Order From Ashes

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 humanitaria...

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...

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....

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 exace...

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 As...

  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 recipie...

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 kn...

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 weap...

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 revol...

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...

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...

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...

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 inc...

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 l...

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 endo...

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.   No...

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 alread...

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 internationa...

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 Eu...

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, visionar...

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 ha...

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...

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 m...

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 th...

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 discus...