Middle East Policy Features Open-Access Articles!

By Middle East Policy

The journal’s Fall 2023 issue includes examinations of Israeli military strategy, the Ukraine war, Syria normalization, green energy in Morocco, and peacekeeping missions—free for all readers.

As part of the mission to provide expert analysis of events vitally important to the region and the world, Middle East Policy announces that five articles from its 157^th issue are available to all readers, free of charge.

These open-access pieces are made available by our scholars. The breadth of the areas and topics demonstrates the journal’s commitment to covering a diverse range of issues affecting politics, economics, energy, and society.

Here are the articles you can read in full, even without subscribing to the publication or accessing it through an institution that provides access. To subscribe to Middle East Policy and get access to every article in all four quarterly journals, please click here.

Here are the open-access articles for the Fall 2023 issue:

What Drove Syria Back into the Arab Fold? by Saban Kardas and Bulent Aras

• The Arab League’s decision to reinstate Damascus’s membership was the culmination of a slow and fitful process that accelerated when Saudi Arabia took the lead.
• Although the United States has been opposed to normalization without progress on the political track, in practical terms its Syria policy has prioritized counterterrorism and human rights, leaving the matter to Arab partners.
• The authors conclude with four areas that will determine the next phase of the process, including how to structure incentives for Bashar al-Assad, and whether the regime can deliver on Gulf states’ demands.

‘Decisive Victory’ and Israel’s Quest for a New Military Strategy by Jean-Loup Samaan

• In 2020, the Israeli military’s chief unveiled a new strategic concept, Decisive Victory, designed to counter nonstate actors with “swift offensive operations relying on the use of smaller units supported by massive firepower.”
• It required a major overhaul in training, weapons development, civil-military relations, and interoperability among the armed services.
• The article examines the political and financial obstacles to change, within both the government and the armed forces, as the region’s way of war evolves.

Hydrogen: Fueling EU-Morocco Energy Cooperation? by Friedrich Plank, Britta Daum, Johannes Muntschick, Michèle Knodt, Christian Hasse, Ingrid Ott, and Arne Niemann

• In the face of the Ukraine war and climate change, the European Union and Morocco are pursuing ambitious green policies, including cooperation on hydrogen energy.
• The article analyzes complex interdependencies to show that supply can meet demand, and it outlines the remaining challenges to preparing the market for commercial hydrogen production.

The War in Ukraine: Risks and Opportunities for the ‘Post-Soviet South’ by Emil A. Souleimanov and Yury Fedorov

• The invasion has weakened Russia, but the states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia face difficult choices, the authors show.
• These states, formerly in the Soviet orbit, can gain favor in the West and refuse to help Moscow circumvent sanctions, but this could provoke retaliation.
• The article analyzes the economic risks and benefits of acting independently, as well as how the states are dealing with complexities of immigration of Russians and the emigration of their nationals into Russia.

Why Peacekeeping Does Not Promote Peace by Dennis Jett

• The UN has 90,000 peacekeepers deployed around the world in 12 operations that cost the international community $6.5 billion a year.
• Rich countries now foot the bill but leave the risks and casualties to the poorer states.
• Jett argues that peacekeepers have neither the carrots nor the sticks to effectively promote peace or punish those who are preventing it, and that UN members must rise above national interests to overhaul the system.