[N]ew forms of governance in the Gulf work through identity projects that include (and often co-opt) difference to gain legitimacy.

[T]urning the page on decades of conflict and underdevelopment in the Horn of Africa will require … democratization and the institutionalization of transparent, accountable governance.

Years of anger at Doha's brash regional policies may have made the opportunity to put Qatar back in its place too tempting to pass up.

What began as a popular uprising against a corrupt dictatorship has been overtaken by a struggle for regional supremacy, with the Middle East's poorest country as sacrificial victim.

Saudi Arabia must place its citizens firmly in the center of its transformation, so that employment, productivity, and local demand determine the direction of the economy.

Saudi Arabia has emerged as the most vigorous stalwart of what can best be described as the reactionary period of the Arab uprisings—their ‘Thermidorian’ phase.

A freelance journalist living in Somalia studied the buccaneers who have seized ships in the Gulf of Aden and captured the attention of navies and news media.

Saudi and Iranian meddling aggravates a divisive, dangerous form of identity politics in fragile, vulnerable states.

With the global flow of energy assuming ever-growing economic and strategic prominence, oil and gas pipelines in the world today have become the major focus of international geopolitical competition.

If the United States wants to reduce its exposure to terrorism and avert further involvement in overseas conflicts, the choice is clear: it must eschew the use of military force to ensure access to foreign petroleum and rely instead on conservation, the market, and alternative sources of energy.

The good performance of energy markets during the seven or eight years following the Gulf War masked many continuing and emerging energy policy challenges that derive from larger domestic and foreign policy issues. The changes in world oil, domestic natural gas, and electricity markets in 1999 and especially 2000 likely reflect the effects of ignoring some of these challenges.

The United States cannot increase its intake of foreign oil by 50 percent, as called for under the Bush energy plan, without involving itself in the political, economic, and military affairs of the states from which all this petroleum is expected to flow. This involvement may take financial and diplomatic forms in most cases, but it will also often entail military action.

Will America now define national security as it did half a century ago to see the betterment of others' conditions as key to ensuring its own safety and well-being? Or will it be satisfied merely to aggressively police the frontiers of hostility at home and abroad to reduce the likelihood of a new terrorist-inflicted disaster?

Portrayals of internal politics as contests between United States–allied ‘moderates’ and puritanical ‘Wahhabis’ are grossly oversimplified. So too is a menu that offers two stark choices: an absolute monarchy tilting toward the West or a revolutionary Islamist regime hostile to the West.