All Policy Analysis by Robert Satloff

President Bashar al Assad of Syria has lately seemed to be doing everything possible to make himself an ex-dictator—and this week he took yet another step in that direction. Ironically, his latest mistake was not some egregious act of oppression or deceit—though he has in the past been guilty of

President George W. Bush welcomed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House Thursday with an unprecedented shower of diplomatic, political, and financial support. Most media attention has focused on two high-profile signs of U.S. backing of Abbas -- Bush's bold characterization of his guest as a "man of

On April 19, 2005, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Robert Satloff held a policy debate at The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. Mr. Gerecht is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy (2004). Dr

In Lebanon, the Bush Administration's regional policy of "constructive instability" is approaching a critical juncture, with important decisions looming about how the further implementation of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1559 relates to other U.S. strategic interests. More generally, the policy is having an effect throughout the region, from the

The Bush Administration's policy of "constructive instability" in the Middle East is facing a critical juncture in Lebanon. Taking advantage of a rare confluence of events and international interests, President George W. Bush has focused U.S. efforts on one plank of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1559 -- the withdrawal

With international pressure rising for a full and speedy Syrian troop withdrawal from Lebanon, Syrian president Bashar al-Asad responded with a speech to his nation's rubber-stamp parliament on Saturday, March 5, that was a blend of defiance and conciliation, leavened with inconsistency and paranoia. If one of Asad's tasks was

Jordan’s King Abdullah recently announced a major initiative for decentralizing political and fiscal authority in the kingdom by establishing a number of regional assemblies and empowering them with many of the responsibilities currently enjoyed by the parliament and central government. This effort should be viewed as one of the means

Of the more than 100 countries that have formally endorsed today's convening of the special U.N. General Assembly on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, not one is Arab. In the West, this is viewed as another manifestation of Holocaust denial, an increasingly commonplace feature of Arab politics

The most frequent criticism of President Bush's Middle East policy is that he has been too hands-off. Unless America takes the lead, so the argument goes, the "peace process" will languish. In other words, U.S. activism is the key to progress. This is, by and large, bad analysis and a