Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
A U.S. soldier watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein fall in central Baghdad, Iraq, in April 2003.
Was Iraq a success or failure?
On a visit to Iraq in the spring of 2021, I was chatting with a group of Iraqi and western friends – all current or former advisors to the Iraqi, US, or UK governments – when the conversation turned to whether the 2003 US-led war to depose Saddam Hussein’s regime had been worthwhile. The dogmatism, divisiveness, and emotion that characterized the debate in the run-up to the war were still evident. For some, ending the murderous brutality and atrocities of Saddam’s rule superseded any other concern. Others were more equivocal, pointing to the corruption, violence, and misrule of the US-bequeathed, post-2003 political order and the toll it has taken on the country.
On the 20th anniversary of the war, the question of whether Iraq is better or worse off and whether the cost in coalition lives and money was worth it is, almost inevitably, being revisited. But it is a feckless one. The reality of Iraq’s experience since 2003 cannot be captured by a simplistic dichotomy; the country is — as it always was — more complicated than that.
Some things are undoubtedly better. Representative politics has been entrenched. Elections — former President George Bush’s measure of democracy and freedom — are genuine contests that are seen as important to political legitimacy. Power has been transferred peacefully across seven successive governments.
The Iraqi media is one of the freest in the Middle East, with rival viewpoints on full display, and criticism of the political elite — unthinkable and deadly in Saddam’s era — is now common. And, after a disappointing first decade and a half, there are signs of economic stirrings underpinned by oil production that is now almost 50% above immediate pre-war highs.
Still, Iraq has fallen far short of the hopes and promises of the war’s proponents. While the country never became a failed state, it has flirted with it at times, especially during the 2005-2008 civil war and at the height of the Islamic State threat, when large swathes in the northwest of the country were beyond Baghdad’s control. Iraqi society still bears the scars of ethnosectarian violence and the divisions it bred.
Development and reconstruction have been slow and stunted. Corruption is endemic, and state services are shoddy at best. Islamist Shia militias act with impunity, answering to their own leaders and increasingly dominating government and state institutions. Meanwhile, the Kurdish region, beloved by its amply rewarded and vocal cheerleaders in the West, is increasingly divided between two warlord factions running what has long amounted to personal fiefdoms.
Washington (and London) bear a lot of responsibility for the outcome. The ignorance and hubris that guided pre-conflict planning and all that followed made for an occupation that was insufficiently resourced and lacked the most basic understanding of the country (or even its language). Hunkered down and detached in the heavily protected Green Zone, the US-led endeavor rested on feet of clay from the get-go, and Washington’s aversion to state building, combined with the disbanding of the Iraqi army and evisceration of the civil service, left Iraq without the tools for effective governance and administration.
Worse still, US post-war policy quickly fell prey to domestic political imperatives and the growing popular disaffection with the occupation at home, leaving the imperial timetable at odds with, and largely dismissive of, conditions on the ground in Iraq.
But the most corrosive aspect of US policy was the ethnosectarian political system it enshrined, dominated by a narrow coterie of identity-based parties that have ruled ever since. Bereft of any real understanding of Iraq or its society, and impatient for signs of “progress,” Washington officials took their cue from their nominal allies in the pre-war Iraqi opposition, turning a blind eye to their failings, and never quite realizing — or at least acknowledging — that, beyond ousting Saddam, their agendas were not the same.
Occupation on the cheap and on the run was never going to establish the foundations for the stable, prosperous Iraq that proponents of the war envisaged, but the kleptocratic, militia-dominated state that has emerged 20 years later is not wholly Washington’s fault.
The zenith of US imperial power, when its ambassadors chose governments, dictated laws, and forced through constitutions, is a distant memory. If the US built the exclusive political fortress that was and remains the Green Zone, the factions that it empowered have manned the ramparts to ensure their exclusive access and control would never be challenged. Power and privilege are what matters to this parasitic elite, not freedom and democracy, and they have taken full advantage of what they inherited to that end.
Iraq’s ethnosectarian factions have fractured over time, and newer faces and groups have come to the fore, but the underlying players and the political equation have remained largely unaltered. The current prime minister, Mohammed Shi’a Sudani, is the first since 2003 not to have been in exile, but most major party leaders such as Nouri al-Maliki, Hadi al-Amiri, Masoud Barzani, or Ammar Hakim are either remnants of the former opposition or their offspring.
Elections determine the relative balance of power among the main players, but successive Iraqi coalition governments have been broad affairs, no matter who leads them, allowing the oligarchy to protect their exclusive power while feeding from the trough. Political opposition, even within the protected confines of the elite, is still regarded as an existential threat. Meanwhile, the real opposition to the corrupt system is brutally repressed, as the government’s deadly response to the 2019-2020 demonstrations starkly illustrated.
Change in the near term is unlikely. Every new Iraqi government talks about reform, but the preservation of the system will remain the number one priority for Iraq’s leaders and their various regional and international benefactors. After over 40 years of war, sanctions, deprivation, and domestic violence, the majority of the population is exhausted, increasingly detached from politics, and largely resigned to the state of affairs.
There are pockets of opposition activism on the “Iraqi street,” especially in the Shia-majority center and south, the heartland of real power in Iraq. But it is disorganized, unfunded, and largely powerless relative to the leviathan that is the US-bequeathed Iraqi state. Good men do not last long in Iraq, either neutralized or co-opted, and the seeds of systemic change are few and far between.
Maybe this was always the most likely outcome. The flourishing liberal democracy that US neo-conservatives imagined would catalyze regional change was never in the cards. A poor vegetable vendor in Tunisia did more to bring about a democratic revolution in the Middle East than the US adventure in Iraq ever did, and the eventual outcome was greater authoritarianism across the region.
Thus, Iraq will likely remain a mismanaged, kleptocratic, violent, and underdeveloped state governed by a political elite that is consumed with self-interest and sustained by oil revenue, the force of arms, and regional and international powers that see the country through the narrow focus of their national security priorities.
Not the worst outcome that could have been imagined in 2003 or since, but certainly less than the Iraqi people deserve.
Raad Alkadiri is the managing director of Energy, Climate & Resources for Eurasia Group. He served as assistant private secretary to the UK Special Representative in Iraq from 2003-2004.
- Iraq War's legacy: Loss of lives, rise of ISIS, & political turmoil - GZERO Media ›
- 20 years since the Iraq War: Lessons learned, questions raised | Ian Bremmer explains - GZERO Media ›
- Iraq then and now: Reflections from NBC's Richard Engel - GZERO Media ›
- From combat pilot to Senator: Tammy Duckworth's reflections on the Iraq War - GZERO Media ›
- From Iraq to Ukraine: Reflections on "wars of choice" - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: The costs of invading Iraq: Sen. Tammy Duckworth & Richard Engel assess war's lasting effects, 20 years later - GZERO Media ›
Can a dictator make democracy work for Tunisia?
The birthplace of the Arab Spring and the only country to emerge from it as a democracy — albeit an imperfect one — is now well on its way to becoming something … different.
An exit poll shows that more than 90% of Tunisians who voted in a referendum Monday approved new constitution that critics say is anything but democratic, mainly because it gives more power to the president at the expense of parliament and the judiciary. Not so, argues President Kais Saied, who claims the 2014 charter gave too much power to lawmakers and judges in the North African country of 12 million.
Turnout, as expected, was low. That's no surprise given that most opposition groups boycotted the referendum. But only 27.5% of voters showing up means that Saied — who refused to set a minimum threshold for the result to be binding — can hardly claim a popular mandate for constitutional change.
How did we get here? Exactly one year ago, Tunisia was suffering the worst political, social, and economic crisis of its democratic era.
COVID infections were soaring, the economy was going nowhere, inequality was rising, public services were hard to come by, and one-third of young Tunisians were unemployed. Democracy had failed to deliver on its promise of a better life due to fragmented parliaments, political infighting, and rampant corruption.
Saied decided to intervene by firing the government and suspending the legislature. Since then, he's doubled down on his emergency powers, ruling by decree and going after his critics, mainly the moderate Islamist political party Ennadha and the judiciary, which the president believes is in cahoots with politicians and the business elite.
But the Tunisian leader's authoritarian vibes don’t jive with his low-key persona. Far from appearing like a fearsome tyrant, Saied is a bookish former constitutional law professor in his seventies known as Robocop — not for being tough on crime, but rather for his stiff speeches delivered in monotone classic Arabic instead of the Tunisian dialect.
Still, he's gone from being elected in 2019 as a political outsider with more than 70% of the vote to dividing his people.
His supporters view Saied as a hero for "challenging the status quo" of corruption and political stagnation, says Eurasia Group analyst Sofia Meranto. For them, he's being decisive and "maintaining a sufficient veneer of doing things by the book" according to his unique legal interpretation of the same constitution he wants to ditch.
The president's detractors, however, resent him for chipping away at the pillars of a system "they have been building for more than a decade, even if it wasn't perfect," Meranto explains. In their view, Saied is "diluting the checks and balances" of the parliamentary democracy that Tunisians fought for in the Arab Spring.
Has the authoritarian-democratic experiment worked so far? Depends on whom you ask.
The president's fans say he’s dismantling a dysfunctional political system that wasn't doing anything to solve the country's problems. They love his populist gestures like demanding that tycoons cough up billions of dollars he claims they looted from the state to avoid prosecution for embezzlement.
Saied's opponents, meanwhile, claim the economy is in even worse shape than when the president seized power. Inflation is hovering above 8%; debt, pensions, and subsidies are draining state coffers; and the government is at serious risk of default if it doesn’t get an IMF bailout soon.
In the middle are many Tunisians with a high level of political apathy who were initially willing to give Saied a chance but have since soured on him over the economy, says Meranto. Some were not even aware of the referendum, which in part explains the low turnout.
What comes next? Undeterred by the low turnout, Saied will surely push ahead to hold parliamentary elections by the end of the year, the next phase of his plan to “break with the past.” But he has yet to publish the electoral law, and the new charter has watered down the power of lawmakers.
Tunisia will "try to muddle through" the next few months despite the worsening economic crisis and perhaps some social upheaval ahead of the December polls, says Meranto. The bigger problem is that with so many Tunisians having checked out of politics, the country might be sleepwalking into autocracy.Protesters rally agains the constitutional referendum in Tunis.
What We're Watching: Tunisian referendum, Lavrov on African tour
Tunisia holds constitutional referendum
Tunisians go to the polls Monday to vote in a referendum over the new constitution pushed by President Kais Saied. The vote is scheduled on the first anniversary of Saied sacking the government and suspending parliament in the only country that emerged a democracy from the Arab Spring. At the time, he justified the move as necessary to prevent a bigger crisis, but his opponents called it a coup; since then, Saied has consolidated power by taking it away from any institution or group that challenged him, including judges and trade unions. The president's growing dictator vibes have upset many Tunisians who initially supported him, but he still has fans among younger people tired of corruption and dysfunctional parliamentary politics. Most opposition groups have boycotted the plebiscite, so the "yes" vote is likely to win (albeit with a low turnout). If the new charter is approved, Saied promises to hold legislative elections within six months. But they'll be less decisive under the revised constitution, which vastly expands presidential power at the expense of parliament and the judiciary.
Russia reassures African friends
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is in Africa this week with a double mission: shore up Moscow's ties across the continent and fight criticism that the invasion of Ukraine has triggered a global food crisis that's hitting Africa hard. Lavrov touched down Sunday in Egypt and will later go to Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo. Egypt is the largest global importer of Russian and Ukrainian wheat, while some 40% of Africa’s wheat comes from both countries. For the most part, African countries haven’t taken sides in the war, but Russia’s blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea has made it impossible for Ukraine to export wheat by sea to Africa and the Middle East. In recent years, the Kremlin has sought to expand its African footprint by courting nations across the continent with weapons, energy, and commodities deals (along with Russian mercenaries to back some of the regimes it supports). But many African countries are wary, especially as Russia's weekend airstrikes in Odesa threatened a long-sought deal to resume Ukrainian wheat exports signed on Friday. No worries, says Lavrov, who insists Russia will deliver on guaranteeing grain shipments to its African clients.Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman is received by Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, in Doha, Qatar, December 8, 2021.
Is a more peaceful Middle East possible in 2022?
The political winds in the Middle East are shifting in favor of greater cooperation among the countries of the region as the US disengages and pivots to Asia. No longer confident they can call on their powerful ally for assistance when the shooting starts, regional powers are seeking to lower tensions in their historically dangerous neighborhood. They are trying to improve relations with erstwhile rivals and to close the chapter of the Arab Spring, which created conflicts within and among countries the region. We asked Eurasia Group analyst Sofia Meranto to explain the recent developments.
What are some of the signs of this trend?
There is increased diplomacy between countries in the region on issues that are important for stability. Toward the end of last year, UAE Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed visited Turkey, his national security adviser Tahnoun bin Zayed visited Iran, and Saudi officials have also been meeting with their Iranian counterparts. This outreach highlights a remarkable shift by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which have for the past years treated Turkey as a rival for influence in the region and Iran as an enemy.
The shift started to take shape in 2020 when the UAE became the first Gulf country to normalize ties with Israel and then pursued a series of economic deals with the state. In early 2021, the years-long blockade of Qatar led by Saudi Arabia and UAE was lifted, leading to improved cooperation among Gulf countries. More recently, the UAE and Turkey recently signed a series of trade and investment deals.
Other countries such as Egypt and Jordan are welcoming the move toward greater cooperation for the increased stability and economic benefits they hope it will bring. Jordan, especially, has often found itself balancing relationships with competing countries of the region.
So, all this is prompted by the US pivot to Asia?
The US’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan last year and its limited response to an Iranian attack on Saudi oil infrastructure in 2019 have served as wake-up calls for Middle Eastern leaders that US security guarantees may be fraying. That has prompted regional rivals to seek out partnerships of mutual benefit and play down areas of disagreement. It has also put pressure on the Gulf states and other Arab countries to directly engage with each other as well as with Iran, Israel, and Syria to defuse longstanding tensions.
Cooperation with the US is still a cornerstone for defense and security arrangements in the region. But Gulf countries are increasingly seeking to expand relationships with external partners such as France, the UK, and even China and Russia.
What does this mean for the post-Arab Spring relations?
More than a decade later, the region is still grappling with the aftershocks of the Arab Spring. Many countries were wracked by mass protests and uprisings that led to leadership changes, and in some cases civil war. Outside of these countries, strong divisions emerged among regional leaders over whether to support these movements or not, and many of them backed different factions in the internecine conflicts in Syria and Libya. These divisions have largely persisted for over a decade and led to hostile or tense political relationships that are starting to thaw.
The UAE, Jordan, and Egypt are leading an effort to mend rifts in a process that has been referred to as putting the “Arab house” back in order. This includes winding down the Libyan conflict, normalizing relations with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and supporting President Kais Saied’s consolidation of power in Tunisia. The upcoming Arab League meeting in March will likely be another opportunity to advance progress on resetting relations and bringing the Syrian regime back into the Arab fold. Better relations and greater stability could allow for more economic cooperation. The Gulf states could also be willing to leverage their vast financial resources to support development in some countries.
What are the risks to this outlook?
But it’s still nowhere near smooth sailing in the region. There are risks that the recent progress in lowering tensions is derailed — by even minor issues or miscalculations — or that a renewed cycle of escalation emerges. The Iran nuclear issue poses one of the biggest challenges. If US-Iran diplomacy fails to resurrect a deal that is agreeable to both sides, it’s not certain what might happen next. Tensions between Israel and Iran could increase, and some form of cyber or military action would be possible. This would raise tensions in the wider region and create anxiety for Gulf states.
Meanwhile, there are still many countries with unstable outlooks including Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They are all theaters of regional competition and could further inflame disagreements between regional powers.
COVID vaccine mandates are coming; political instability in Tunisia
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics this week:
As COVID-19 cases rise, are vaccine mandates coming?
Oh, you just want to get me in more trouble. Yeah, some mandates are coming, but they're not national mandates in the United States. In some cases, you're looking at federal and state employees, in some cases you're looking at lots of individual corporations, universities, and such. I mean I've already been to a number of events where vaccines have been mandated in New York. You've got this Excelsior Pass if you want to go to the Brooklyn Nets games, as I certainly do. You show it off and that gets you in with your vaccine. So I think it's really going to be a decentralized process. But clearly, given Delta variant and the number of people that are getting sick and dying because they're not vaccinated, you're going to see moves towards more mandates, as a consequence.
What's happening in Tunisia and how will it affect the broader region?
Well, massive unlimited employment, lots of corruption from the government and also COVID on top of all of that. And just, remember this was the one country that kind of successfully had a transition during the Arab Spring and didn't revert to authoritarianism. But it's a weak constitution, there's lots of open contestations in terms of what some of these rules really mean, who has power, what the separation of powers look like. And what ended up occurring was the president sacked the prime minister and suspended parliament and used the military in so doing. And it's absolutely unclear he has a constitutional mandate to do so. A lot of people demonstrating saying, this is awesome. A lot of people demonstrating saying this is illegal and a coup. The United States in contact with the president and expressing both concern but also support in this early day. Economically these guys are in a lot of trouble and political stability kind of doesn't exist right now. So look, lots of countries around the world on the back of COVID going to experience much more political instability, Tunisia leading the pack in North Africa right now.
Are you watching the Olympics? What's your favorite event?
I've been watching a little bit of the Olympics, it is in Tokyo. I turned on the NBC coverage late evening the other day. Have to say my favorite event for Summer Olympics has to be the gymnastics. And it's really sad to see the United States unable to pull off the gold to the team that was formerly known as Russia, but has had their name suspended because of all of the doping. And very sad to see Simone Biles who is in a league of her own on planet have to pull out for medical reasons. But still I think the Olympics... I've always been a fan of the Olympics. I like anything that brings the world together and has us root for humanity. That's harder to find these days and any excuse we have, I'm all for it.
- Make the COVID vaccine mandatory - GZERO Media ›
- Vaccine papers, please! - GZERO Media ›
- Should government force businesses to require vaccine passes ... ›
- Biden expected to announce vaccine mandate for federal workers - GZERO Media ›
- COVID hypocrisy & misinformation - GZERO Media ›
- COVID hypocrisy & misinformation - GZERO Media ›
People celebrate in the Avenue Habib Bourguiba after Tunisian President Kais Saied announced to assume executive authority in addition to suspending parliament and Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi's government in Tunis, Tunisia on July 25, 2021.
The only Arab Spring success story on the brink
Tunisia, the only country that emerged a democracy from the Arab Spring, is now in the middle of its worst political crisis since it got rid of former autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali over a decade ago.
On Sunday, the 64th anniversary of the country's independence from France, President Kais Saied responded to widespread protests over the ailing economy and COVID by firing embattled Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspending parliament for 30 days. Troops have surrounded the legislature, where rival crowds faced off on Monday, with one side chanting in support of the move and the other denouncing it as a coup.
How did we get here, do we even know who's really in charge, and what might come next?
Tunisians are fed up. Over the past year, Tunisians have repeatedly taken to the streets in the largest numbers in a decade to decry the stagnant economy, rising inequality, inadequate public services, and dwindling job opportunities for young people (even before the pandemic, youth unemployment was already at 36 percent, the highest rate in North Africa.) Young Tunisians led the protests, often battling trigger-happy police.
COVID, of course, made everything worse. It crushed Tunisia's labor-intensive tourism industry, and forced thousands of Tunisian migrants to hop on boats across the Mediterranean headed for Europe via Italy, which saw a five-fold increase in arrivals in 2020. Right now, COVID infections rates are soaring while barely 7 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
More broadly, the people feel politicians remain as corrupt as they were under Ben Ali, and have failed to deliver on the promise of democracy to provide a better life for ordinary Tunisians. Trust in the system has plunged after highly fragmented parliaments have created a series of fragile coalition governments that slow-walk meaningful reforms, leaving the country in economic stagnation and a permanent political stalemate.
Constitutional crisis. Saied's sudden move has created a constitutional crisis because it's unclear he had the authority to dissolve the government on his own.
A former constitutional law professor who was elected as an independent in late 2019 to root out endemic corruption, the president says he's within his constitutional powers to govern by decree until he appoints a new PM. It's an unusually out-of-character performance by Saied, who styles himself as a moderate statesman and whom many Tunisians jokingly refer to as "Robocop" for putting audiences to sleep with his monotone delivery during speeches.
However, the moderate Islamist Ennadha party, as the largest force in parliament and the coalition government, insists it must nominate the next prime minister. (Ennadha — which was banned by Ben Ali for being inspired by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood — has always been part of democratic coalition governments and won the 2019 parliamentary election, but fell short of an outright majority.)
The problem is that the separation of powers under Tunisia's mixed presidential-parliamentary system is somewhat confusing: just weeks ago, Saied and Mechichi were squabbling about who controls internal security amid the former's broader plans to reform the constitution. Interestingly, the constitution says a special court should resolve those disputes… but (surprise!) the executive and legislative powers still haven't agreed on how to set it up.
Next moves. Whether you think it's a power grab or a necessary intervention to address a crisis, Saied's action has captured the zeitgeist by moving against a political establishment that most Tunisians have long resented. However, it's hard to imagine how he will be able to govern once he restores parliament because he doesn't have a party of his own. As president, he controls the military, but the reformist Robocop would rather make Tunisian democracy work than become dictator of a police state.
At a minimum, the situation creates more urgency for Tunisia's politicians to fix a system that — imperfect as it may be — gives the people a lot more of a say than in any other country that experienced the Arab Spring.
US President Joe Biden and Russia's President Vladimir Putin meet for talks at the Villa La Grange.
What We're Watching: Biden-Putin summit, North Korea's food crisis, Tunisian constitutional reform
No fireworks in Geneva: Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden sat together for four hours on Wednesday, and as we anticipated in Signal, both leaders agreed to continue to cooperate where they can and to continue to pursue their national interests, as they see them. They're now expected to work together on nuclear disarmament. That's good, since these two countries still account for most of the world's atomic weapons. They're also open to exchanging prisoners, a welcome development. But more importantly, Biden and Putin set down their red lines: for the US it's the critical infrastructure that should be off-limits from hackers, and for Russia it's further expansion of NATO. US sanctions will remain in place. If the summit was a "success," it's only because expectations were low. Curb your enthusiasm indeed. For now, we'll be watching to see whether US-Russia ties enter a period, however brief, of the stable and predictable relations Biden says he wants, or if some new controversy triggers a new war of words.
North Korea has a food crisis: Kim Jong Un admits North Korea faces a "tense" food shortage problem. That warning is especially worrisome in North Korea, where it is highly unusual for the regime to report bad news — especially coming from the usually hardy Kim Jong Un. State media blames the current food crisis on a series of floods that destroyed crops, China's border closure over COVID, and crippling international sanctions. While the country's economy is in chronic bad shape, any mention of food shortages is a clear reason for alarm, given that a severe famine wiped out almost 20 percent of the population in the 1990s. UN food agencies believe the situation is not yet dire, but they warn North Korea may experience "a harsh lean period" by the fall if it doesn't get imports or aid soon. To address the crisis, Kim has ordered all state resources to be directed to farming. Interestingly, this time even the famously chubby Supreme Leader himself could be feeling the pinch: in recent photos he appears to have lost a lot of weight, though observers say it's likely a result of a voluntary diet to improve his (reportedly) poor health.
Constitutional do-over in Tunisia? Ten years after the Arab Spring revolution that paved the way for democracy and a new constitution in Tunisia, President Kais Saied has called for a debate on how to rework the country's political system. Tunisia has been mired in political deadlock for months as Saied and Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi squabble over who has what powers, including important portfolios like internal security. The current constitution, approved in 2014, created a mixed presidential-parliamentary system that has contributed to the confusion. Tunisia is the only country where the Arab Spring led to democracy, but the call to tweak the basic structures of that system comes at a dicey time: the North African country is struggling with economic malaise, coronavirus, and a recent surge of protests over police brutality.
Has the Middle East’s “Arab Moment” passed?
President Biden's approach to the Middle East will have to adapt to the once-in-a-generation power grab occurring between Iran, Israel, and Turkey while Arab nations in the region increasingly lose influence. That's according to Johns Hopkins University Middle East scholar Vali Nasr. "The Arabs are not really deciding the geostrategy of the region. They're not the strongest players right now. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the events of the Arab Spring, the bigger players like Iraq, Syria, Egypt lost their footing—they've collapsed." Nasr spoke with Ian Bremmer on an episode of GZERO World.
Watch the episode: Is the US Misjudging the Middle East's Power Shifts? Vali Nasr's View