All Policy Analysis by David Schenker

During his Cairo visit, Secretary Hagel should press the Egyptian military for a franker exchange of views, including on aid, the Sinai, and political transparency.

Perhaps Washington's best Arab ally, the monarch increasingly lacks money and political stability.

The Israeli-Syrian border is quiet no more, as armed Islamist rebels pledge to take back the Golan Heights.

President Obama should support regional initiatives that help ameliorate Jordan's energy problems, such as exporting natural gas from fields off the coasts of Israel and Gaza.

If current international inaction on Syria continues, UNDOF will face increasing difficulties, and the long-quiet Israel-Syria border could easily revert to a battlefield.

Domestic issues, rather than the war raging next door, currently dominate Lebanon's politics.

Providing for Syrian refugees has been difficult for cash-strapped Jordan, but more troubling is the prospect of foreign jihadists moving across the border.

As the Assad regime continues its bloody campaign to remain in power, Washington Institute scholars assess the impact of current and potential spillover on Syria's neighbors, Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon.

On January 18, 2013, David Schenker, David Makovsky, and Robert Satloff addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute to discuss the Jordanian and Israeli elections. Mr. Schenker, the Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Institute, formerly served as the Pentagon's top policy aide

Why Obama needs to focus on corruption to save America's most reliable Arab ally.

In January, the Atlantic published a series of policy proposals for the Obama administration's second term by Washington Institute scholars. The full series is collected here.

The war in Syria is raising the risk of all-out confrontation between Sunni and Shiite extremists in Lebanon, though the violence might be worse if not for the U.S.-supported Lebanese Armed Forces.

Lebanon has a long history of muddling through, and it may do so again unless Syrian violence reignites sectarian tensions in the perennially troubled state.

"In 2000, not long after Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad died and was succeeded by his son Bashar, analogies between the Assads and the Corleone family of The Godfather started to make the rounds. While details of the popular metaphor varied, the dominant focus of the comparison was on whether Bashar