On Sept. 20, for the first time in history, two Chinese warships docked at Iran’s principal naval port of Bandar Abbas, in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the gateway for at least 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas shipments. The ships are taking part in four days of joint naval exercises. One of […]
When it comes to its foreign policy towards Russia and Ukraine, Israel walks a diplomatic tightrope. The Jewish state must take into consideration all kinds of factors: its relationship with both countries, one of them a great power; its alliance with the United States, which strongly backs Kiev in its struggle with Moscow; and the […]
This autumn marks a quarter-century since the demise of the Communist dictatorships in central and eastern Europe. It all began on Sept. 11, 1989, when Hungary, which had opened its border with Austria four months earlier, gave permission for thousands of East Germans who had arrived on “vacations” to leave the country, in order to […]
There are countries that are known to punch above their weight. For better or worse, one of these of late has been the Gulf state of Qatar. A tiny country of 11,571 square kilometers jutting out from the Arabian peninsula into the Persian Gulf, its only land neighbor is Saudi Arabia. Most of its population is […]
The demise of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 has led to Islamic militias fighting for control of the country. The overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 2003 has seen the country collapse, as a full-scale insurgency by Sunni Islamists has been mounted against the Shi’ite government in Baghdad. In Syria, a weakened Bashar al-Assad’s regime is […]
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been Turkey’s prime minister since 2003, and also chairs the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which holds a majority of the seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, has now been elected president of the republic for a five-year term. Erdogan, the first popularly elected head of state, […]
The current war waged by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the third in six years, has again resulted in Israeli Arab protests in various towns and cities, led by the Islamic Movement in Israel, Balad (National Democratic Assembly), and Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality). Some of the protesters were reported to have waved Palestinian flags […]
As my field of research and teaching is in comparative politics, I have kept files on virtually every country in the world for decades. They consist mainly of magazine and newspaper articles, and students find them handy when researching term papers. My filing cabinets would soon have no room for new pieces if I didn’t […]
Yemen, the poorest Arab state, with a gross domestic product per capita of little more than $1,400 a year, remains a country in political crisis. Located at the south-western edge of the Arabian peninsula, the present-day Yemeni state was formed in 1990, when the north, an ancient Arab kingdom and then a republic, united with […]
Fighting has intensified in eastern Ukraine after the president, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko, declared an end to a 10-day cease-fire and ordered his forces to attack pro-Russian separatists. The Ukrainian military has been using air strikes and artillery attacks against them. Meanwhile, at his own request, the upper house of the Russian parliament had revoked […]