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​This study traces the evolution of the sporting boycott of Israel from its inception and its impact on the colonial system of Israeli apartheid. It contextualises the development of this boycott in major international sports tournaments over the past decade, and how the outbreak of the Arab revolutions in late 2010 gave additional impetus to Arab youth to boycott Israel and sports in particular. Their boycott went hand in hand with their demands to end tyranny and autocracy, giving Arab athletes an opportunity to transform major international sports tournaments into a space for political action. The paper argues that the sporting boycott of Israel emerged in the last decade as a political tool for athletes and assesses the impact of this campaign in international sports tournaments on Israel's international reputation, its sports brand, and its diplomatic efforts related to marketing its emerging sports entrepreneurship.

This paper highlights the role of the armed forces and their impact on the process of political transition, and discusses civil-military relations in their various aspects: the state, society and the armed forces per se, in order to reveal the main pillars that constitute a balance between the power of political institutions (legislative and executive) and the military power of the army. Such a balance would lead to the subduing of the army to the civil authority, and confine military activities to security and defense. The paper focuses on the common characteristics shared by states that have succeeded in building democratic armies. To conclude, the author presents a set of recommendations addressed to activists and democrats, on what ought to be done and what should be avoided in the security-defense field during the process of democratic army building.

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and its capture of vast territories in the Fertile Crescent, has confounded the political calculations of a number of all major political players invested in the Arab region, including regional and global powers. With the failure of regional actors to contain the group, the United States was forced to backtrack on its military withdrawal from the region—when it pulled its troops out of Iraq—and become involved, anew, in the Middle East.

Sponsored by the “Safer World” foundation, based in the United Kingdom, this meeting held at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies examined possibilities for the spreading of peace and stability across conflict hotspots around the globe.

This paper investigates the factors that have led to the collapse of Baath-ruled Syria. It argues that the abandonment of the rentier – distributive economic system that had traditionally propped up the social base of the Baath party (labourers, farmers, and rural populations) and the adoption of liberal economic policies was key to the crisis. The end of the Cold War, the passing of resistance discourse, with the start of the Middle East peace process, and the information revolution have contributed to weakening the cultural and ideological hegemony of the Syrian Baath-ruled state. This led to increasing reliance on the security apparatus to control an increasingly young and educated society. The loosening economic grip of the state resulting from the abandonment of the public sector, and the rise of crony capitalism accompanied by the declining role of political socialisation (in schools and universities), and the loss of control over the flow of information, left the regime with no other option but resorting to violence to deal with the crisis. The peaceful opposition movement hitherto was transformed into an armed revolution, and then into a regional and international proxy war, with the rising role foreign interference in the crisis.

This paper discusses international competition in Latin America between the United States, Russia, and China. Whilst the United States aims to maintain its traditional influence in the region based on the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 , which made Latin America a zone of exclusive influence for the US due to its geographic and economic significance. Russia and China instead seek to challenge this influence, on the one hand in the face of American expansionism in their respective vicinities, and on the other to bring about a multipolar global order. Moreover, the region is of economic importance to those states. The study arrives at the basic conclusion that the US still has the greatest military and economic presence in Latin America, but Russia and China have managed to penetrate the region by establishing military relations with anti-US regimes, most prominently Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Moreover, China has become an important trade partner to countries such as Brazil and Argentina, surpassed the US in trade volume with these states.

This article draws from structurationist and symbolic interactionist sociology, seeking to build a bridge between the realist–liberal and rationalist–reflectivist debates in the field of international relations. In doing so, it argues against the neorealist claim that self-help is given by anarchic structure exogenously to process. It further argues that self-help and power politics do not follow either logically or causally from the anarchic structure of the international system, but are generated by process rather than by structure. There is no logic of anarchy apart from the practices that create and instantiate one particular structure of identities and interests rather than another. Self-help and power politics are institutions, not essential features of anarchy – anarchy is what states make of it. The article explores three ways in which identities and interests are transformed under anarchy: by the institution of sovereignty, by an evolution of cooperation, and by intentional efforts to transform egoistic identities into collective identities.

This paper discusses what it sees as turmoil in Turkish policy towards the Syrian crisis, a policy that is marked by constant fluctuations. For example, the passive stance towards ISIL’s occupation of the Kurdish town of Ain al-Arab/Kobani stood in contradiction to Turkey’s subsequent air attacks on ISIL positions inside Syria following the explosions in Suruc, only for Turkey to then change tactic again by bombarding the rear lines of the PKK in northern Iraq. Even after Turkey opened up the Incirlik airbase to coalition forces, Turkey did not participate in the campaign against ISIL beyond a few strikes, while its air power was continuously targeting PKK positions. Turkish policy in Syria has not developed much, and is being pulled into the political crisis and acts of violence at home, which have crippled the country since the elections of June 7, 2015. In addition, the situation in Syria has forced Turkey to focus on its southern borders, putting it in contact with the various active parties in Syria with their conflicting interests. Furthermore, the Syrian crisis has forced Ankara to reconsider its management of the Aegean coast and its northern borders, to keep refugees on its territory and so maintain good relations with the EU.

​عنوان الكتاب الأول بلغته الأصلية: The End of American World Order. عنوان الكتاب: نهاية النظام العالمي الأميركي. المؤلف: أميتاف أشاريا Amitav Acharya. دار النشر: Polity. سنة النشر: 2018. عدد الصفحات: 138. عنوان الكتاب الثاني بلغته الأصلية: Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. عنوان الكتاب: اللفياثان الليبرالي: أصول وأزمة وتحول النظام العالمي الأميركي. المؤلف: جون إكنبري Gilford John Ikenberry. دار النشر: Princeton University Press. سنة النشر: 2011. عدد الصفحات: 372.

​Qatari foreign policy presents a challenge for students of international relations. Whereas major theories within the field tend to privilege structural factors in explaining the action of states, and particularly small states, in the case of Qatar, the quality of leadership and the strategies that leadership employs to navigate through the structural constraints—primarily geography—are equally important. One of the main findings of this paper is that the strategies adopted by the Qatari elite since 1995 did alleviate many of the structural constraints which the country would otherwise have faced. Moreover, during the short-lived Arab Spring of 2011-2013, Qatar tried to reshape the political landscape in the Middle East to its favor, challenging the two regional hegemons Saudi Arabia and Iran, in Egypt and Syria respectively. Yet, the paper concludes, geopolitical factors and the relative capabilities of states remain instrumental in assuring a state’s sustained capacity to continue playing a key role. This is particularly true in a region where elite thinking continues to be defined by realpolitik.