

Introduction

Amidst an unpredictable U.S. election campaign, a populist revolt against Washington’s political establishment is in the making. An increasingly frustrated electorate has handsomely rewarded New York businessman Donald Trump at the ballot box for vigorously – and at times crudely – taking on political taboos as he remains the Republican Party’s undisputed frontrunner, despite having proposed to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. This and his proposal to defeat the Islamic State group, or ISIS, by “taking its oil” have undoubtedly contributed to cementing his frontrunner status.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a conservative firebrand and Tea Party favorite, has from the outset of his campaign sought to portray himself as the ultimate political outsider. This, along with his constant condemnation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPA, the U.S.-negotiated nuclear agreement with Iran, has become the signature issue of his foreign policy platform.

Before eventually dropping out of the race after failing to win his home state of Florida, Senator Marco Rubio pledged to unify the Republican Party between its traditionally business friendly elite, its conservative base and neoconservative foreign policy establishment.

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