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China's economic growth led to a concomitant expansion of its interests across the globe, and the Middle East and North Africa s today vital to the sustainability of that growth.

​​​​This study explores the trajectory of state disintegration in Sudan from 1821 to 2025, starting from a central question: does the April 2023 war constitute a revealing variable that exposes a process of structural disintegration whose foundations accumulated over time? Or is it an explanatory variable that, in itself, drives the deepening of this disintegration? Drawing on a historical sociology approach, the study analyzes the interaction of five main variables addressed in the literature on state disintegration: war, elite conflict, geostrategic intervention, erosion of legitimacy, and the pressures of globalization. The study shows that successive wars and resource depletion, along with ethnic/regional elite divisions and international competition over the Red Sea, have undermined the state’s monopoly over the legitimate means of violence, leading to a hybrid pattern of disintegration in which the center retains international recognition while power is effectively distributed among local armed networks. The study concludes that existing models of state disintegration explain important aspects of the Sudanese experience, but require further development to accommodate forms of multiple sovereignties and managed disintegration​​

The Gulf states, as a center for oil and gas production, face the challenge of adapting to an increasingly uncertain energy landscape as new resources arrive in the market, and the reverberations of unstable demand and turbulent geostrategic conditions. The great challenge for these countries, in which social peace depends on unlimited consumption of subsidized energy, is to reduce consumption and develop alternative energy sources to conserve traditional fuels for export. The effects of these transformations are significant today, and the economic, social and political stability of these countries, as well as their ability to remain major players in the global energy system is at stake. Renewable energy policies, tailored to the unique political, economic and social conditions of each country, need to translate aspirations into swift practical action to succeed and rejuvenate the option of cooperation within a productive institutional framework.

In September 2014, US President Barack Obama announced a “comprehensive strategy” to degrade and destroy ISIL. Obama stated, “I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency: If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.” But despite this announcement, questions over the nature, goals, and instruments of US policy towards ISIL still continue to be asked in the context of a debate between those who think that the US is not doing enough to take on ISIL and those who think it would be better for the US not to expand its military involvement in the conflict. This debate has been influenced by internal American political polarizations in the form of the critical position taken by leading Republicans such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who view the Obama policy as weak, and Middle Eastern regional rivalries over the position towards ISIL and the nature of the political choices that must frame the confrontation with it.

Russia has not specified its national interests in the Middle East or the Arab World since the 1990s. This paper discusses Russia’s shift toward a more active and effective role in the Middle East, in particular after Vladimir Putin came to power. Putin’s attempts to strengthen Russia in the Middle East were driven by a mixture of nostalgia and strategic national interests. With the events of the Arab Spring, Russia sensed that Arab revolutions could result in geostrategic changes in the region, which may not comply with its growing ambitions. It is this background against which Russia’s different stances toward each Arab Spring country and the outcomes of their respective uprisings can be read. Putin expressed anti-change reservations in Libya and Egypt, and even more so in Syria, making it one of the major actors in the Syrian crisis. At the same time, however, Moscow had no strong stance on Yemen, Tunisia, or Bahrain. The motives behind Russia’s role can be understood through a look at its internal situation, which is being influenced by waves of democratic change in the Arab Region, as well as its impact on the future of Central Asian countries, particularly Russia’s allies (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Belarus). This paper discusses all of these entanglements in the context of the current Arab situation.

This study examines the ability of network technology to challenge despotism regimes. It thus applies two theoretical approaches. The first is the "Prisoner's dilemma" and the "despot/jailer's dilemma" and the second is the "case study", which studies a number of cases of "network technology", whether used by protest groups or by authoritarian regimes, to determine the extent (and direction) of their impact in practice. The study concludes that network technology — through challenging the logic of the "prisoner's dilemma" and reversing it to become the "jailer's dilemma" — can, theoretically, pose an element of weakness for despotism regimes. However, in reality, network technology can be used by these regimes with the same effectiveness, to respond to mass protests supported by technology. This indicates that network technology can be seen as a neutralizing factor, the impact of which should be studied relative to the impact of other factors.

The book explores reimagining geographical spaces beyond physical maps, influenced by the complex dynamics of major powers' interests, strategies, and geostrategic interactions.