The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

Emiratis celebrated their failure to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the United Nations Security Council as the end of an era in which the Gulf state took its foreign policy cues from the United States. However, the Emiratis may be celebrating prematurely.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the international condemnation it generated contains key lessons for policymakers.

They are lessons that should have been learned in past global crises but weren't. However, the Ukraine crisis offers an opportunity to correct that mistake.

It may be only a matter of time before Russian troops control the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and topple President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

However, that may not be the end of the story. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops could find themselves in Ukraine for the long haul depending on whether Ukrainians have the stomach to launch an insurgency.

Israel and Gulf states struggle not to fall off the tightrope they walk as a Russian attack on Ukraine makes hedging bets increasingly tricky.

Ukraine is about much more than the security of one sovereign nation. The battle for Ukraine is a battle for the new world order.

Europe is likely to shoulder the brunt of the fallout of a rapidly escalating crisis over Ukraine. Middle Eastern states could prove to be a close second.

Food, far more than diplomatic relations with Arab states, could be turning Israel into a state rooted rather than implanted in the Middle East even if Palestinians are likely to continue to look at the Jewish state as an implant and usurper for generations to come.

A recent dinner in Washington suggests that a seemingly forthcoming visit to Turkey by Israeli President Isaac Herzog could be about more than putting an end to strained relations between the two erstwhile allies.

When Turkish finance minister Nureddin Nebati this week announced plans to encourage households to convert their gold holdings into Turkish liras in a bid to shore up Turkish central bank reserves, he was targeting people like Esra G.

Ms. G., whose last name has been abbreviated to preserve her anonymity, has had a life-long troubled relationship with gold. When she was barely three years old, her distaste for it as an adornment was already so strong that she dumped all her gold rings, bracelets, necklaces, and earrings into the Bosporus.

Katherine Harvey, A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Saudi Struggle for Iraq, Oxford University Press 2022

Iraq has in the last year taken a lead in sponsoring talks between Middle Eastern arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran in an effort to prevent tension in the region spinning out of control. The Iraqi role is remarkable given that Saudi Arabia for more than a decade after the 2003-led US invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein wanted nothing to do with the country’s post-Saddam leadership. Saudi perceptions of Iraq as an Iranian pawn persuaded it even to refuse reopening a diplomatic mission in Baghdad until 2019.

In Self-fulfilling Prophet: The Saudi Struggle for Iraq (Oxford University Press 2022), Katherine Harvey paints a fascinating picture of what happens when policy is crafted based on perception rather than fact. Harvey tells the story of a post-invasion Iraq that was systematically rebuffed by Saudi Arabia in its efforts to reintegrate into the predominantly Sunni Arab world. Iraq had been ostracized following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and expulsion from the Gulf state in 1991 by a US-coalition.

Saudi King Abdullah, convinced that Iran had successfully infiltrated Iraq and that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was an Iranian stooge, blocked Iraq’s reaching out to the kingdom and eventually drove into the hands of Iran. In doing so, Saudi Arabia was standing up for its perceived interests that diverged from those of the United States. The US wanted the Saudis to engage with the Shiite Muslim majority that came to power in Iraq as a result of the US invasion.

As a result, Harvey’s well-documented book contributes to understanding the limits of US power in the Middle East and the significant perceptual gaps that Middle Eastern states need to bridge to ensure that a regional détente is sustainable.