This monograph explores the emerging challenge of nonstate actors’ anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) strategies and their implications for the United States and its allies by looking at two regions, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, with case studies such…
In one of the opening scenes of the 1973 movie, The Exorcist, an older Catholic priest stands among the ruins of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Hatra. 1) In the movie, he views an ancient statue of an Assyrian wind…
This monograph examines the new Arab regional order that has emerged over the past few years and analyzes opportunities and challenges for U.S. strategic interests. The regional order encompasses: 1) an anti-Islamist grouping of countries that came about largely in…
The threat perceptions of many Arab states aligned with the United States have changed significantly as a result of such dramatic events as the 2011 U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, the emergence and then fading of the Arab Spring, the…
In the post-Saddam era, differences among Iraqi ethnic and religious groups will either emerge as a barrier to political cooperation and national unity, or they will instead be mitigated as part of the struggle to define a new and more…
Yemen is one of the oldest societies in the Middle East. It sits athwart one of the world’s most strategic waterways, and hence, throughout the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union contended for influence over it. With the…