Order From Ashes: Recent Episodes
The Century Foundation
Today’s world order is in unprecedented flux. The United States is navigating a new international system in which cannot dictate global rules. Conflict continues to destabilize the Middle East and attract an outsized share of policy attention around the world and in Washington. Host Thanassis Cambanis interviews activists and analysts about the most pressing issues in international policy. This podcast is produced by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank that for more than one hundred years has worked to foster opportunity, reduce inequality, and promote security at home and abroad.
During decades of turmoil, war, and regime change in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has played a critical, often overlooked role—steering Iraq away from sectarian conflict, promoting civic democracy over direct theocracy, and quietly seeking to calm regional tensions.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, Century International fellow Sajad Jiyad explains how Sistani has appealed to a majority of the world’s millions of Shia Muslims with his indirect model of clerical authority, a stark contrast to the competing model of direct clerical rule advanced by his compatriots in Iran.
Jiyad has published a new political biography, God’s Man in Iraq: The Life and Leadership of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which offers the first comprehensive account of Sistani’s legacy and draws on original sources and hundreds of interviews during decades of fieldwork inside Iraq. Jiyad
Observers of Iraq and of Shia power will find God’s Man in Iraq an incomparable appraisal of Sistani’s legacy—and an invaluable guide to the perilous transition that will follow his tenure.
You can learn more and order copies on the book’s homepage. God’s Man in Iraq is also available in Arabic.
Read:
- Commentary: "The Man Who Saved Iraq," by Sajad Jiyad (in English and Arabic)
- Book page: God’s Man in Iraq: The Life and Leadership of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, by Sajad Jiyad
- Arabic book page: رجل الله في العراق
Participants:
- Sajad Jiyad, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
The Middle East has faced growing instability, violence, and the risk of a wider war ever since October 7.
Most attention is understandably focused on Israel, where 1,200 people were killed in a single day, and Gaza, where the death toll is steadily climbing past 11,000, the majority children and women.
But the wider region is experiencing a level of violence that is cause for alarm: near-daily clashes between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel; steady attacks on the U.S. military in Iraq and Syria; and increasingly bold military initiatives by Yemen’s Houthi rebel forces.
How has the Gaza war changed the wider Middle East? What new dynamics are shaping conflicts and diplomacy among the regional powers and in the region’s many simmering conflicts? How will America’s bear hug of Israel affect other American interests in the Middle East?
Century International fellows Aron Lund, Sam Heller, and Thanassis Cambanis are joined by Michael Wahid Hanna from International Crisis Group to step back from the day-to-day developments of the Gaza war and assess the changing regional context.
Read:
- Commentary: “It’s Time for a Ceasefire in Gaza—and Then a New Push for Peace,” by Thanassis Cambanis, Dahlia Scheindlin, and Sam Heller
- Commentary: “America Needs to Prevent a Regional War in the Middle East,” by Sam Heller and Thanassis Cambanis
Participants:
- Sam Heller, fellow, Century International
- Aron Lund, fellow, Century International
- Michael Wahid Hanna, director, U.S. program, International Crisis Group
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Foreign donors are propping up Lebanon’s public institutions and services with the kind of aid they ordinarily provide to failed states. Will this aid create more problems than it solves for Lebanon’s long-suffering people?
On this episode of Century International’s Order from Ashes podcast, fellow Sam Heller discusses the alarming findings of his report, “Adopt a Ministry: How Foreign Aid Threatens Lebanon’s Institutions.”
As Lebanon’s crisis worsens, foreign donors have stepped in to take over many core functions normally fulfilled by the government. Is this aid, which is vital in the short term, threatening the viability and long-term recovery of Lebanon?
Donors, aid agencies, Lebanese officials and experts can start by getting honest about the tradeoffs, Sam argues. A first step toward changing the counterproductive aid dynamic requires a full picture of foreign support for Lebanon, so donors and the Lebanese government can coordinate aid to useful ends and not just perpetuate dependency and state breakdown.
Read:
- Report: “Adopt a Ministry: How Foreign Aid Threatens Lebanon’s Institutions,” by Sam Heller
- Commentary: “International Aid Keeps Lebanon Afloat. It Could Also Be Destroying Its Institutions,” by Sam Heller [in English and Arabic]
Participants:
- Sam Heller, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Ali Al-Mawlawi traces the long history of anti-Shia prejudice in Iraq. That prejudice, he argues, distorts contemporary debates over whether Shia factions are undermining the state when they compete for power.
This episode of Order From Ashes is the fourth and final episode in “Shia Power,” a series about the transformation of Shia politics in Iraq, and what Iraq’s experience teaches us about the role of religion in politics everywhere.
In episode 1 of “Shia Power,” Sajad Jiyad and host Thanassis Cambanis chart the powerful role of religion and the Shia clergy in the creation of a new Iraqi order after Saddam Hussein. In episode 2, Marsin Alshammary draws on her fieldwork in the seminaries of Najaf to argue that clerical authority has not diminished, despite setbacks over the last twenty years. In episode 3, Taif Alkhudary chronicles the revolutionary efforts of the Tishreen protest movement to establish an alternative to religious politics. In episode 4, the final in this series, Ali Al-Mawlawi connects some of today’s sectarian rhetoric to Iraq’s long history of anti-Shia prejudice.
Participants:
- Ali Al-Mawlawi,
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Read:
Report: “Iraqi Shia Factions Are Supposedly ‘Anti-state.’ But State Power Is What They Want,” by Ali Al-Mawlawi
Book: Shia Power Comes of Age
Project: Shia Politics
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast “Shia Power” series, Taif Alkhudary explains how the October 2019 protests formed a popular response to years of thwarted democratization.
The Tishreen protests movement, Alkhudary argues, represents an indigenous democratization movement that is resisting the putative democracy put in place after the U.S. invasion. Since 2003, Iraqis have endured corruption, dysfunction, and ethno-sectarian tensions, which the political elite justified as the cost of democracy. The Tishreen movement, while still politically immature, has revealed an alternate path.
This episode of Order From Ashes is the third in a four-part series about the transformation of Shia politics in Iraq, and what Iraq’s experience teaches us about the role of religion in politics everywhere.
In episode 1 of “Shia Power,” Sajad Jiyad and host Thanassis Cambanis chart the powerful role of religion and the Shia clergy in the creation of a new Iraqi order after Saddam Hussein. In episode 2, Marsin Alshammary draws on her fieldwork in the seminaries of Najaf to argue that clerical authority has not diminished, despite setbacks over the last twenty years. In episode 3, Taif Alkhudary chronicles the revolutionary efforts of the Tishreen protest movement to establish an alternative to religious politics. In episode 4, the final in this series, Ali Al-Mawlawi connects some of today’s sectarian rhetoric to Iraq’s long history of anti-Shia prejudice.
Participants:
- Taif Alkhudary, research officer, LSE Middle East Center, and PhD candidate, Cambridge
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Read:
- Report: “Young Revolutionary Parties Are Still Iraq’s Best Hope for Democracy,” by Taif Alkhudary
- Book: Shia Power Comes of Age
- Project: Shia Politics
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Marsin Alshamary explains why, despite some setbacks, Shia clerics in Iraq still wield a great deal of authority.
Protest movements have rejected religion in politics, while corrupt politicians have sullied the reputations of religious factions. But clerics and their institutions remain powerful players in Iraqi society even as their roles change.
This episode of Order From Ashes is the second in “Shia Power,” a four-part series about the transformation of Shia politics in Iraq, and what Iraq’s experience teaches us about the role of religion in politics everywhere.
In episode 1 of “Shia Power,” Sajad Jiyad and host Thanassis Cambanis chart the powerful role of religion and the Shia clergy in the creation of a new Iraqi order after Saddam Hussein. In episode 2, Marsin Alshammary draws on her fieldwork in the seminaries of Najaf to argue that clerical authority has not diminished, despite setbacks over the last twenty years. In episode 3, Taif Alkhudary chronicles the revolutionary efforts of the Tishreen protest movement to establish an alternative to religious politics. In episode 4, the final in this series, Ali Al-Mawlawi connects some of today’s sectarian rhetoric to Iraq’s long history of anti-Shia prejudice.
Read:
Report: “Shia Clerics in Iraq Haven’t Lost Their Authority,” by Marsin Alshamary
Book: Shia Power Comes of Age
Project: Shia Politics
Participants:
- Marsin Alshamary, assistant professor of political science, Boston College
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Sajad Jiyad plumbs the complex evolution of Shia Islamism during two decades at the center of Iraqi power.
This episode of Order From Ashes is the first in “Shia Power,” a four-part series about the transformation of Shia politics in Iraq, and what Iraq’s experience teaches us about the role of religion in politics everywhere.
A new edited volume from Century International, Shia Power Comes of Age: The Transformation of Islamist Politics in Iraq, 2003–2023, maps the radical transformation of Shia Islamist politics in Iraq over the last two decades. Contributors include Taif AlKhudary, Ali Al-Mawlawi, Marsin Alshamary, Thanassis Cambanis, Maria Fantappie, Fanar Haddad, Sajad Jiyad, Renad Mansour, and Ben Robin-D’Cruz.
Sajad and Thanassi, directors of Century International’s Shia Politics project, reflect on the lessons of Iraq’s Shia Islamists for politicians, policymakers, and researchers.
In episode 1 of “Shia Power,” Sajad Jiyad and host Thanassis Cambanis chart the powerful role of religion and the Shia clergy in the creation of a new Iraqi order after Saddam Hussein. In episode 2, Marsin Alshammary draws on her fieldwork in the seminaries of Najaf to argue that clerical authority has not diminished, despite setbacks over the last twenty years. In episode 3, Taif Alkhudary chronicles the revolutionary efforts of the Tishreen protest movement to establish an alternative to religious politics. In episode 4, the final in this series, Ali Al-Mawlawi connects some of today’s sectarian rhetoric to Iraq’s long history of anti-Shia prejudice.
Read:
Book: Shia Power Comes of Age
Project: Shia Politics
Participants:
- Sajad Jiyad, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
In a miserable twist for the people who live there, Iraq has become a front-line test lab for the extreme effects of climate change. A combination of forces, accelerated by bad human decisions, has dramatically degraded Iraq’s environment. And Iraq’s experience is a harbinger of what’s coming to the rest of the world.
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Century International fellow Zeinab Shuker explores the unhappy mix of factors that has made Iraq so inhospitable.
Zeinab is leading “Living the Climate Emergency: Lessons from Iraq,” a new Century International project exploring how policymakers and researchers can draw on the case of Iraq and its neighbors to translate into action the growing consensus that the climate crisis is already here.
Century’s Climate Emergency Project will connect field researchers, policymakers, and a wider audience through roundtables, public events, podcasts, and reports. Future research in this project will place today’s crisis in a historical context; map the contours and human impact of climate change in Iraq and its neighborhood; and finally, drawing on the lessons of the extreme case in Iraq, make projections about the future and propose solutions.
Read:
- “The Deep Roots of Iraq’s Climate Crisis,” Century International report by , Zeinab Shuker
- “Iraq Is Overheating. How Can It Mitigate the Effects of Climate Change?,” Century International commentary by Zeinab Shuker
Explore:
Project homepage, “Living the Climate Emergency: Lessons from Iraq”
Participants:
- Zeinab Shuker, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Lebanon’s ruling elites have sabotaged talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which offered the last hope for reforms that could save the country’s economy and improve life for millions of suffering people.
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, researchers Sami Zoughaib, from The Policy Institute in Lebanon, and Sam Heller, from Century International, reveal how Lebanon’s elites have misled the public on the reality of the country’s dire situation.
Without some course change, Zoughaib and Heller argue, Lebanon will not have the IMF program it needs to halt its economic collapse. But public pressure could still force elites to act responsibly—or at least hold those elites accountable.
The two researchers discuss the findings in their new report, a joint production of Century International and The Policy Institute in Lebanon. It is part of “Networks of Change: Reviving Governance and Citizenship in the Middle East,” a Century International project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Read:
“The Shadow Plan: How Lebanese Elites Are Sabotaging Their Country’s IMF Lifeline,” by Sami Zoughaib and Sam Heller.
Participants:
- Sami Zoughaib, economist and research manager at The Policy Initiative in Lebanon
- Sam Heller, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
The scramble for electricity has produced new interest groups that will shape the evolution of Lebanon’s decaying power sector, and the country’s future. Lebanese people endure erratic and expensive electricity supplies—not because of some staggering technical challenge but because of corrupt, often criminal, monopolies that control the energy sector.
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Century International fellow Zachary Cuyler talks about the competing interest groups that reap the benefits of Lebanon’s failed electricity system.
Zack delves deeper into the dysfunction in Lebanon’s electricity sector in his recent Century International commentary, “Lebanon’s Grid Has Collapsed. What Comes Next?”
Participants:
- Zack Cuyler, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
The effort to secure Iraq’s borders after the defeat of ISIS has created other, new sources of instability, as conflict supply chains adapt to new circumstances.
A close look at two border towns in Iraq’s western desert illustrates the law of unintended consequences. The Iraqi government, bordering countries, and the international community moved to more tightly control official border crossings in order to defeat ISIS. As a result, however, militias and smugglers have moved a great deal of commerce, legal and illicit, to other crossing points. In the meantime, people along once-prosperous trade routes suffer privation and violence, driving new conflicts.
Researchers Renad Mansour and Hayder Al-Shakeri tell the tale of trade, smuggling, and conflict across Iraq’s borders. The trajectory of trade route towns Rutba and Qaim help explain the mechanics of conflict supply chains and the unintended consequences of efforts to secure parts of the border without thinking of the spinoff effects.
Participants:
- Haydar Al-Shakeri, research associate, MENA Program, Chatham House
- Renad Mansour, director, Iraq Initiative, Chatham House
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Members have fled the Muslim Brotherhood in droves since its ouster from power in Egypt in 2013, frustrated that the organization can’t take care of them, or provide meaning for their lives. Will the Brotherhood learn the lessons of its failures before its next, inevitable, comeback?
In this final episode of Broken Bonds, Amr ElAfifi explores the Brotherhood’s crisis of membership and the implications for policy.
Some have left the Brotherhood because they’ve lost trust in the leadership; others, because they say the organization “is not being brotherhood enough.” The Brotherhood’s fractious trajectory after the Rabaa massacre of 2013 makes clear that there is no single Brotherhood path during a period of unprecedented violent repression.
The Brotherhood’s scattered grassroots have followed divergent paths, some embracing militancy, some withdrawing to the private sphere, and others abandoning faith altogether.
The Brotherhood tried to claim the mantle of Islamist politics, but found itself beset by contradictions and crises. “Islamism,” like the Brotherhood, is not a clearly defined or monolithic movement.
Broken Bonds is a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Noha Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses, and staying power. In the third episode, Khaled dissected the identity crisis that has defined the Brotherhood since its establishment. In the fourth episode, Ayyash sketched the leadership vacuum and power struggles that have hobbled the Brotherhood since 2013.
Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.
The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants:
- Amr ElAfifi, PhD candidate at Syracuse University; research manager, Freedom Initiative
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
The Muslim Brotherhood is a hierarchical organization suffering a debilitating leadership vacuum. Now, the organization has to reinvent itself while most of its top cadres are in exile, dead, or in jail.
Years after being forced to become a transnational organization because of its leadership’s expulsion from Egypt, the Brotherhood is now at an even more complex crossroads. Its old strategies for managing its relationship with the Egyptian state, and maintaining a quasi-clandestine presence in Egypt, are no longer relevant.
Abdelrahman Ayyash explains the power struggles and inchoate efforts to create a coherent strategy among the Brotherhood’s fragmented leadership after the 2013 coup and subsequent crackdown. The Brotherhood has been riven by power struggles and fundamental debates over resources, its international orientation, and the use of violence. This leadership crisis has hobbled the Brotherhood.
This is the fourth episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Noha Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses and its staying power. In the third episode, Khaled dissected the identity crisis that has defined the Brotherhood since its establishment. The fifth and final episode of Broken Bonds explores the crisis of membership and the implications for policy.
Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.
The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants:
- Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is suffering from an identity crisis, made worse by ongoing, violent state repression. Nearly a century since its founding, the Brotherhood hasn’t reconciled its social and political aims.
Noha Khaled plumbs the first of three crises besetting the Brotherhood: its internal identity conflict over what kind of organization it aspires to be.
Throughout its history, the Brotherhood has struggled to accommodate its mission as a religious and social service network, alongside its ambitions for political power. That ambivalence, or contradiction, forms the cornerstone of the Brotherhood’s ongoing triple crisis.
This is the third episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Abdelrahman Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. In the second episode, Ayyash, Khaled, and Amr ElAfifi mapped how the crises of identity, legitimacy, and membership simultaneously explain the organization’s weaknesses and its staying power. The remaining episodes of Broken Bonds go deeper into the crises of legitimacy and membership, and the implications for policy.
Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.
The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants:
- Noha Khaled, writer and researcher
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
The Muslim Brotherhood tries to project an image of grassroots power and disciplined leadership. A trio of researchers takes a different view, describing a once-formidable organization that is under strain and out of touch.
The Brotherhood, they argue, is experiencing multiple crises—of identity, legitimacy, and membership—which accelerated after Egypt’s military coup in July 2013.
Based on unprecedented access to Brotherhood leaders, rank-and-file members, and internal dissenters, the three researchers—Abdelrahman Ayyash, Amr ElAfifi, and Noha Khaled—take a new granular view of the organization.
The Brotherhood and its detractors alike have misunderstood it as a mass ideological organization, missing its evolution into an elite membership organization disconnected from its constituents.
This is the second episode of Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The first episode charted Ayyash’s personal coming of age in a Brotherhood milieu. Remaining episodes of Broken Bonds go deeper into each of the three crises facing the Brotherhood and the implications for policy.
Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.
The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants:
- Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International
- Amr ElAfifi, PhD candidate at Syracuse University; research manager, Freedom Initiative
- Noha Khaled, writer and researcher
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
What’s it like to come of age in a Muslim Brotherhood family in Egypt’s Nile Delta? Abdelrahman Ayyash recounts his childhood, political awakening, and disenchantment.
Ayyash recounts his early history cocooned in a Brotherhood community that took care of its members’ schooling, moral training, social life, and career counseling. And he recalls with stark frankness his shock, as a young blogger and political activist, at the political rigidity of the movement in which he’d been raised.
Ayyash’s personal journey from a young movement standout to dissident, critical researcher opens Broken Bonds, a five-part special season of the Order From Ashes podcast. The remaining episodes of Broken Bonds explore the triple crises facing the Brotherhood, the organization’s likely resurgence, and how observers and policymakers mischaracterize the Brotherhood and its significance.
Broken Bonds explores the evolution of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood from the apex of its power, when it won Egypt’s presidency in 2012, to the organization’s disarray and marginalization today.
The podcast season is a companion to a new book, Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22, published in February 2023 by TCF Press. Broken Bonds is part of “Faith and Fracture,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants:
- Abdelrahman Ayyash, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
The catastrophic earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 had particularly dire consequences for the millions of displaced Syrians living near the epicenter. Many of them have moved multiple times to flee violence. Since September, an outbreak of cholera has rapidly spread across Syria and entered Lebanon. And to make matters worse, international humanitarian aid is only allowed to enter northern Syria through a single border crossing, which is closed because of earthquake damage.
On this episode of the Order from Ashes podcast from Century International, Aron Lund discusses Syria’s unending catastrophe, its origins in bad governance, and what donor nations can do to help.
Years of war, drought, and climate change have ravaged Syria’s water supply and infrastructure, forcing half of the population to drink unsafe water. Now, the earthquake has compounded the damage to Syria’s built environment, exacerbating Syria’s already dire humanitarian situation.
Read more about the human and environmental origins of Syria’s deadly cholera outbreak in Aron’s Century International report “Cholera in the Time of Assad.”
Participants:
- Aron Lund, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
This fall, news broke that a web of thieves—including high-level officials—had stolen $2.5 billion in Iraqi government cash. The scam is only the most recent example of systemic corruption perpetrated by Iraq’s elites since 2003. The country’s new government has its work cut out for itself.
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Sajad Jiyad talks about the sordid theft and the way forward to fight corruption.
Sajad shares more about the origins of Iraq’s consociational system of power sharing, and public graft, in his report “Corruption Is Strangling Iraq.”
Participants:
- Sajad Jiyad, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
America maintains an enormous military infrastructure on the Arabian peninsula and in the Persian Gulf. How should the United States shrink this enormous footprint while continuing to protect its interests and those of its sometimes difficult partners in the region?
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, Becca Wasser considers some of the practical ways in which a progressive-minded United States could shift away from its overinvestment in military bases.
Despite the war in Ukraine and rising tensions with China, the United States retains a massive and problematic military footprint in the Middle East, which creates moral hazard and often locks Washington into military solutions ill-suited for complex policy problems.
Figuring out how to get the balance right in the Middle East can help the United States strike a more healthy, and less militarized, balance throughout the world.
This episode of Order from Ashes is part of a regular series on progressive foreign policy in the United States. We’re looking to start a constructive conversation about the specifics of a progressive foreign policy that remains invested and engaged in the world, while moving away from reflexive militarism and toward a framework based on rights and values.
Participants:
- Becca Wasser, senior fellow, Center for a New American Security
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Progressives have done a good job articulating the problems with bad policies, especially the Global War on Terror, which worsened the problems it was supposed to solve.
But what is the better, progressive alternative?
On this episode of the Order From Ashes podcast, New America fellow Alex Stark outlines some of the specific ingredients of a policy that tries to promote genuine stability.
Sound, progressive counterterrorism would build on a complex and sustainable vision of stability, rooted in rights and better governance. Instead of seeking to eliminate violent groups, it has designated as terrorists, a progressive counterterrorism policy would invest in accountability and development, along with military operations, to marginalize violent groups.
This episode of Order from Ashes is the first in a regular series on progressive foreign policy in the United States. We’re looking to start a constructive conversation about the specifics of a progressive foreign policy that remains invested and engaged in the world, while moving away from reflexive militarism and toward a framework based on rights and values.
Participants:
- Alex Stark, fellow, New America
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
The United States and Lebanon are, in some ways, very different political contexts, and yet organizers face strikingly similar dilemmas and pitfalls in both countries. Both Nicole Carty and Jean Kassir have been actively involved in politics since 2011—Carty in the United States and Kassir in Lebanon. In this episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of Order from Ashes—the two activists share their insights.
In their experience, movements go through similar cycles. Carty and Kassir emphasize the importance of developing movement infrastructure to avoid the pitfalls associated with these cycles, and to capitalize on moments of mass mobilization—to seize opportunity. Movements must also be able to create moments, not just react to them.
A lack of transmission of skills between generations and a disconnect between movements causes stagnation and the repetition of mistakes. Both activists describe learning lessons from movements across the globe in terms of tactics, discourse, and political imagination. And both emphasize careful thinking about learning and the transmission of skills.
By fostering both transnational and intergenerational learning, movements may have some hope of avoiding the familiar pitfalls.
This podcast is the final of a special eight-part season of Order from Ashes, as part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants include:
- Jean Kassir, co-founder of Lebanese media platform Megaphone
- Nicole Carty, core team member, Momentum, a social movement incubator and training institute
- Naira Antoun, director, Transnational Trends in Citizenship, Century International
No matter how big they are, protests alone do not create political change. They must be nurtured into something more enduring: a movement. Movements are neither protests nor organizations.
Ivan Marovic cut his teeth as a student activist in Serbia in the 1990s and as a leader of the Optor movement that brought down Slobodan Milosevic. Since then, he has worked with dissidents and movements all over the world. In this episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of Order from Ashes—Marovic talks about the importance of skill-building for movements.
Unlike many other factors that affect movements, skill-building is something that can be controlled. The skills of organizing, communicating, strategic planning, and tactical innovation must be nurtured at the grassroots level. This is all the more crucial in authoritarian settings where crackdowns seek to break any civil society networks and may seek to eliminate leadership. Marovic emphasizes the importance for movements of learning, self-reflection, and time spent together.
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants:
- Ivan Marovic, director of field education, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict in Washington, DC
- Naira Antoun, director, Transnational Trends in Citizenship, Century International
For the last decade and more, popular outrage at police brutality has driven mass protests in both the Middle East and the West. Opposition to police excesses—from crackdowns on protests in Egypt and Iraq to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020—has highlighted the need for change.
In this episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of Order from Ashes— anthropologist Hayal Akarsu and sociologist Alex Vitale argue that policing crises around the globe are connected; that is, they are all part of one broad crisis with different local permutations. These permutations may include repressive political policing, long-term corruption and ineffectiveness, everyday policing, or a combination of these, as well as economic factors such as increasing inequality. As awareness of the climate crisis deepens, the role of police in protecting corporate interests may become an increasingly prominent feature of the crisis of policing legitimacy.
Police reform is, more than ever before, a global industry, which circulates experts, tools, standards, models, and training programs. As such, police reform is a key part of foreign policy initiatives, diplomacy efforts, and development programs. A transnational framework enables us to see these connections.
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants include:
- Hayal Akarsu, assistant professor of anthropology, Utrecht University
- Alex Vitale, professor of sociology, Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center
- Naira Antoun, director, Transnational Trends in Citizenship, Century International
From Poland to the studios of Fox News, reactionaries have recast progressive ideas about gender as a militant “gender ideology” that threatens society and its values. These politicians and pundits stoke this and other “moral panics”—mass frenzies of fear about practices, ideas, or identities that supposedly threaten a country’s innocence or moral character.
Moral panics are an increasingly prominent feature of the political landscape around the world, and they increasingly focus on gender. This episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of Order from Ashes—draws on examples from Egypt, Poland, and elsewhere to show how leaders, media, and other actors cultivate, promote, and even invent these moral panics. These actors exploit moral panics to rapidly construct social coalitions that might not otherwise coalesce. And in case after case, moral panics are shown to be about power—more policing of the marginalized; stifling social and economic change that would cost the elite; fighting democratic reforms; and redirecting grievances toward scapegoats.
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants include:
- Lobna Darwish, gender and human rights officer, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
- Kate Korycki, assistant professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, Western University Canada
- Naira Antoun, director, Transnational Trends in Citizenship, Century International
Pundits, policymakers, and even academics often treat the Middle East as “exceptional”—a region of primordial violence and war, stuck in premodern social dynamics. But such conflict is not unique to the region—the United States and Europe have, of course, fought in multiple wars, though often not on their own soil. It is because of these assumptions that news coverage of the war in Ukraine is viewed with justifiable shock, but the media often treats violence in Iraq or Syria as relatively unremarkable—the Middle East is supposed to be used to war.
In this episode of Order from Ashes, the scholars Karma R. Chávez and Maya Mikdashi talk about moving beyond the common exceptionalizing frameworks that surround region, gender, and sexuality. They argue that, if straight and queer sexualities are analyzed together—rather than treated as if the condition of LGBTQ minorities is solely its own separate issue—observers can better understand how state and social power operate. Queer or marginalized genders and sexualities are policed or controlled, but so too are straight sexualities and all genders, in ways that are fundamental to how state power operates. The broader implication of their analysis: when we stop seeing the Middle East as exceptionally authoritarian, backward, and violent—and stop seeing the United States and Europe as particularly democratic and civilized—the transnational contours of war and power become clearer.
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants:
- Karma R. Chávez, chair and associate professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, University of Texas, Austin
- Maya Mikdashi, assistant professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and a lecturer in the program in Middle East Studies, Rutgers University
- Naira Antoun, fellow, Century International
A cursory survey of contemporary media, policy, and academic landscapes suggests that we live in an age of militias, in which they are increasingly prevalent actors and a growing political challenge in armed conflicts. But are there really more militias now than ever before? Or is there just more attention given to them?
In this episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of Order from Ashes—scholar Jacob Mundy discusses what might be driving the “militiafication” of thinking about mass organized violence. The legacies of “new war” theories and the emerging global order—in which North Atlantic powers no longer call all the shots—are essential to understanding the alleged age of militias.
While there are ways in which militias play an important role in constituting the global terrain of organized violence, this role does not appear to be proportionally larger in recent years than in previous decades. How can we explain, then, the disproportionate intellectual and policy weight given to militias?
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants include:
- Jacob Mundy, associate professor in peace and conflict studies, Colgate University
- Naira Antoun, director, Transnational Trends in Citizenship, Century International
Discussions of self-styled Islamist armed groups, such as the Islamic State, tend to heavily focus on gender and religion. Yet these elements are almost always never considered in analyses of white supremacist groups. What accounts for this difference and why does it matter? In this episode of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship”—the new season of Order from Ashes—we speak with scholar Amanda Rogers about overlooked aspects of militias and nonstate armed groups in transnational perspective.
Common frameworks that emphasize violence do not have the tools to fully understand how these ideological movements function. Important elements that tend to be overlooked in such approaches include gender and religion.
Rogers identifies other gaps in discussions of armed groups: Even though analyses of Islamist groups incldue gender, they usually treat women as peripheral. And wildly different groups—Hezbollah, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Hamas—are treated as the same analytical unit simply because of their supposed connection to Islam. When it comes to white supremacist groups, however, religion is barely considered at all, even thought many o have an explicit religious ideology.
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants include:
- Naira Antoun, director, Transnational Trends in Citizenship, Century International
- Amanda Rogers, fellow, Century International
A worldwide crisis in citizenship and rights has made it clear that no country’s struggle is entirely exceptional. Today’s episode of Order from Ashes kicks off a new season of the podcast: Transnational Trends in Citizenship.
Today, Naira Antoun, director of Century International’s Transnational Trends in Citizenship project, talks with Century International director Thanassis Cambanis about the connections between the crises in the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America.
For more than a year, Century International hosted discussions among experts who usually focus on their own regions—the Middle East or Western Europe and North America—and asked them to compare their regions and policy areas.
As a result of this exercise, the project’s teams of researchers, activists, and academics revealed commonalities and connections in their study of militias, gender and sexuality, police accountability, and protest. They also demonstrated how bringing experts on different regions together can test assumptions, create new knowledge, and inspire powerful new insights into old but persistent policy problems.
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants include:
- Naira Antoun, director, Transnational Trends in Citizenship, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Even while Ukraine is experiencing tremendous suffering and dislocation since the Russian invasion, spillover effects are being felt all over the world. Syria is especially vulnerable, after ten years of war, with Russia as a major player in the Syrian conflict.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, Century International fellows Sam Heller and Aron Lund assess some of the most immediate humanitarian, diplomatic, and military consequences of the Ukraine war for Syria.
Heller’s recent Century International report argues in some detail how humanitarian pressures and increased diplomatic tension are likely to exacerbate hunger and precarity for Syrians. In this podcast, he and Lund make the case that Syria is vulnerable in other ways to harmful spinoff effects of the war in Ukraine.
Participants include:
- Sam Heller, fellow, Century International
- Aron Lund, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
A year and a half ago, the historic Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries—but did little for stability or democracy in the region, much less for Israeli–Palestinian peace. On this episode of Order from Ashes, Century International fellow Dahlia Scheindlin assesses the possibility of salvaging progressive foreign policy goals from the problematic agreements.
A progressive U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East should encourage Israeli–Palestinian peace, reduce militarization, support democracy, and strengthen the rules-based international order. So far, the Abraham Accords have mostly undermined these goals. In a new report for Century International, Scheindlin argues that diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab states can promote the core aims of progressive foreign policy in the Middle East—but it will take focused American leadership to turn the Abraham Accords around.
This podcast is part of “Transnational Trends in Citizenship: Authoritarianism and the Emerging Global Culture of Resistance,” a TCF project supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Open Society Foundations.
Participants include:
- Dahlia Scheindlin, fellow, Century International
- Thanassis Cambanis, director, Century International
Millions of Syrians depend on international aid that comes through a single border crossing—aid that depends on an agreement with Russia. Every year, and sometimes more frequently, the UN Security Council fiercely debates its tenuous agreement to keep open aid crossings into Syria. The number of open crossings has steadily diminished, and today, only a single access point remains, at Bab al-Hawa. This year, Russia has suggested it will no longer agree to let UN aid through this crossing after the current UN authorization expires on July 10. On this episode of Order from Ashes, TCF fellows and Syria experts Aron Lund and Sam Heller discuss why aid is so important to the 4 million Syrians served by the border crossing, and why it’s been an uphill struggle for the United States and its allies to keep aid flowing to the parts of Syria that remain under rebel control.
Participants include:
- Sam Heller, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Aron Lund, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Syria faces an unprecedented food security crisis. Almost 60 percent of the country is now food-insecure, and more than a million Syrians cannot survive without food aid. The crisis has many causes, chief among them the country’s economic collapse and the depreciation of its currency. But disruptions to key imports such as wheat and fuel have also harmed food security. Western sanctions have exacerbated these problems.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, Syria expert Sam Heller discusses the case that Western governments should do what they can to help, even though they have a limited ability to fix the crisis. Food security, Sam argues, should top Western policymakers’ Syria agenda, and inform their other Syria policy choices.
Participants include:
- Sam Heller, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia have a hand in nearly every hot spot around the Middle East. The two rivals don’t control what happens, but they can play a major role in destabilizing battleground states—or calming tensions. There are many spots ripe for diplomacy: the war in Yemen, the simmering instability in Iraq and Syria, the political crisis in Lebanon.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, we hear Middle East expert Dina Esfandiary and Iraqi analyst Sajad Jiyad about the new round of diplomacy. What has prompted Iran and Saudi Arabia to be willing to talk, and where might they be willing to calm tensions?
Participants include:
- Dina Esfandiary, senior adviser for the Middle East and North Africa, International Crisis Group
- Sajad Jiyad, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Tensions between Egypt and Turkey have run high for nearly a decade. Turkey has hosted Egyptian dissidents and opposition parties since the Egyptian coup in 2013; and the two countries support opposite sides in the Libyan War and have very nearly come into direct military conflict. Both are major U.S. partners, at least on paper: Turkey is a formal treaty ally in NATO, and Egypt is a top recipient of U.S. military aid.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, we hear from Turkey expert Nicholas Danforth and Egypt expert Michael Wahid Hanna about the recent, tentative thaw in relations between the two countries. Turkey and Egypt’s rivalry, and its unsettling consequences, serve as a reminder that there are many countries with power to drive events, and conflicts, in the Middle East.
Participants include:
- Nicholas Danforth, senior visiting fellow, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Soon after taking office, President Biden announced that the United States would stop contributing offensive weapons to the war in Yemen. “This war has to end,” the president said. But the complex conflict in Yemen appears, to the contrary, to be heading for a new round of intense fighting, this time around the city of Marib.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, we talk to two analysts who know Yemen intimately: Nadwa al-Dawsari and Peter Salisbury. It might be possible for the United States to wash its hands of the Yemen war, they argue, but very hard for Washington to catalyze a resolution. What are the realistic options, and what’s best for the long-suffering civilians caught in the conflict?
Participants include:
- Nadwa Al-Dawsari, non-resident fellow, Middle East Institute
- Peter Salisbury, senior analyst, Yemen, International Crisis Group
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
On this episode of Order from Ashes, we talk with Dahlia Dassa Kaye, the lead author of a new RAND Corporation study that advocates a major overhaul of U.S. strategy in the Middle East. Washington can and should jettison legacy arrangements that no longer make sense. Multi-billion dollar military assistance deals with Israel, Egypt, and Jordan were conceived nearly fifty years ago. Big-ticket weapons deals with Arabian monarchies have distorted American policy.
Dassa Kaye argues that the United States can redefine stability and invest in better governance, moving away from dysfunctional partnerships and counterproductive policies. The United States doesn’t have to choose between perpetual war and complete disengagement; as it ends its forever wars, Washington has an opportunity to invest in diplomatic, social, and political leverage that will bring more enduring stability to the Middle East.
Participants include:
- Dahlia Dassa Kaye, fellow, the Wilson Center and senior political scientist, the RAND Corporation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Ten years ago, the uprising in Tahrir Square toppled Egypt’s dictator and raised hopes for political reform across the Middle East. Great setbacks followed in Egypt, which now suffers under an even more repressive autocracy than the one it overthrew in 2011.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, close observers of Egyptian political life explore the still unfolding legacy of the unsuccessful revolution of 2011. The threat and promise of Egypt’s uprising still makes Egypt’s military dictatorship nervous—and still suggests prospects for future democratic reforms.
Participants include:
- Naira Antoun, Mada Masr and The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Critics of hyper-militarized foreign policy argue that the abuses of America’s war on terror led in a direct line to the January 6 attempt to overturn the presidential election. On this episode of Order from Ashes, two advocates from the grassroots organization Win Without War dissect the connections between unaccountable foreign policy and surging authoritarianism.
Democracy is threatened in the United States because of global trends. Stephen Miles and Kate Kizer argue that deep systemic trends will continue to threaten democracy after Trump’s presidency. A serious attempt at accountability, and an investment in peaceful tools of power, can shift the United States away from the dangers of militarization.
Participants include:
- Stephen Miles, executive director, Win Without War
- Kate Kizer, policy director, Win Without War
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
The challenge to American democracy has called into question some of the country’s deepest assumptions about exceptionalism. Fellows at The Century Foundation have been studying fragile democracy, authoritarianism, and militia rule in the Middle East for decades.
We apply some of the lessons learned from studying authoritarian relapse around the world—from the importance of calling a coup attempt by its proper name, to the limits of the “war on terror” model for dealing with violent insurrectionists and white supremacist terrorism in the United States.
Participants include:
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
A fearsome array of climate and environmental woes is straining the Middle East, worsening the existing crisis of poor governance and weak states in the region. On this episode of “Order From Ashes,” we speak to climate researcher Peter Schwartzstein about some of the specific environmental emergencies in the Middle East, and some of the possible solutions.
The United States has many opportunities to incorporate environmental and climate change concerns into all its policymaking. Because of its acute crises of climate, governance, and security, the Middle East is particularly ripe for a new approach.
Drawing on the reports he spearheaded in TCF’s new initiative, “Nature and National Security in the Middle East,” Schwartzstein suggests some encouraging possible moves for Middle Eastern governments, civil society, and the United States to address this slow-burning emergency.
Participants include:
Peter Schwartzstein, independent researcher and
Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
The United States always had difficulty squaring its record on the ground in the Middle East with its efforts to promote rights and democracy. It’s even harder after the Trump presidency and a contested election, which featured the sitting president and many Republicans questioning the integrity of the electoral process without any basis in fact.
The Middle East’s long authoritarian relapse increasingly has echoes in the crisis in the United States. On this episode of “Order from Ashes,” we talk with Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research at the Project on Middle East Democracy. We discuss the obstacles that the Trump presidency created for aspiring reformers in the Middle East, and assess the emboldened crop of autocrats who will challenge the Biden administration.
Participants include:
- Amy Hawthorne, deputy director for research, Project on Middle East Democracy
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Egypt’s 2013 military coup and crackdown left the Muslim Brotherhood more adrift than ever before in its ninety-two-year history.
With tens of thousands of members surviving in exile in Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood is undergoing new strains. Youth in the diaspora have experimented with new, liberal approaches to life, politics, and religion, pitting them against a rigid and aging Brotherhood leadership.
Abdelrahman Ayyash, author of the recent report, “The Turkish Future of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” discusses how the Brotherhood has changed under unprecendented repression, and whether it can adapt enough to survive.
Participants include:
- Abdelrahman Ayyash, Egyptian researcher
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundatio
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Washington, D.C. has been the most generous donor in the world to humanitarian aid efforts for Syrian civilians. But United States policy has also been bent on overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
On this episode of “Order from Ashes,” we talk with Syria-watchers Daphne McCurdy and Sam Heller about ways the United States can provide meaningful assistance to Syrian people, without endorsing the Assad regime. With Assad securely in power and the war in Syria largely over, how can the United States balance the conflicting imperatives to stabilize Syria, help civilians, and hold war criminals accountable?
Participants include:
- Daphne McCurdy, associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Sam Heller, independent researcher, Beirut
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Mohammed Bin Salman quickly shook up the old sleepy way of doing business in Saudi Arabia when he effectively took power in 2015. He took on the Saudi establishment, sidelining the clergy and other royals. He also quickly spent the international goodwill invested in him with a series of destabilizing moves, including a destructive war in Yemen and the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Now solidly ensconced in power as a crown prince in his early thirties, Mohammed Bin Salman could rule for decades to come, steering the policy of one of the world’s wealthiest countries and the planet’s single most powerful oil producer.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, we hear about the emerging long-term trend lines of Mohamed Bin Salman’s rule from Ben Hubbard, New York Times reporter and author of the recent book MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman.
Participants include:
- Ben Hubbard, Beirut bureau chief, the New York Times
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, displaced populations and conflict zones were considered especially vulnerable, driving early fears that the Middle East would be especially hard hit. The first wave of the pandemic shook Iraq and Iran, but the worst fears did not materialize, at least not initially.
Now, however, cases are increasing across the region. The pandemic is straining areas already buckling under sanctions, armed conflict, regional rivalries, corruption, and economic depression. On this episode of Order from Ashes, international affairs researchers at The Century Foundation discuss how the pandemic is accelerating regional crises and why it has not yet led to any systemic change. (There’s more TCF analysis of the pandemic in the Middle East in the new roundtable, “Middle East Strained by COVID-19, But Not Transformed.”)
Participants include:
- Dina Esfandiary, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Aron Lund, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Lebanon has served for decades as one of the world’s leading experiments in extreme libertarianism, illustrating what happens to a society with little to no government regulation or social protection.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the weaknesses of a health system suffering from corruption and gaping inequalities between public and private hospitals. What role have neoliberal international aid demands for austerity and privatization—known as the Washington Consensus—played in setting up Lebanon’s health system for failure? And what does Lebanon’s case show about the need to reinvest in strong public goods?
On this episode of Order from Ashes, Sima Ghaddar joins Kareem Chehayeb, who in a recent commentary for The Century Foundation argued that austerity and privatization have left residents of Lebanon extremely vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Participants include:
- Kareem Chehayeb, journalist, Beirut
- Sima Ghaddar, doctoral candidate, University of California, Los Angeles
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
The European Union is the world’s most successful experiment in shared sovereignty, and its biggest, wealthiest social welfare state. It also has struggled with nationalism and fragmentation in the face of crises, from the 2008 global financial meltdown, to the 2015 migration wave and subsequent rise of the far right, to the ongoing stresses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In what ways has the European model worked, and in what ways has it failed? Only a revived international order can address global problems like health, finance, and climate change. Veteran observers of the European Union discuss the continent’s response to COVID-19, and suggest lessons for international cooperation going forward.
Participants include:
- David Carretta, journalist, Brussels
- Rolla Scolari, journalist, Milan
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
The global crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic will prompt a period of reflection and, potentially, a once-in-a-generation chance for sweeping policy change and reform. But the United States and the rest of the world have a checkered record during similar hinge points in modern history.
After World War II, policymakers responded to widespread social collapse and upheaval with bold, visionary investments in a new international and domestic order, spending money on long-term institutions and programs that produced deep and lasting stability. But other critical moments ended up as missed opportunities, characterized by chauvinism and isolationism: the end of World War I, the end of the Cold War, and 9/11.
On this episode of Order from Ashes, Ilan Goldenberg and Mieke Eoyang assess this history and argue that we aren’t necessarily condemned to repeat past mistakes. Today, Americans have a rare opportunity to dramatically transform government, society, and the international order for the better—or else risk worsening the defects that have left the world so vulnerable to the pandemic in the first place.
Participants include:
- Mieke Eoyang, vice president, Third Way
- Ilan Goldenberg, senior fellow, Center for a New American Security
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
The COVID-19 epidemic hit Iran and its neighboring countries early, and has tested health systems and governments across the region. A second crisis hit the region in early March, when oil prices plummeted after a decision by oil producers to flood the market. Our guest on this episode, Karen Young, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has been following both crises.
These twin shocks have shaken vulnerable people across a region already buffeted by conflicts and political crises. Countries like Iraq and Iran seem ill-positioned to handle a health emergency—and falling oil prices threaten to make the Iraqi state insolvent. The virus and the spiralling effects of an oil price war also highlight the deep connections among countries in the MIddle East, and between the Middle East and the world economy.
Participants include:
- Karen Young, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
During the Cold War, the United States promoted international law and human rights as a way to constrain its global rivals. Since the 1990s, however, Washington has more and more often dispensed with even the rhetorical cover of international law. The United States and its allies have habitually considered themselves exempt from international legal constraints.
The decades since the 2003 invasion of Iraq have witnessed an acceleration of this trend. What is the cost of a full-fledged abandonment of the norms promoted by international law and human rights? International law and Middle East policy scholar Aslı Ü. Bâli discusses the many disturbing practical outcomes of our current state of eroded international law, including the impact on sanctions regimes, assassinations, and wars.
Participants include:
- Aslı Ü. Bâli, UCLA professor of law
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Years of tension and slights between the governments of Iraq and the United States came to a head after the United States breached the terms of its partnership with Iraq with the assassination of a group of government officials outside Baghdad International Airport.
Now Iraq is asking the United States to withdraw its troops, and the United States is threatening sanctions against Iraq—one of its most important strategic partners in the Arab world.
How will this crisis affect security in Iraq and the resurgence of the Islamic State? How much of the relationship can be salvaged? What will be the costs for Iraq, the United States, and the surrounding region?
Participants include:
- Sajad Jiyad, managing director, Bayan Center
- Maria Fantappie, special adviser, Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Sajad Jiyad is the managing director of Al-Bayan Center for Planning and Studies in Baghdad.
Maria Fantappie is a special adviser on the Middle East–North Africa region at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Switzerland.
A new report out today from TCF report examines Gulf expansionism through a case study of the Emirates-based company Dubai Ports World (DP World). This multinational is one of the world’s leading global port operators and logistics giants—and a source of power for the United Arab Emirates.
A close look at its operations in the Horn of Africa reveals the ways that a government can exert control through a modern state-chartered company. A closer look at the operations of DP World also casts light on a key driver of disastrous state fragmentation in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.
DP World functions like a modern-day version of the British East India Company, serving as both a foreign policy tool and a profit engine. The analysis in Advani’s report, and our discussion with him here, help explain how governments exert political power outside the confines of traditional statecraft.
Participants include:
- Rohan Advani, researcher
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
From Libya to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond, countless militias, parties, “brigades,” “forces,” “battalions,” and “detachments” have emerged to directly challenge the formal state.
These groups form a new category of actor, which draws power from the state, and at the same time competes with the state or even undermines it. The authors of a new report from The Century Foundation discuss the concept of “hybrid actor,” which allows us to make better sense of the pivotal players in conflict zones and shaky states across the Middle East, and beyond.
Participants include:
- Renad Mansour, research fellow, Chatham House
- Dina Esfandiary, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Iraq is the second-largest OPEC oil producer, believed to have huge unexploited reserves that will make the country increasingly rich as it modernizes its decrepit energy infrastructure. Iraq holds a strategic position at the center of regional rivalries, and is perhaps the only country that maintains close security, political, and economic relations with Iran, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other competing powers. The underdeveloped oil sector underlies much of Iraq’s significance, wealth, and potential power in the region. An expert in Iraq’s oil sector and the international companies that compete for contracts in Iraq, Samya Kullab gives an overview of Iraq’s burgeoning oil sector, and its intersection with policy. Participants include: 1. Samya Kullab, senior correspondent, Iraq Oil Report 2. Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Nearly a decade after the Arab uprisings gripped the region, large-scale protests have broken out in Iraq and Egypt. In Iraq, arguably one of the most open political systems in the Arab world, authorities struck the protesters with surprising levels of violence. In Egypt, the surprise was that protests took place at all, given the historic levels of authoritarian repression.
What do the protests reveal about state failure—and what kind of pressure do they exert on governments to change? Iraq and Egypt, like many governments in the region, have rigid systems that appear incapable of serious changes in policy or governance. What can we learn from the latest round of revolts?
Participants include:
- Maria Fantappie, Iraq senior adviser, International Crisis Group
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
This podcast is part of an ongoing TCF series that explores progressive policy proposals for America’s most pressing international priorities.
The United States is by far the most significant donor to the United Nations and has, for much of the UN’s history, been one of its primary boosters. American support for the United Nations has fluctuated, and, since President Trump took office, has plummeted. But Washington’s love-hate relationship with the United Nations and with the compromises and niceties of international diplomacy predates Trump, and has come in for bipartisan criticism.
However, a pressing global emergency like climate change, or another worldwide financial crisis, cannot be solved without the international system. How can the United States revive the effectiveness of the United Nations, so that the international institution can help address ongoing crises and manage burgeoning great-power competition between the United States, Russia, and China?
Participants include:
- Richard Gowan, UN Director, International Crisis Group
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
This podcast is part of an ongoing TCF series that explores progressive policy proposals for America’s most pressing international priorities.
On this podcast, we learn about the shifting views of Israelis and Palestinians, and the different visions of the future that they are considering in addition to the two states envisioned in the Oslo Accords—including confederation, a single state, annexation, and indefinite occupation.
Politics in Israel–Palestine can seem unpredictable, but some long-term trends are clear. The Israeli electorate has moved decisively to the right, and support for a “two-state solution” has fallen to historic lows among both Palestinians and Israelis.
What are the possibilities for the United States to affect Israeli policies on settlements and annexation of occupied territory?
Participants include:
- Dahlia Scheindlin, political scientist and fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
This podcast is part of an ongoing TCF series that explores progressive policy proposals for America’s most pressing international priorities.
America has had an inflated military presence since 9/11, especially in the Middle East. Defense budgets are historically bloated, and policymakers have avoided making choices about closing bases and reducing troop deployments.
Political support is waning for the forever war and politicians from both major American parties agree that the United States needs to scale back its global military entanglements and set real priorities. The Middle East, many of them say, has occupied policy attention that should be directed to other, more pressing priorities.
Now the tough questions concern the details: What would a right-sized U.S. military presence look like in the Middle East? If the U.S. military shouldn’t have quite so many bases in the region and troops deployed, what is the right amount? What wars should the United States be prepared to fight? How, politically, can American leaders sell the idea of containing threats instead of setting impossible but popular goals, like entirely eliminating terrorism? What’s a reasonable budget?
Participants include:
- Mara Karlin, director of strategic studies, Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
This podcast is part of an ongoing TCF series that explores progressive policy proposals for America’s most pressing international priorities.
As part of our running series exploring in detail what an alternative progressive U.S. foreign policy would look like, on this episode of TCF World we turn to Iran. We analyze what an effective foreign policy toward Iran should look like, taking into account Iran’s destabilizing record of expansion and militarism in the Middle East.
Tensions with Iran are as high as they’ve been in decades, after U.S. President Donald J. Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor. Today, the most pressing matter is how to avoid an escalation with Iran that leads to war.
If and when this crisis passes, what are the options for salvaging the deal, or managing the fallout of its collapse? The original nuclear deal was negotiated in 2015 and is known by its formal title, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Many of the deal’s supporters, including several candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, argue that the United States should reenter the original deal after Trump is no longer in office. We explore how the original deal could be revived, or what could take its place if it has completely collapsed by the time Trump’s successor takes office in 2021 or 2025.
Participants include:
- Ariane Tabatabai, associate political scientist, RAND Corporation
- Dina Esfandiary, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Progressives still have to figure out how to translate into policy widely shared concerns with global inequality, authoritarianism, climate change, and reflexive militarism. In this episode, Thanassis Cambanis, Michael Wahid Hanna, and Daniel Benaim discuss the contours of a future progressive foreign policy in the Middle East, what’s missing from the current debates, and the limits of American power.
Participants include:
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Daniel Benaim, senior fellow, Center for American Progress, and visiting assistant professor, New York University
For years, the United States has invested significant political capital in attempting to broker a peaceful resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. However, these attempts have largely failed. Israel’s occupation is more entrenched than most Americans realize, and Palestinian politics appear increasingly splintered. Many commentators and policymakers now believe a two-state solution is no longer viable. In this podcast, Khaled Elgindy identifies two main blind spots that have hobbled America’s role as an effective mediator: Israeli power and Palestinian politics.
Participants include:
- Khaled Elgindy, nonresident fellow, Brookings Institution
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Although it’s still widely used by analysts and policymakers, the term “sectarianism” has distorted efforts to explain political dynamics in Iraq. Since 2003, Iraqi society has undergone significant transformations as a result of social, political, and other forces. Fanar Haddad discusses the drivers of political instability in Iraq. Sectarian dynamics have evolved, along with Iraqi views of nationalism. The political system has normalized, both domestically and regionally. A more inclusive notion of citizenship, Haddad argues, requires a strong institutional basis.
This podcast is part of “Citizenship and Its Discontents: The Struggle for Rights, Pluralism, and Inclusion in the Middle East” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants include:
- Fanar Haddad, senior research fellow, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore
- Rohan Advani, senior policy associate, The Century Foundation
This podcast is in Arabic.
From the Queen Boat incident in 2001 to the waves of arrests following Mashrou’ Leila’s concert in Cairo in 2017, Egypt’s LGBTQ community has always endured a precarious position. In recent years, Egyptian authorities have directed a brutal crackdown against its members. Ahmed El Hady discusses the recent intensification of repression and the crisis facing LGBTQ Egyptians. El Hady, an activist and a neuroscientist, situates the struggle for LGBTQ rights in Egypt within the broader quest for political freedoms that began in 2011. Any discussion of rights, he argues, must incorporate LGBTQ rights as well.
This podcast is part of “Citizenship and Its Discontents: The Struggle for Rights, Pluralism, and Inclusion in the Middle East” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants include:
- Ahmed El Hady, activist and neuroscientist, Princeton University
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Despite enjoying more autonomy than other parts of Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan is losing its position as the center of gravity for Kurdish nationalism. The unwillingness of Kurdish elites to relinquish their power, economic crisis, and regional instability have made political evolution all the more difficult. As a result, Kurdish society and young Kurds in particular are disengaging from the political process. In this podcast, two researchers who conducted extensive fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan discuss the current political impasse of Kurdish nationalism. They argue for a new social contract that provides rights based on citizenship rather than party affiliation or patronage-based networks.
This podcast is part of “Citizenship and Its Discontents: The Struggle for Rights, Pluralism, and Inclusion in the Middle East,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants include:
- Cale Salih, research officer, United Nations University Centre for Policy Research
- Maria Fantappie, Iraq senior adviser, International Crisis Group
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
This podcast is in Arabic.
The question of universal rights in the Middle East is a delicate one. As pluralism and rights come under threat from communal violence, authoritarianism, and religious identity politics, the call for universal rights becomes even more necessary. Yet marginalized groups face unique challenges that set them apart from the wider population. Our guests discuss the basis of rights and how to create inclusive forms of citizenship. The biggest challenge they contemplate is how to push for universal rights without erasing difference.
This podcast is part of “Citizenship and Its Discontents: The Struggle for Rights, Pluralism, and Inclusion in the Middle East,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. This podcast is in Arabic.
Participants include:
- Karl Sharro, architect and critic
- Lina Attalah, editor of Mada Masr
- Rabab El Mahdi, associate professor, American University of Cairo
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
The question of universal rights in the Middle East is a delicate one. As pluralism and rights come under threat from communal violence, authoritarianism, and religious identity politics, the call for universal rights becomes even more necessary. Yet marginalized groups face unique challenges that set them apart from the wider population. Our guests discuss the basis of rights and how to create inclusive forms of citizenship. The biggest challenge they contemplate is how to push for universal rights without erasing difference.
This podcast is part of “Citizenship and Its Discontents: The Struggle for Rights, Pluralism, and Inclusion in the Middle East,” a TCF project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Participants include:
- Karl Sharro, architect and critic
- Lina Attalah, editor of Mada Masr
- Rabab El Mahdi, associate professor, American University of Cairo
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
At the end of March, the last die-hard supporters of the Islamic State were driven out of the final remnant of a once-sprawling territorial caliphate encompassing vast swathes of Iraq and Syria. Associated Press reporter Sarah El Deeb covered the end of this phase of the Islamic State at the remote riverbank hamlet of Baghouz.
The group’s territory is gone, but the followers that El Deeb interviewed have not given up their allegiance to the violent group and its extreme, nihilistic ideology. El Deeb discusses the conundrum of what to do with thousands of captured Islamic State supporters—and her fear that it’s only a matter of time before the group returns in yet another incarnation.
Participants include:
- Sarah El Deeb, reporter, Associated Press
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Technologies and methods of controlling civilian life developed and tested in the Middle East often migrate to the United States and other world markets, where they’re used on some of the most marginalized populations. In particular, the Israeli security industry plays a pivotal global role in developing policing tactics, weapons, and instruments, which are marketed around the world.
Shimrit Lee discusses the expanding Israeli security industry and how it promotes its products and security philosophy with a profound, if often unexamined, impact on global police tactics. Lee argues that the marketing tropes used by this growing security industry have contributed to further normalization of violence against civilians.
Participants include:
- Shimrit Lee, curator, writer, and educator, New York University
- Rohan Advani, senior policy associate, The Century Foundation
In a conflict as polarizing as Syria’s, journalists often struggle to decide how best to bring to their audiences the voices of their sources and subjects. In this episode, two journalists who have written extensively about the conflict in Syria discuss the complexity of opinions in the country and their experiences speaking to Syrians who are ambivalent about the conflict. They share the process they use to assess the credibility of their sources and their narratives about the conflict, and how they decide what to share with their readers.
Participants include:
- Loubna Mrie is a Syrian activist, journalist, and writer. She covered the Syrian war as a photojournalist for Reuters from 2012 to 2014 in rebel-held areas. She came to the United States in 2014 and earned a MA in Near Eastern Studies from New York University. Currently based in Oakland, she is a frequent commentator on Syrian and Middle Eastern affairs and has written for The Nation, Time Magazine, Vice, and The New Republic, to name a few. She is currently writing her first book.
- Anne Barnard is a journalist for the New York Times who led coverage of the Syria war for six years, reporting from across the Middle East as Beirut bureau chief. Since 9/11, she has chronicled the human and strategic impact of U.S. war policies on frontline areas, from Iraq to Syria and Gaza. She is currently the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
There’s been an increasingly vigorous debate in the United States of America about what a progressive foreign policy would look like. There has been far less talk, however, about how much America should care about the world—about international ties and obligations, and about the inescapably global aspects of security, finance, and trade.
On this episode of TCF World, two journalists who have written extensively about the American and international left discuss the politics and risks of international progressive alliances, and the challenges of crafting a new foreign policy for the United States without retreating into isolationism.
Participants include:
- Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a journalist, author, and currently a senior editor at The Nation. She has written for The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the London Review of Books, among others. Her topics of interest include Left internationalism, citizenship, global inequality, borders, and the proliferation of tax havens. Her first book was The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen (2015).
- Sam Adler-Bell is a writer whose work focuses on issues such as surveillance, corruption, labor organizing, and criminal justice. He has written for numerous publications including The Nation, the New Republic, The Intercept, Jacobin, and was a senior policy associate at The Century Foundation.
Last year, the much-vaunted Iran nuclear deal fell apart when President Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement, imposed new sanctions, and pressured American allies to stop doing business with Iran. With Trump’s policy now seemingly settled, what is going to become of Iran’s relations with Europe and other major powers, such as Russia and China? On this episode, Dina Esfandiary examines the challenges Iran faces with regional and global powers following the United States’ withdrawal from the Iran deal.
Dina Esfandiary is a fellow at The Century Foundation. Her research focuses on Persian Gulf security, Iran’s foreign relations, and relations between states and non-proliferation in the Middle East. She is also an international security program research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and an adjunct fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Middle East Programme.
Participants:
- Dina Esfandiary, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, The Century Foundation
It’s always been a challenge to conduct independent research and journalism in Syria, where the government’s network of secret police and informants tightly monitor all conversations. Since the uprising and conflict that began in 2011, it’s only become harder to gather information in Assad’s Syria.
Nabih Bulos, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, discusses the difficulties of reporting on the Syrian conflict from government-controlled areas. He recently travelled to the Syrian cities of Damascus, Mhardeh, and Quneitra, as well as to the Ghouta region. On this episode of TCF World, Nabih speaks about the challenges of entering the country; what Assad’s government hopes to gain from allowing foreign journalists to enter; and the regime’s ability to control the flow of information. He also discusses life in Syria for ordinary citizens, as well as the challenges Assad faces in constructing a post-civil war order.
Participants:
- Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times
- Thanassis Cambanis, The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, The Century Foundation
Whenever policymakers have tried to place human rights at the center of American foreign policy, they frequently find themselves trading them away for other strategic goals—or facing accusations of hypocrisy. How can we make human rights take center stage?
Sarah Margon, the Washington director for Human Rights Watch, discusses the complicated relationship between American foreign policy and human rights. From the Cold War to the War on Terror, the United States has cultivated an ambiguous relationship to the issue of human rights. Since September 11, human rights discourse has been marginalized more than ever, despite the steady efforts of a small community of lawmakers, diplomats, and advocates. Values and rights still play a fundamental role in America’s self-image and, for a dwindling constituency, undergird our foreign policy. This podcast explores how to make the case for a human rights-based approach to U.S. foreign policy at our current, fraught historical moment.
Participants
- Sarah Margon, Washington director for Human Rights Watch
- Thanassis Cambanis, The Century Foundation
The Saudi-led coalition has led a brutal air campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen since 2015. The result has been a tremendous humanitarian catastrophe, with 50,000 dead, millions on the brink of starvation, and a deadly outbreak of cholera in 2016. The dire situation has also been exacerbated by the continuation and intensification of two overlapping wars—the U.S. war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State, and an intractable, multi-sided civil war. While the United States has demonstrated some desire to distance itself from the Yemen war, the Saudi-led coalition has intensified its battle over the port city of Hodeidah. Gregory Johnsen discusses the multiple overlapping conflicts in Yemen and the options for the United States to reduce the negative humanitarian and strategic consequences of the conflict there.
Gregory Johnsen is a Yemen expert who served on the Yemen Panel of Experts for the UN Security Council from 2016 to 2018. He was a Fulbright fellow in Yemen and resident scholar at the Arabia Foundation, and holds a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. Johnsen is also the author of The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia.
Participants
- Gregory Johnsen, author and Yemen scholar
- Michael Wahid Hanna, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, The Century Foundation
Iraq is finally forming a new government after its elections in May, and faces a daunting crisis of governance and corruption. A frustrated electorate has high, perhaps unrealistic, expectations that the new government will transition from a system of redistribution based on sectarian identity to one rooted in accountability, institutions of oversight, and cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian alliances.
Maria Fantappie, a senior advisor for the International Crisis Group, discusses the long-standing stalemate within the Iraqi parliament and the deleterious impact of competition between the United States and Iran. She argues that the next four years are likely to bring a hybrid system of governance, including both pre-existing, sectarian alliances, and new, cross-sectarian coalitions over certain issues.
Meanwhile, next-door Syria is also entering a new political phase. President Bashar Al Assad is attempting to rebuild parts of the country, even as the war continues into what appears to be its final phase. The government’s enactment of the Urban Renewal Law and Decree 66 has made it possible to undertake urban development projects such as Marota City and Basilia City in the outskirts of Damascus.
Joseph Daher, a Swiss–Syrian activist and researcher at University of Lausanne in Switzerland, has tracked the dynamics of the first reconstruction efforts. Neighborhoods that were formerly home to lower-middle class citizens are being developed for wealthy Syrians, while areas that opposed the regime have yet to witness any reconstruction efforts. According to initial research, it appears that reconstruction is being used to reconstitute the Assad regime and reconfigure society in ways that might prevent future uprisings.
Participants
- Maria Fantappie, International Crisis Group
- Joseph Daher, University of Lausanne
- Thanassis Cambanis, The Century Foundation
September’s mass protests in Basra shook Iraq’s government all the way to the top—and perhaps mark a new phase in Iraq’s popular politics. In a brief wave of demonstrations, residents of Basra attacked government buildings, militia headquarters, and the Iranian consulate: symbols of the corruption that has kept their city poor, polluted, and starved of public services, despite the fact that it produces most of Iraq’s oil.
Tamer El-Ghobashy covered the protests in Basra, and here discusses why Iraq’s second city reached a breaking point. He also reflects on the decidedly post-sectarian turn in Iraq’s dysfunctional politics. The mostly poor, mostly Shia residents of southern Iraq provided the rank-and-file fighters for the war against the Islamic State. Now, they want to see some improvement in their quality of life. The protests ended incumbent prime minister Haidar al-Abadi’s quest for another term. What impact will they have long-term on Iraq’s appalling governance?
Participants include:
- Tamer El-Ghobashy, Baghdad bureau chief, The Washington Post
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Germany is more than three years into a massive human and policy experiment, figuring out how best to integrate mor- e than one million Syrian asylum seekers. Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed Syrian refugees and others fleeing conflict zones—partly on humanitarian grounds, and partly as a bet that an influx of motivated young workers might rejuvenate the economy.
Lily Hindy traveled to Germany and interviewed dozens of people involved in this great social engineering project, from Syrian refugee families to vocational instructors to government officials. She shared her findings in a multimedia TCF report. She found that Germany’s coordinated re-sponse had produced some surprising successes, like the vocational training and language programs designed to assimilate newcomers and prepare them for the workforce. She also documented some of the bumps in the road, from social tensions and discrimination against immigrants and the ambiguous response of some of the immigrants to their new host society.
There are considerable lessons here for the United States, or any other country that is willing to welcome new immigrants and invest in their integration. -
Participants include:
- Lily Hindy, doctoral student, University of California–Los Angeles
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Liberal internationalists (from all over the American political spectrum) have responded with horror to President Trump’s broadsides against the very idea of alliances and international cooperation. But the president’s questioning of the principles of the United Nations and NATO have raised doubts within the internationalist foreign policy elite. How effective are international institutions, agreements and alliances? Was there really a golden age—an international liberal order—that lasted from the end of World War II until the inauguration of Trump, during which generous American stewardship produced prosperity and stability?
Paul Staniland has joined the debate with a forceful essay in the Lawfare blog entitled “Misreading the ‘Liberal Order’: Why We Need New Thinking in American Foreign Policy.” He argues that an international liberal order did exist, although it wasn’t as rosy as some of its staunchest defenders proclaim—nor is President Trump solely responsible for the erosion of the postwar international order. A better understanding of the ambiguous record of internationalism since 1945 is required if the United States is to design a more effective foreign policy in years to come. Paul Staniland discusses the debate about the international liberal order and its implications for crafting an improved order to succeed it.
Participants include:
- Paul Staniland, political scientist, University of Chicago
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Aya Fatima Chamseddine has been exploring the ways that Lebanese youth get indoctrinated into armed militant groups—or trapped in dead-end jobs that encourage them to join dead-end sectarian political parties, or flee the country. Her path-breaking reports for Synaps brought the voices of her research subjects to life, shedding light on thorny policy questions with a narrative flair. What is the “youth problem” in the Arab world, and is it really that different than in the rest of the world?
Synaps is a new research collective based in Beirut and founded by veteran policy analyst Peter Harling. It has taken an innovative approach to training local researchers, and has adopted a method of radical transparency, addressing in public on its website the challenges of conducting fieldwork, shaping research, finding funding, and reaching an audience. Peter and Aya discuss the wider challenges of shaping policy while producing deep, original, and relevant research.
Participants include:
- Aya Fatima Chamseddine, fellow, Synaps
- Peter Harling, founder and director, Synaps
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
The growing power of armed groups in the Middle East has raised an old question: how do militants recruit new constituents? Researchers have long debated the relative merits of ideology versus services as drivers of militant groups (an argument dubbed “greed vs. grievance”).
Developments in Iraq and Lebanon have given us a better understanding of the interplay of ideas and material rewards for militia recruitment. Legacy militia groups like Hezbollah have been joined by relative newcomers like Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (“Hashd al Shaabi”) at the epicenter of power. On this podcast, Renad Mansour, a leading expert on Iraq’s paramilitaries, joins Sima Ghaddar, a keen observer of Hezbollah, to discuss the new insights about paramilitary recruitment and loyalty that they’ve learned from Iraq and Lebanon.
Participants include:
- Sima Ghaddar, policy associate, The Century Foundation
- Renad Mansour, research fellow, Chatham House
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
As tensions flare between Iran and the United States, TCF takes a look at Iran’s record in Iraq. Some critics of American policy say that Washington “lost Iraq,” and paint Tehran as a master puppeteer controlling every development in the country.
Two scholars of Iran and Iraq examine the situation, and the picture they paint is decidedly more mixed. On this podcast they discuss Iran’s missteps, as well as the ways it has successfully extended its power in the MIddle East. Iran might have edged out the United States in Iraq, for now, but it hasn’t established anything close to hegemony.
Participants include:
- Dina Esfandiary, a CSSS fellow in the war studies department at King’s College London, and an adjunct fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Middle East Programme.
- Renad Mansour, research fellow, Chatham House
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Another season of elections is upon the Middle East. Egypt’s presidential election appeared anything but free, as President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi renewed his authoritarian mandate and squelched even the appearance of competition. In contrast, both Lebanon and Iraq are hosting freewheeling parliamentary campaigns, with elections coming in both countries in May.
How much do these electoral contests serve to bring more democracy? Status-quo players have learned how to navigate the electoral process without engaging in any significant reform or opening—whether outright authoritarians like Egypt’s Sisi, or more complex but profoundly undemocratic warlords and demagogues like many of the sectarian leaders in Iraq and Lebanon.
Our guests examine the connections between elections and democracy in this latest cycle of voting in the Middle East, in a global context where basic political propositions about the viability of electoral democracy are being called into question.
Participants include:
- Sima Ghaddar, policy associate, The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
There seem to be fewer and fewer opportunities to build relationships between adversarial governments in the Middle East region. Even the faint promise that briefly flared during the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program has faded. Today, the Middle East has fewer communications channels and institutional forums than any other region in the world.
Dalia Dassa Kaye and David Griffiths debate some of the incremental possibilities to begin constructing (or reconstructing) the region’s security architecture. If expectations are kept low and governments are willing to improvise, these researchers suggest there are prospects to establish rudimentary security architecture.
Griffiths argues that sailors can find common ground on technical matters like incidents at sea and search and rescue, which can provide the basis of some security cooperation. Dassa Kaye suggests that new initiatives can come out of difficult period like the present. Can technical agreements over sea lanes, nuclear waste, or disputed boundaries ever translate into the type of political process necessary to effectively manage conflict, or resolve it?
Read Dalia Dassa Kaye’s “Can It Happen Here? Prospects for Regional Security Cooperation in the Middle East,” David N. Griffiths’ “Oceans of Opportunity: Maritime Dimensions of Security in the Arab World,” and Thanassis Cambanis’ “The Israel-Hezbollah Channel: UNIFIL’s Effective but Limited Conflict-Management Mechanism.” These reports are part of the TCF project “Order from Ashes: New Foundations for Security in the Middle East.”
Participants include:
- Dalia Dassa Kaye, director, Center for Middle East Public Policy, the RAND Corporation
- David N. Griffiths, independent researcher and former Canadian naval officer
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
Women’s rights advocate AlAnoud AlSharekh is a leader in the fight to end violence against women and promote women’s political participation in the Middle East. She has worked in Kuwait and throughout the region to promote women’s rights.
In this podcast, AlSharekh talks with Hindy about the challenges and opportunities for those pushing for legal reform in the the region.
AlSharekh is the founding director of the Abolish 153 campaign to end legislation that effectively gives men regulatory, judicial, and executive power over their female kin—including minimal repercussions for honor killings—in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf region. She is an outspoken advocate for women’s rights in a region where so-called “disciplinary violence” by men against their female kin remains permissible by law and by social practice. Article 153 of Kuwait’s penal code treats “honor killing”—when a man murders his sister, wife, daughter, or mother after becoming enraged by her adulterous or sexual transgression—as a misdemeanor, punishable with a maximum three-year prison sentence or a $50 fine. Last summer, three Arab countries passed legislation on violence against women following years of advocacy by local and international campaigns.
AlSharekh is also a consulting partner at Ibtkar Strategic Consultancy, where she is training a group of Kuwaiti women political leaders to run for office. In 2016 AlSharekh was awarded a knighthood (National Order of Merit) by the French government for her work promoting women’s rights in the region. She holds a PhD from SOAS London in Comparative Literature and Feminism.
Participants include:
- AlAnoud AlSharekh, founding director of the Abolish 153 campaign
- Lily Hindy, senior associate, The Century Foundation
Editor's Note: This podcast was updated as of April 3, 2018.
Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units played a pivotal role in defeating the Islamic State and are positioned to reap a greater share of power in the upcoming May elections. Fanar Haddad argues that the militias — while newly popular — are an old phenomena. Iraq has struggled to consolidate state authority and grapple with militia politics at least since Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. Today’s problems are thorny, but don’t necessarily mark a watershed.
Also in this episode, Aron Lund discusses the latest developments in Syria, where a war that is supposed to be entering its final phase is presenting new dangers. A complicated standoff in the north, around the town of Afrin, has brought NATO allies Turkey and the United States to the brink of conflict. Russia provides a slim, and unlikely, bulwark against further internationalization of Syria’ war. A siege of the rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta, in the Damascus suburbs, threatens still more harm to civilians, unless the international community plans for the defeat of their allies. The new phase in Syria’s war is proving as deadly, and risky, as all the previous ones.
Read Fanar Haddad’s analysis of the Iraqi militias here, Aron Lund’s commentary on the crisis in eastern Ghouta here, and his exploration of Syria’s war economy through a single cement factory here.
Participants include:
- Fanar Haddad, senior research fellow, Middle East Institute, Singapore
- Aron Lund, fellow, The Century Foundation
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
There have been repeated, failed efforts over the decades to assemble some kind of Middle Eastern regional security force, something like an “Arab NATO.” Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, examines those initiatives all the way to the present. Grand initiatives are impossible, he argues, but small-scale, piecemeal, and tactical efforts to build cooperation among Arab security forces might make headway. America’s role remains important because of its deep bilateral security ties with so many Middle Eastern governments.
Meanwhile, the Arab states of the Gulf are enjoying warm relations with the United States but have fallen deep into internal feuds. Many of the Arab monarchies consider themselves in an existential struggle with Iran, and are also involved in regional conflicts elsewhere. Instead of building deeper relationships and coalitions, they have resorted to a constantly shifting mosaic of alliances, says Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. America’s insistence that Gulf countries exhibit more independence has increased instability, as Arab leaders in the Gulf hedge their bets with a greater number of often contradictory partnerships.
Katulis and Hokayem talk with TCF senior fellow Thanassis Cambanis about their contributions on these issues to Order from Ashes: New Foundations for Security in the Middle East. Their reports, and others in this TCF project, can be read online.
Participants include:
- Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, based in Washington, D.C.
- Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in London.
- Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, based in Beirut.
From America’s vantage point, Iran is a primary source of destabilizing intervention across the Middle East. But Iran, like other states, much of the time is pursuing its own interests and trying to manage what it perceives as security threats. Dina Esfandiary, a fellow at King’s College London, talks about the view from Tehran, where the nuclear deal isn’t perceived a windfall or a free lunch. She proposes some ways to better manage Iran’s fears as well as its provocations.
In the second segment of this podcast, former U.S. government official and current Duke University professor Bruce W. Jentleson proposes a blueprint for a rebalanced American foreign policy. The United States has drifted away from a clear strategy based on its fundamental interests, Jentleson argues. It’s time to clean house and go back to basics.
Esfandiary and Jentleson talk with TCF senior fellow Thanassis Cambanis about their contributions to the TCF project Order from Ashes: New Foundations for Security in the Middle East. Their reports, and others in this project, can be read online.
Participants include:
- Dina Esfandiary, a CSSS fellow in the war studies department at King’s College London, and an adjunct fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Middle East Programme.
- Bruce Jentleson, a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University. He served as senior advisor to the State Department policy planning director from 2009–11. His book The Peacemakers: Leadership Lessons from Twentieth Century Statesmanship will be published in April.
- Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.
Why does the Middle East lag behind every other region in the world in security architecture? What is security architecture?
The Century Foundation has launched the results of a multi-year research project, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, that examines the Middle East’s current regional security environment at a time of perhaps unprecedented turmoil and instability.
In this podcast, TCF senior fellows Michael Wahid Hanna and Thanassis Cambanis discuss the findings in Order from Ashes: New Foundations for Security in the Middle East, which will be released online beginning January 2018 and in book form in March 2018.
We look at (mostly failed) efforts to create security cooperation. Bold ideas like a pan-Arab peacekeeping force or a new peace process might be impossible in the current climate, but there are plenty of piecemeal efforts that could create security architecture that still improves human security in meaningful ways. This research suggests that security and reform cannot be considered in isolation; they are inextricably linked. Any effective conversation about reform and stability ought to address the security threats, fears, and domestic politics that underlie government decisions.
Participants include:
- Thanassis Cambanis, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
- Michael Wahid Hanna, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
It’s been a year since the dramatic siege and fall of Aleppo, and another part of Syria suffers under blockade: Eastern Ghouta, on the flank of Damascus, where an estimated 400,000 civilians languish under arguably worse conditions than Aleppo experience, but with little international attention.
Syrian activist Marcell Shehwaro was at the center of the popular uprising in Aleppo, and won a reputation as an unflagging supporter of civil society and a critic of abuses by the government and also by rebel militias. Today she is working from Beirut to give voice to her fellow citizens trapped in Eastern Ghouta. “Every morning I ask myself what did I not do for Aleppo, so that I can do it for Ghouta.”
In our second segment, we hear from James Sadri, executive director of the Syria Campaign, which works with citizens’ groups inside Syria and tries to carry their message abroad. His organization is best known for its efforts to publicize the work of the White Helmets, volunteers who rescue Syrians from bomb sites. He marvels at the resilience of Syrians and the failure of the international system to uphold its commitments to human rights and law—and wonders what the international liberal order can salvage from its shameful record in Syria.
Participants include:
- Marcell Shehwaro, a Syrian civil society activist from Aleppo, currently based in Istanbul and Beirut.
- James Sadri, executive director of The Syria Campaign.
- Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow at The Century Foundation.
This podcast was produced by Harrison Cramer.
Donald Trump's presidency has brought into stark relief questions about America's role and standing in the world. Author Suzy Hansen has spent a decade investigating America's complicated relationship with the Islamic world. She unspools some of the delusions and denials that undergird America's troubling foreign policy, and asks how it's possible to be a progressive at home and in the world in her new book, "Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World." TCF talks to Suzy Hansen in Istanbul. Participants include:
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Suzy Hansen is contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and has written for many other publications. In 2007, she was awarded a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs to do research in Turkey. She currently lives in Istanbul. Notes on a Foreign Country is her first book.
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Thanassis Cambanis is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.
This episode was produced by Harrison Cramer.
More than five million Syrians, over one-fifth of the country’s prewar population, have left their homeland since the uprisings began in 2011. As President Bashar al-Assad claims victory and reconstruction talks ensue, many of these exiles, refugees, and émigrés see no possibilities for return.
On November 30, The Century Foundation published a report on national identity and belonging among Syrian exiles by TCF Foreign Policy associates Lily Hindy and Sima Ghaddar, based on their series of extended narrative interviews with displaced Syrians in Lebanon, Europe, and the United States.
Participants include:
- Thanassis Cambanis, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
- Lily Hindy, Policy Associate, The Century Foundation
- Sima Ghaddar, Contributor, The Century Foundation
The Kurdish drive for independence has foundered and Iraq has reestablished control over disputed areas. Ethnic strains remain, and political divisions are flaring within Iraq’s major communities. How much control does Iran really have over Iraq? Can Iraqi prime minister Haidar al-Abadi maintain his balancing act, keeping Iran and the United States both on his side, and avoiding dangerous strongman overreach? We speak in Beirut with Renad Mansour, a research fellow at Chatham House, and Christine van den Toorn, director of the Institute of Regional and International Studies at American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. Participants include: * Renad Mansour, research fellow at Chatham House * Christine van den Toorn, director of the Institute of Regional and International Studies at American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. * Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow, The Century Foundation
As Syria’s conflict settles decisively into a new phase, much of the fight has moved to diplomatic salons. Reconstruction and normalization are the biggest questions of the day. If Syria is to be rebuilt, who will pay? If Bashar al-Assad wins the civil war outright, will the foreign governments that opposed him now change tack and reestablish full diplomatic relations? These questions frame the Syrian government’s diplomatic agenda, as it tries to leverage battlefield gains to reap lasting political dividends. Western governments are perplexed, as they ponder whether and how to continue their opposition to Assad. Participants include: * Thanassis Cambanis, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation * Michael Wahid Hanna, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation * Aron Lund, Fellow, The Century Foundation * Sam Heller, Fellow, The Century Foundation
Egypt is enduring the harshest crackdown on civil liberties and political freedom in its modern history. As media outlets, civic institutions, and political parties buckle or vanish under inordinate pressure, Mada Masr has managed to maintain a small space for free expression, publishing critical and engaging content in Arabic and English. Founder and editor Lina Attalah, speaking in Cairo, discusses the risks and challenges of editing a publication that regularly publishes stories irksome to the government. She also discusses Mada’s experiments with collective management and reader engagement, as the publication seeks to succeed as a journalism business. List of participants include: * Lina Attalah, Editor of Mada Masr * Thanassis Cambanis, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
Has Iran secured a path to the Mediterranean, as some analysts and politicians claim? What is Hezbollah doing these days inside Syria? The Century Foundation’s foreign policy team considers some of the more alarming analysis of Hezbollah and Iran’s position. Tehran and its Lebanese partner have achieved many of their aims in Syria, changing the strategic playing field — although some of the threat assessments seem inflated. Participants include: * Thanassis Cambanis, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation * Sima Ghaddar, Policy Associate, The Century Foundation * Michael Wahid Hanna, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation * Aron Lund, Fellow, The Century Foundation * Sam Heller, Fellow, The Century Foundation
In TCF World’s inaugural podcast episode, Century Foundation fellows Thanassis Cambanis, Michael Wahid Hanna, Aron Lund, and Sam Heller try to put to rest some of the mythology and exaggerations that have grown up around the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). After three years of power in a self-declared caliphate, ISIS is on the run from Mosul, its capital in Iraq, and is on the verge of defeat in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. Nonetheless, many commentators and U.S. policymakers still contend that ISIS is as powerful as ever, and is winning even while appearing to lose. The Century Foundation’s foreign policy team considers drivers of the Islamic State’s resilience and resurgence, its actual strengths and potential, the impact of territorial losses, and the fragile commitment of some governments to exterminate ISIS. This podcast is a remastered and edited version of a conversation originally posted on July 18, 2017. Participants include: * Thanassis Cambanis, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation * Michael Wahid Hanna, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation * Aron Lund, Fellow, The Century Foundation * Sam Heller, Fellow, The Century Foundation