The Mideast’s Front Burner Issues

By Henri Barkey

Dr. Henri J. Barkey is the Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is the former Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Professor at Lehigh University. Barkey is also a former public policy scholar at the Wilson Center. His most recent works include Turkey's Syria Predicament (Survival, 2014) and Iraq, Its Neighbors and the United States, co-edited with Phebe Marr and Scott Lasensky (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2011). He served as a member of the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff working primarily on issues related to the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and intelligence from 1998 to 2000.

The Middle East went through maelstrom developments during the Obama Administration. Some of these were put into motion by the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Others, such as the Arab Spring, were the direct result of corrupt and brittle authoritarian regimes no longer capable of responding to their citizens’ aspirations and needs. Now, after eight years of Obama, it is difficult to argue that much has improved.

In fact, save for a spike in the price of oil, the region has suffered deeply from the after effects of the Arab Spring; economies were battered, tourism revenues collapsed, civil wars and foreign intervention created an image of interminable uncertainty. Only the Gulf region managed to wall itself off from these negative influences. After the oil price collapse, even the Gulf countries have had to tighten their belts and look for alternative business models.

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