Amr Hamzawy appears on NPR's "The Conversation" to discuss the current crisis in the Middle East.
Given the last two weeks in the Middle East — client entities like Hizbollah provoking a conflict, the Saudis and Egyptians speaking without power from the sidelines, Western uncertainty about the role of Syria and Iran — is it possible to draw a new map of the Middle East?
This is a dangerous moment for the Middle East, because the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon could easily escalate to involve the broader region. Any strategy to address the present crisis must deal with the realities of the Middle East as they are now, not try to leapfrog over them by seeking to impose a grand new vision. Such a vision would be bound to fail as it did in the case of Iraq.
The regime of Bashar al-Asad is under pressure from Syrian citizens who want a different political system and from the United States, which wants Syria to change its regional policy. As a result, it is impossible to separate completely a domestic process of political reform from the external pressures.
As most Americans were celebrating Independence Day on July 4, the small, ravaged nation of Cambodia celebrated what it hoped would be its independence from one of the most horrific periods in twentieth-century history. In a hall of the royal palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, in front of a Buddhist monk, judges for the upcoming tribunal of the Khmer Rouge were sworn into office.
Has President George W. Bush given up on his liberty doctrine? From Libya to Iran to Azerbaijan, the Bush administration appears to have downgraded the importance of democracy promotion in the last several months. Nowhere, however, has a new indifference to democracy been more striking than in Egypt.
Russia has a tsarist political system, in which all major decisions are taken by one institution, the presidency. In fact, this is the only functioning political institution in the country. Separation of powers, enshrined in the 1993 Constitution, does not exist in reality. On the contrary, unity of power and authority has become the new state-building doctrine.
Egypt made progress in political liberties in 2005 over the course of presidential and parliamentary elections, despite many flaws. The developments of 2005 did not, however, put Egypt firmly on a path toward democracy nor did they demonstrate a clear commitment to such a path on the part of the ruling establishment.