Tamara Wittes is a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. Wittes served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from November of 2009 to January 2012, coordinating U.S. policy on democracy and human rights in the Middle East for the State Department. Wittes also oversaw the Middle East Partnership Initiative and served as deputy special coordinator for Middle East transitions. She was central to organizing the U.S. government's response to the Arab awakening.
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Today’s shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is a good thing in itself, but without further diplomacy it will prove just a brief respite from the violence.
The current unravelling has its roots in the political dysfunction of both Israel’s party system and the Palestinian national movement’s decayed one-party dictatorship.
From “forever wars” to cyber operations, today’s national security challenges are proving vexingly complex for both Democrats and Republicans. Boosting budgets and restructuring security agencies has not helped surmount the challenges. But there’s one thing that could: improving gender diversity in leadership teams.
For many Israelis, the embrace and policies of the Trump administration seem like an overwhelming win. President Trump has good relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, certainly as compared with President Barack Obama (the distaste was mutual). In addition, many of Trump’s senior officials vie with one another to maintain good relations with Jerusalem. Gone are the days when a U.S.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on Order from Chaos.
Editor's Note: Last week, Tamara Cofman Wittes co-chaired an international election observation mission in Lebanon for the National Democratic Institute (she serves on NDI’s board, but the views laid out below are her own, not NDI’s).
Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared on Markaz.
Now that ISIS’s rule in Raqqa is over, both locals and wary external observers are wondering what comes next. The United States government appears intent on avoiding another costly, lengthy, and possibly ineffective Middle East reconstruction mission. Yet it must also consider the consequences of underinvestment and too swift a disengagement.