Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From MESH Admin
Some of the many interactive geography quizzes on the web ask visitors to identify the countries and capitals of the Middle East. We assume MESH readers have no problem there, so we’ve collected links to more challenging quizzes. There’s no end to learning.

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From Andrew Exum
Be sure to read the speech given on Monday by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Association of American Universities in Washington.
Since 9/11, the U.S. and its allies have been involved in two prolonged counter-insurgency campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are low-tech conflicts in which anthropological skills and language [...]

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MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Ofira Seliktar is a professor of political science at Gratz College and adjunct professor at Temple University, specializing in predictive failures in intelligence. Her new book is The [...]

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From Mark T. Clark
The November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program set off a storm of controversy and criticism. I critiqued only one part of it in an earlier post. I believed then, as I believe now, that the report was flawed intellectually as it relied an academic assumption that the Iranian [...]

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From a member
(A MESH member who prefers to remain anonymous submits the following comment on the film Charlie Wilson’s War.)
This is a movie made by a highly sophisticated political and artistic mind, someone—the director—who knows all the arguments and charges and nuances of what this important episode has come to mean to various interpreters. [...]

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From Mark T. Clark
The controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program raises more questions than it answers. Critics—and criticisms—are aplenty. These have focused on three levels: tactical (the kind of intelligence we have), strategic (understanding Iran’s intentions) and political (the fallout on U.S. and international policies in curbing Iranian nuclear ambitions). Given the [...]

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From Michael Rubin
Dilip Hiro, a London-based author who focuses on Iran and Iraq and a frequent commentator in The Nation, addresses the question “Why Iran Didn’t Cross the Nuclear Weapon Road” in a recent essay (YaleGlobal Online, Dec. 11, 2007) he wrote for the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

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