The sad news from Kuwait, where Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah died at the age of 91, literally rocked the entire world. A special session of the UN General Assembly was held that was dedicated to this event, where delegates from all over the world observed a minute of silence for the loss of an intelligent,…
As these words are being written, the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are in Washington DC to sign agreements to normalize relations between their countries and the state of Israel. While the United States and Israel were represented by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Arab states sent…
During the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (527-565 AD), a mysterious plague spread out of the Nile Valley to Constantinople and finished off the Roman Empire. Appearing first in China and North India, the “Black Death” (Yersinia pestis) radiated throughout the Mediterranean and into Northern Europe. It may well have killed close to half…
An agreement to establish diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel and a Saudi-Pakistani spat over Kashmir coupled with feuds among Gulf states and between Turkey, the kingdom, and the Emirates drive nails into the notion that the Arab and Islamic world by definition share common geopolitical interests on the basis of ethnicity…
Rejiggering security arrangements in the Gulf may be a more pressing issue than meets the eye. That is not good news for the Gulf states. It is also bad news for China, which could see the rug pulled out from under its studious effort to remain on the sidelines of the Middle East’s myriad conflicts….
Little suggests that fabulously wealthy Gulf states and their Middle Eastern and North African beneficiaries have recognized what is perhaps the most important lesson of this year’s popular uprisings in Algeria and Sudan and the 2011 Arab revolts: All that glitters is not gold. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and to a lesser extent…
