Publications

The Middle East of 2014 might well be described as a bubbling cauldron. Voluntarily or involuntarily, the main international actors – the US, Russia, and to some extent the European Union (EU) – were drawn into the maelstrom. The seizure by the Islamic State (IS) organization of large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, along with its attempt to expand into stable countries such as Jordan and the Gulf monarchies, forced the US and some of its allies to revise their policy of avoiding military intervention in the internal events in the region. In recent years this policy was largely upheld, even when events involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millions of others.