Saddam Would Have Survived the Arab Spring

Iraq has not yet embraced the modern cult of the opinion poll. Voter research is unheard of, market research is rare, and surveys of national attitudes tend to...

Arab Spring with same impact as "big bang strategy": Islam at war with self - not West

Nice piece in the NYT at the end of September pointing out that the primary impact of the Arab Spring is that, in giving people chances to rule themselves and...

Morning Must Reads: April 10

Big policy week: budget today, and gun control and immigration tomorrow

Will the Arab Spring Rain on Obama’s Re-election?

Until now, the Arab spring has felt like a wash in domestic political terms. Conservatives have charged Obama with “losing” Egypt to the Islamists after...

French Satirical Cartoons Spark Ire in the Arab Spring’s Birthplace

After a week of anti-American violence in several cities over the “Innocence of Muslims” video, the rage pivoted on Wednesday to another Western...

The View from Algiers: The Islamist Threat in Next Door Tunisia

Algerians may complain about the lack of democracy but they aren’t advocating a revolt. They say they’ve seen enough of what extremists can do to a country

Saudi Prince Throws $300 Million at Twitter (What Arab Spring?)

Here you go Twitter, have $300 million, signed: Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, nephew of Saudi Arabia's king and, according to Forbes, the 26th...

Can Entrepreneurship Bring Change Where the Arab Spring Has Not?

Ambitious and talented, the next generation of Arab entrepreneurs is readily seeking out opportunities to develop and grow, testing ideas in venues such as MIT...

The President and the Islamist: Two Politicos Spar Over Tunisia’s Future

There are few better ways to gauge the Arab Spring’s bitter ideological divisions than to visit this country’s two most powerful men. On the one end of Tunis,...

Arab Spring, NBA Lockout Top Twitter’s 2011 Standout Stories

The biggest events of 2011 — the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami — were tremendous on their own. But the reverberations of...

The Arab Spring’s Nobel Laureate Says the Revolution Isn’t Over

Change Square has changed, but not for the better. The tent city outside Sana’a University that was the focal point of year-long protests against Yemen’s...

Syria: Is This an Arab Spring or a Balkan Winter?

Special Envoy Kofi Annan told the U.N. Security Council Tuesday that his struggling peace plan is the last hope to prevent Syria from plunging into an all-out...

Is Marrakech’s Westernized Female Mayor a Real Figure for Change?

Upstairs in the old City Hall building in this ancient tourist mecca, there is an unexpected sight: In the sprawling mayoral suite, the head of Morocco’s third...

The Rise Of The Salafis

In the 13 months that Mohammed Abdel-Rahman has been protesting outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo, he has become so familiar to American officials that they...

The Arab Spring is Over: From Tunisia to Syria, the Struggle is Now Between Islamists, Generals and the Old Regime

There are countless great sources for those who following the Middle East's political clock by the movement of its second- and minute-hands. But for those...

Controversial Tunisian Court Ruling Reflects Dilemmas of the Arab Spring

In a sign that conservative Islam could yet take hold in this modern, largely secular country—home to the Arab Spring’s first revolution—a feisty, blunt-talking...

For all you Iran-is-winning types, the sad truth

You get two variants of this logic: 1) if the US leaves Iraq, Iran wins automatically (or it's won already because the Shiite majority actually rules); and 2)...

The Winter of Morocco's Discontent: Will the Arab Spring Arrive?

Could Morocco be next? For nearly a year, Moroccans have clashed with riot police in near-weekly protests, as they take to the streets to demand more political...