scholarly journals The Saudi Political System and the Calculations of the New Balances in the Middle East

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-346
Author(s):  
Abdullah H. Othman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The Relationship

This article highlights the role of Saudi Arabia in the process of regional integration and the establishment of new balances of power in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is arguably one of the most important states in the region in terms of power, economy and diplomacy. Its power is not only limited to political influence, but also carries with it religious dimensions that helped to shape and escalate regional situation as manifested through Saudi Arabias attempts to contain non-Arab forces to establish privileged relations with them from a national or Islamic perspective .Saudi Arabia has stepped up military agreements to ensure regional balance in the Middle East, one of the most important international regions. The stability of the region is considered to be of international concern. It is against this backdrop that Saudi Arabia competes for influence in the Middle East. In addition to the events of September 11, 2001, which negatively affected the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States of America, especially after the accusations made by the United States against Saudi Arabia and accused it of supporting the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia was strained. Saudi Arabia began to look for a new partner that would have considerable political weight, and in Russia found what it was looking for. The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation began to develop gradually despite the absence of political exchange and cooperation between the two parties for a long time, and this relationship took the form of expansion to include the field of diplomatic representation and the conclusion of economic and oil agreements and in various other fields represents the political rapprochement between the two countries.

Manar Shorbagy on Edward Schatz

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Global Perspectives ◽  
Islamic Movement ◽  
American Values ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Islamic Activism

This essay is a response to Edward Schatz’s contribution in this book, Global Perspectives on the United States. It acknowledges ways that Schatz contributes to our understanding of anti-Americanism, especially in relationship to Islamist activism, but it also seeks to put the relationship between anti-Americanism and Islamist activism in a broader context. It argues that the goal of combatting all different forms of “Islamic activism” in places like the Middle East is at once counter-productive and futile, in that it stimulates both anti-Americanism and Islamic activism. It suggests that a better goal for the U.S. would be to respect the phenomenon and learn how to differentiate between violent and nonviolent elements in the broader transnational Islamic movement. U.S. policy since September 11, 2001, has, it argues, largely failed because it has focused on initiatives showcasing American “values” when “American values” themselves are not under attack, but specific U.S. policies do generate deep resentment in the region.

scholarly journals Bioterrorism: Lessons Learned Since the Anthrax Mailings

mBio ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Imperiale ◽  
Arturo Casadevall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Bacillus Anthracis ◽  
Life Science ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Risks And Benefits ◽  
September 11 Attacks

ABSTRACT In the fall of 2001, Bacillus anthracis spores were spread through letters mailed in the United States. Twenty-two people are known to have been infected, and five of these individuals died. Together with the  September 11 attacks, this resulted in a reevaluation of the risks and benefits of life science research with the potential for misuse. In this editorial, we review some of the results of these discussions and their implications for the future.

Death from Above

The Drone Age ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 55-95
Author(s):  
Michael J. Boyle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Targeted Killing ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Physical Risk ◽  
September 11 Attacks

Chapter 3 argues that drones undermine the legal and ethical prohibitions on assassination and extrajudicial violence outside of wartime. It traces the emergence of the practice of targeted killing from its origin to its embrace by the United States after the September 11 attacks. It shows how the United States adopted the use of drones alongside the practice of targeted killing to control risks as it fought a new war against al Qaeda, but found itself gradually drifting into more conflict zones and fighting new enemies. While the United States used drones to protect its pilots from physical risk, it altered the nature of the risks they faced and created new ones for the population who live under the drones. Drones also subtly changed how the United States wages its wars, making it more willing to countenance killing people outside of active battlefields. It concludes by discussing how more countries are now experimenting with targeting killings.

scholarly journals U.S. Supreme Court Denies Certiorari in Habeas Case Brought by Guantánamo Bay Detainee Challenging His Continuing Detention

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-855
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Past Time ◽  
Guantanamo Bay ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The U.S

On June 10, 2019, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in a case in which the D.C. Circuit held that the United States could continue to detain an individual at Guantánamo Bay until the cessation of the hostilities that justified his initial detention, notwithstanding the extraordinary length of the hostilities to date. The case, Al-Alwi v. Trump, arises from petitioner Moath Hamza Ahmed Al-Alwi's petition for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the legality of his continued detention at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay. The Supreme Court's denial of certiorari was accompanied by a statement by Justice Breyer observing that “it is past time to confront the difficult question” of how long a detention grounded in the U.S. response to the September 11 attacks can be justified.

Can the United States Promote Democracy in the Middle East?

2003 ◽  
Vol 102 (660) ◽  
pp. 21-26
Author(s):  
Amy Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Democratic Change

In the aftermath of September 11, the United States has no alternative other than to begin to shift its role in the Arab world from an enabler of authoritarian rule to a supporter of gradual, but genuine, democratic change.

US Dealings with Iran, 1979–1980

2021 ◽  
pp. 143-166
Author(s):  
Payam Ghalehdar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
British Military ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter serves as an introduction to the second part of the book’s empirical analysis by sketching the evolution of US attitudes toward the Middle East. It shows how the United States relied on the British military to safeguard US interests in the region until the end of the 1960s and then on regional proxies after the British military withdrawal from the region. Even after the end of the Cold War, successive US administrations eschewed hegemonic expectations toward the region until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The chapter concludes by briefly illustrating how the lack of both hegemonic pretensions and perceptions of anti-American hatred in Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait foreclosed US regime change in the 1991 Gulf War.

Brown Threat

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kumarini Silva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Race Studies ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Critical Intervention ◽  
Brown Bodies

Brown Threat makes a critical intervention in U.S based race studies. The book positions a category of ‘brown’ identification (along side identity) as a form of organizing race and racialized hierarchies in contemporary culture, especially in the wake of September 11. Here, brown is seen as both a product of historical xenophobia and slavery in the United States, and as a newer form of ongoing racism tied to notions of security and securitization. In order to illustrate this process, each chapter maps various junctures where the ideological, political and mediated terrain intersect, resulting in both an appetite for all things ‘brown’ by U.S. consumers, while at the same time various political and nationalist discourses and legal structures conspire to control brown bodies (immigration, emigration, migration, outsourcing, incarceration) both within and outside the United States. The book explores this contradictory relationship between representation and reality, arguing that the representation acts as a way to mediate and manage the anxieties that come from contemporary global realties, where brown spaces, like India, Pakistan, and the amalgamated Middle East, pose significant economic, security, and political challenges to the United States.

The Battle for Syria

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Phillips
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Factors ◽  
International Dimension ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
Regional Factors

This book provides an analysis of the crucial but underexplored roles the United States and other nations have played in shaping Syria's ongoing civil war. Most accounts of Syria's brutal, long-lasting civil war focus on a domestic contest that began in 2011 and only later drew foreign nations into the escalating violence. The book argues instead that the international dimension was never secondary but that Syria's war was, from the very start, profoundly influenced by regional factors, particularly the vacuum created by a perceived decline of U.S. power in the Middle East. This precipitated a new regional order in which six external protagonists — the United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar — have violently competed for influence, with Syria a key battleground. Drawing on a plethora of original interviews, the book constructs a new narrative of Syria's war. Without absolving the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime, the book untangles the key external factors which explain the acceleration and endurance of the conflict, including the West's strategy against ISIS. It concludes with some insights on Syria and the region's future.

Seek Knowledge Even If It Takes You to China (Via Washington)Saudi Arabia and China in the Twenty-First Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 166-188
Author(s):  
Sean Foley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Strategic Factors ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Two Sides

For much of the last twenty years, China’s ties with Saudi Arabia have been understood in commercial terms, with most scholars arguing that the relationship has little cultural or historical depth. Drawing on multiple trips to China between 2011 and 2015 along with a ten-month period living continuously in Saudi Arabia in 2013 and 2014, this paper argues that there are factors other than economics that should be considered: namely, historical ties dating back to the seventh century, Saudi cultural and geo-strategic linkages to the United States, and the new economic and political geography of Eurasia. While cultural and strategic factors have limited the growth of Saudi-Sino ties since the start of the Arab Spring, they are likely to be the factors that allow for the two sides to realize the potential of their bilateral relationship in the future—even while retaining their close current alliances with other great powers.

scholarly journals Arab Spring, Islamist Ice Age

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdelwahab El-Affendi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
Religious Extremism

Between June 30th, the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Islamist military takeover in Sudan, and July 4th, Independence Day in the United States, something miraculous happened in the Middle East. Suddenly everyone was in agreement, and – almost – everyone was happy. President Bashar al-Assad was ecstatic. In an interview with the Baath Party’s newspaper Al-Thawra shortly after the army deposed Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s first-ever freely elected civilian president, on July 3, Assad applauded the coup as marking “essentially the fall of political Islam.”1 In his lengthy interview, he categorized his enemies into two groups: those “who completely abandoned their identity and embraced a ‘Western Dream’ even with all its flaws” and those “who went in exactly the opposite direction and abandoned their identity and embraced religious extremism.”2 The latter he alternatively designated as “Wahhabis” or “Takfiris.” In the presumed bastions of Wahhabism in the Gulf, Morsi’s downfall was received with even more elation. Within days, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE pledged an aid package worth USD 12 billion to cash-strapped Egypt, showing how much they appreciated this outcome.3 And while Israel joined its sworn enemy Hamas in maintaining a guarded silence,4 its media (and some politicians) did not hide their glee at Morsi’s political demise.5 As usual, the Obama administration was either unable to make up its mind or was too embarrassed to say what it believed. But that was in itself a clear stance, since the United States was happy to permit its key allies to provide massive cash injections to the new army-backed regime. It also refrained from ...

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