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Since the time of President Thomas Jefferson, and on through the presidents of the 20th century, the United States has talked about itself as the propagator, protector, and defender of democracy around the world. Yet America has never showed any qualms of forming military and political alliances with authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The US justifies these international alliances on the basis that “not all dictatorships in the world are enemies of the United States, but all the United States’ enemies are dictatorships.” The US therefore adopted a two-track diplomacy: while working to spread democracy (directly or by means of international organizations and NGOs) the US has no issue in supporting autocratic governments when its interests are involved. How did US policy apply to the democratic transformation in the former Eastern bloc states in Europe on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and subsequently, when American values and interests went hand in hand, and how did it then apply to the Arab Spring of 2011, when US values and interests were congruent in some cases and out of sync in others, according to the situation in each country and its strategic importance from America’s perspective? What are the results of these policies and what differences emerge from such a comparison of the Arab and East Europe cases.

Our study aims to put under scrutiny the Algerian army tasks and roles through different periods of time and this requires going back to the roots when the national liberation army was established, returning to the present as the army has become the institution protecting the state. An institution which has an everlasting organic relation with politics, embodying one of its central tasks. The study needs to highlight the above cited issues in its attempt to grasp and understand the army role during the 1992s' political crisis, and in so doing a particular attention is given to the ways how the army dealt with the crisis and what is the nature of its contribution in tackling and facing it. Finally, the study is concerned with the army role in the near future from a prospective approach.

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 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 review covers selected samples of Israeli writings on the Arab Spring produced by think tanks, academic centers, universities in Israel

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.

This study attempts to determine the latest changes in the US-Saudi alliance and reflect on its destabilization. Specifically, it aims to determine whether the current crisis in US-Saudi relations might actually lead to a rift. Alternatively, the current events could be nothing but a temporary breakup depending on each country’s vision of its interests, after which relations could resume. The study reached some important results. It concluded, for example, that the speculation of a collapse of the US-Saudi alliance and its replacement with the US-Iranian alliance is farfetched and lacks depth. It is politically impossible and strategically inoperable for the US to side with Iran at the expense of Saudi Arabia amid the current polarization.

This paper provides descriptive statistics on Arab public opinion towards the US over time, using the Arab Opinion Index from 2011 to 2019/2020. While Obama attempted to let pragmatism lead his foreign policy, Trump's policies upended the status quo of many issues, hastening conflict in the Arab region. How did this impact Arab opinion of the US and its foreign policy? Did these rapid shifts affect Arab citizens in their view of the US? Or does the Arab citizen find the content of this foreign policy indistinguishable from before, albeit with a different tone? The paper demonstrates that Trump's policies, which confused many international organizations and alliances, and caused chaos, especially in the Arab world, led to a rapid decline in the positive evaluation of the United States in the Arab world.

Given the unrest boiling in the region, this paper considers the possibility of partitioning the countries of the Levant. Given the state of affairs and current political indicators in Syria and Iraq, which suggest the Kurds have started to regain their national unity and awareness, the group is now the only faction in the Levant fighting on nationalist or ethnic bases. What makes it easier for them to establish a viable Kurdish entity, at the local level, is the fact that they have huge economic, political, human, and military potential. This paper examines local and international contexts and obstacles to the establishment of a Kurdish state. It also argues that it will be unlikely, meanwhile, that sectarian entities could be created in Syria and Iraq given current local and international circumstances. Indeed, sectarian tension is nothing more than social tension that is the result of imbalance in the distribution of wealth and power, and the result of political authoritarianism. Therefore, the warring groups are not part of the framework of separatist tendencies; though they are liable to turn into sectarian nationalisms due to foreign intervention and agendas.

​This article analyses the development of civil-military relations in Ethiopia and how they are affected by politics, culture and ethnicity whilst drawing on compatibility theory. It explores a fundamental issue: to what extent does ethnic and cultural diversity influence civil-military relations in Ethiopia? The article begins with the hypothesis that the military's interests and political affiliations arise from their vision of the nation-state's interest, and may conflict with the attitudes of civil institutions, complicating the separation between civil and military institutional mandates. The article demonstrates how the social structure and distribution of tribes has had an impact on the reform processes of successive political systems in Ethiopia. Moreover, it concludes that consensus in civil-military relations and civilian control of government will continue in the future if slogans of centralization and citizenship are actualized through legal and democratic methods based on the principles of justice and equality in rights and duties among all constituents.