Research Library

Rapid urbanization and expansion of cities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has created new opportunities — along with environmental risks, lack of financial and natural resources, and social disparity. In a new issue brief, visiting research scholar Osamah Alsayegh explores how developing smart sustainable cities can bring social and economic benefits to the growing urban population.

Five key factors make the Biden administration’s attempts to expand the Abraham Accords in the Middle East likely to fail, writes nonresident fellow Omar Rahman. Instead, regional approaches like the restoration of Saudi-UAE diplomatic relations with Iran are now holding sway.

This issue brief highlights the potential collaboration between Arab countries and China in dealing with the global energy transition, and examines the energy transition from the perspectives of the world's largest economy (China) and richest hydrocarbon region (the Middle East).

Fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen examines where the six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council currently stand in their outlook and approaches toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Gabriel Collins, the Baker Botts Fellow in Energy & Environmental Regulatory Affairs, analyzes the impact of China’s emerging demographic decline, debt burden and increasingly likely structural economic growth downshift on global oil and gas markets.

The author reviews four scenarios that could develop as the dispute over Turkey's purchase of a Russian-made missile defense system continues.

The rising use of low-speed electric vehicles (LSEVs) in China may have a dramatic effect on local gasoline demand and therefore global oil prices, writes energy fellow Gabriel Collins.

The mix of good short-term prospects for oil revenues along with long-term market uncertainties has a clear policy implication for oil-dependent Latin American economies: use the larger short-term revenues to diversify their economies, nonresident fellow José Antonio Ocampo writes in a new issue brief.

Even though the United States has long maintained a dominant presence in the Gulf, the Chinese social contract model may actually more applicable to the social and economic dynamics of GCC states than the Western orthodoxy of political liberalism and unbridled free market policies, the author argues in this issue brief.