U.S. Policy

By the time Washington finishes arguing about who lost Kuwait, a new debate may have to be joined about the failure of U.S. policy toward Jordan. The Kuwait crisis is drawing King Hussein into Saddam Hussein's orbit with profound consequences for the stability of the Middle East heartland and the

Keynote addresses by Moshe Arens, Richard Haass, Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, and Paul Wolfowitz.

Secretary of State Baker's idea of developing "a new security structure" for the Middle East has been the subject of much attention. What specifically does the U.S. have in mind? The most honest answer is not much. It appears that, in raising the idea, Secretary Baker was for the most

It is surprising how few Arabs and Arab states are supporting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. As Secretary of State James Baker's visit to Damascus on Thursday shows, the anti-Iraq coalition includes the Arab world's three other most important powers: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. This triumverate marks the Arab world's

Many commentators and policy-makers in Washington are calling for U.S. military action to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait. While this option may be attractive in principle, today it is impossible in practice. Indeed, according to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, the U.S. military still has some way to go before it can

The danger of a U.S.-Iraq military confrontation may be receding for the time being. But now the debate in the administration, Congress, and the public faces a new issue: will the Bush Administration's multilateral strategy prevent it from taking unilateral military action if Saddam Hussein refuses to withdraw from Kuwait

Superpower relations in the Middle East is an especially timely and provocative topic -- timely because superpower relations clearly are changing, and provocative because the consequences from those changes are far from self-evident. On one hand, the lessening of the tensions between the superpowers, especially the declining role of the

We have been living through a political earthquake. A year ago Erich Honecker was still heading East Germany, and people were talking about the solid infrastructure of the GDR. Milos Jakes was still ruling in Czechoslovakia, and it was said that the communist party had a strong system of control

The American government is intent on trying to bring the parties in the Arab-Israeli dispute closer together, to talk, to negotiate and to resolve differences. President Bush has reaffirmed this commitment on several occasions and Secretary of State James Baker described our goals eloquently in his speech on "principles and