via The Caravan
Issue 1922 of The Caravan is now available online. The journal is a periodic symposium on the contemporary dilemmas of the Greater Middle East.
by Hafed Al-Ghwell via The Caravan
Today, America finds itself in roughly the same waters that drowned British ambitions in the Middle East between 1946–1969. In less than two decades, Washington has vacillated from direct intervention to calls to “share the region,” which have now been supplanted by the “America First” diplomacy of bold declarations that favor smaller, “face-saving” compromises.
by Reuel Marc Gerecht via The Caravan
“Foreign interference” is a phrase often heard in the Middle East. In the pre-modern era, Muslim dynasties continuously challenged each other. The idea of “foreign” intrusion was, however, religiously defined: there were Greek and Latin Christians in the west, Mongol Shamanists and Hindus to the east. The recurring and intense wars between the Ottomans and the Safavids, where sultans and shahs attempted in their diplomatic correspondence to strip each other of legitimacy, were an intramural match, despite the Sunni–Shiite clash, where victory on the battlefield determined who owned what.