In this episode, Dr Andreas Krieg illustrates how private security companies are a response to an emerging global phenomenon: surrogate warfare. Military surrogacy involves not only human stand-in’s such as proxies, local militias and private contractors; but also with machine or technological surrogates as such drones, AI, and cyber-tech.

Did you know that the UAE is a federation of seven emirates which are governed by six ruling families? How did Dubai achieve global prominence to an extent that many rave about its economic model? This webinar approaches the UAE’s evolution through a socio-historical lens in the following order:

- The UAE as a federal government

- The prehistoric times (3000 B.C to 600 A.D), the Islamic era (600 to 1500 A.D) and onward to a period of transformation (1500 to 1820 A.D)

- Britain and the Trucial States (1820 to 1945)

- Political leadership under Abu Dhabi - The achievements of the Nahyan family, from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan to Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed

Speaker:

Dr Aqil Kazim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Society/Sociology Programme at the United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, UAE. Dr Kazim received his MA and PhD from American University, Washington, DC. He is the author of The United Arab Emirates AD 600 to the Present: A Socio-discursive Transformation in the Arabian Gulf. He served as Dean of Students at American University, Sharjah and as Chair of the Sociology Department at UAEU. He has published numerous articles, including The Rise of Dubai: A Social History of the Commercial Cities in the Gulf and The Construction of the Pearl Industry in the UAE Region in 1869 -1938: its construction, production, and decline. He has also presented in many conferences on topics such as UAE’s demography, urban development and consumerism and edited the Emirati Studies textbook as well.

For the reading materials for this session, please visit

https://mei.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/The-UAE-Federation-MEI-SNU.pdf

Against the backdrop of two interlinked events – the increased Arab-Israeli closeness resulting from the Abraham Accords and the attempts to resurrect the Iran nuclear deal, this webinar will explore the current nature and future dynamics of the relationship between Iran and the GCC states under the paradigm of regional security.  Panelists will delve into two important dimensions of the Iran-GCC dynamics – viz., their respective security concerns and the possibility of common grounds for cooperation between them. Through its deliberations and discussions, the session will explore the viability of a regional security arrangement for the Gulf region which includes the six GCC states, Iran and Iraq and ponder over its acceptability by these states as well as other important regional stakeholders such as Israel.

This public talk was conducted online via Zoom on Tuesday, 1 June 2021 at 4.00pm (SGT) and was organised by the MEI Political Economy research cluster.

Click here for more details: https://mei.nus.edu.sg/event/iran-gcc-dynamics-and-regional-security/ 

About the Webinar

Asia is one of the most diverse regions in the world, with a variety of different environments within its vast lands. Several countries within Asian, including Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, and Qatar, are at risk of weather extremes and rising sea levels due to climate change. There is a growing realization that past efforts will not be enough to thwart future threats.

Join Doha Forum and the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore in their upcoming session on Asian perspectives on climate change, which seek to inform the discussion as a global issue, highlight variable risks, and illustrate different approaches to the problem.

Opening Remarks

• Ms Grace Fu, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment, Republic of Singapore

Panellists

• Mr Albert Chua, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE), Singapore

Moderator

• Mr Bilahari Kausikan, Chairman of the Middle East Institute, NUS

This public talk – jointly organised by Doha Forum and Middle East Institute, NUS – was conducted online via Zoom on Tuesday, 25 May 2021, at 5.00pm. Click here to go to the event webpage: https://mei.nus.edu.sg/event/existing-in-an-existential-crisis-the-asian-response-to-climate-change/ 

Among the Gulf states, did you know that Oman possesses arguably the greatest amount of raw and scenic beauty? What makes Oman geographically critical is its control over a finger of land in the southern coast, called the Musandam Peninsula, which has allowed the sultanate to pursue an independent foreign policy straddling between its neighbours, Iran and Western governments. What makes the same peninsula intriguing is that you can watch racing dolphins, or quite simply, swim with them!

The Omani sultanate as we know today has a rich history comprising early Portuguese control, a Swahili ruling class (indicating East African ties) at one point and a period when the mountainous interior (under the Imamate) was distinguished from the coastal Sultanate of Muscat and Oman. Only as late as the 1960s did these two areas begin to be united politically. Under Sultan Qaboos, the modernisation of the Sultanate moved forward with purpose. However, the cost of it was a personalisation of rule but the benefits were tremendous social and economic transformations.

Let us uncover the Omani odyssey, its economic outlook under a new sultan and a bold project named the Oman Vision 2040.

Speakers: Dr Mohamed Saad Al Muqadam, Sultan Qaboos University and Dr Yousuf Hamed Al Balushi, Chief Economist of Oman Vision 2040 

Dr Mohamed Saad Al Muqadam is an Assistant Professor of Oman modern history at Sultan Qaboos University and previously held several senior appointments at the College of Arts of Social Sciences including Assistant Dean for the college, Dean of Students Affairs and as Head of the Department of History. Dr Al Muqadam earned his PhD from the University of Exeter, where he began to dive into the relationship between Oman and Persia. Besides research interests in the sultanate’s history, he has also examined China-Oman relations in depth, among other bilateral relations.

Dr Yousuf Hamed Al Balushi is the Chief Economist of the Oman Vision 2040 taskforce and is passionate about Oman’s development and investment potential. He has served as an advisor on foreign direct investment (FDI) to both Oman’s Supreme Council for Planning and to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Dr Al Balushi holds a PhD from King’s College London where he explored the impact of FDI on the contribution of the private sector to Oman’s economic development. He has since published in different outlets, as author of the monograph Omani economy: globalization and the winds of change and as co-editor on a Palgrave MacMillan series covering economic diversification in the Gulf

For the reading materials for this session, please visit this link:

https://mei.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Oman-Macro-framework-F.pdf

In 1949, at the end of  long periods of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People’s Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world’s largest nations was committed to fundamentally re-engineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data of the country. Making It Count is the history of efforts to resolve this “crisis in counting”. Drawing on a wealth of sources culled from China, India and the US, Arunabh Ghosh explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers.

Ghosh shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, Ghosh not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalises wider developments in the history of statistics and data.

Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, Making It Count offers fresh perspectives on China’s transition to socialism.

Bridging the Gulf Episode 4 — Answering the Five “W”s of Kuwaiti Democracy (Friday, 14 May 2021):

Dr Tahani Al Terkait is a researcher on politics focusing on Kuwait, the Gulf region and the Middle East. She earned her PhD in political science from Durham University, UK. She defended her thesis in 2017, entitled “The Conceptual and Constitutional Underpinnings of Kuwait’s System of Government”. She is also a member at the London-based Centre of International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD), SOAS, where she received her Master’s degree. Before pursuing higher education, Dr Al Terkait worked for Kuwait’s public sector for 15 years, serving her country as a diplomat and consultant in public diplomacy. She served Kuwait as Kuwait’s first female Press Attaché at the Embassy of Kuwait in Washington DC, USA, from 2001 to 2007. Her academic and professional experiences have shaped her research interests in political reforms, human rights and gender equality in the Arab world.

The past five years have witnessed tremendous changes in Saudi Arabia affecting the line of royal succession, the business class, the religious establishment and the social scene. This week's episode of Bridging the Gulf will explain the significance of these changes in the context of the kingdom’s foundation, the decades-long intertwining of religion and political power, the discovery of oil, and Saudi Arabia's religious significance. It will also examine the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and his interest in diversifying the economy to implement “Vision 2030”.

Speaker: Ms Eman Alhussein, Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington

Opening tune by audionautix.com

Andrea Ghiselli, author of the book Protecting China’s Interests Overseas: Securitisation and Foreign Policy, will discuss Chinese foreign and security policymaking with Raffaello Pantucci, a researcher at RSIS whose work looks at security dynamics in the Eurasian heartland. Focusing on the broad territory that lies between MENA and South and Central Asia, Ghiselli and Pantucci will discuss China’s challenges in managing non-traditional security issues across this wide landscape and the gradual development of a Chinese strategic approach to defending its interests overseas.

With a footprint that has dramatically increased since the announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative by President Xi Jinping in 2013, Chinese companies and institutions are increasingly having to manage a more complicated range of security threats. From terrorism to crime and political risk and geopolitical risks, Chinese firms and citizens find themselves in ever more precarious places and the Chinese state is still working out how to play a role in managing these risks. Moderated by MEI Principal Research Fellow Alessandro Arduino, Ghiselli and Pantucci will explore these questions and highlight particular issues Dr Ghiselli focuses on in his new book.

Event image taken from the cover of Protecting China’s Interests Overseas, Securitization and Foreign Policy by Andrea Ghiselli

In this podcast Dr Joshua Reno, Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University, discusses how the pressure of constant war-readiness produces military waste which in turn animates places and people far from the battlegrounds. He argues that rejected designs, outdated planes, scrapped ships, and space debris, should be central to calculations of social, political, and economic costs of war.