Research Library

The creation of a new industry of brain capital technologies could stimulate major economic activity, create jobs, and contribute to technological advances for the U.S. and its allies, write Harris Eyre, Rachel Meidl and co-authors.

Abu Dhabi has shown increasing discomfort with OPEC’s actions in recent years. Do diverging interests spell departure? Fellows Jim Krane, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen and Mark Finley weigh the risks and opportunities of an OPEC exit by the UAE.

This paper models the oil strategy of Gulf Arab states under three future energy transition scenarios. Under the most ambitious scenario, the region would have to decouple its oil revenues from its economic growth and could face significant economic and political consequences.

How durable is the Saudi-Russian relationship, and what are its implications for the longstanding energy-for-security arrangement between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.?

This analysis explores the consequences of West Bank annexation for Israel’s international standing, internal cohesion and socio-economic fabric, and security within a larger framework of regional stability.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco has cultivated the country’s image as a bastion of moderate Islam and of himself as a strategic partner, but to what extent does his international reputation correspond to public opinion in Morocco? In this paper, the author evaluates the king’s domestic standing as part of a larger Baker Institute study on religious authority in the Middle East.

The authors show that border barriers can have unintended but important biological consequences for biodiversity by, for instance, inducing changes to the environment and reducing genetic diversity.

In separate papers, two Baker Institute fellows — one Palestinian, the other Israeli — provide their perspectives on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A set of common interests (if not values) has emerged in Israel and the GCC states in the turbulent aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings and the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement. Framing both is a sense of bewilderment felt equally in Jerusalem and in GCC capitals at U.S. policies in the Middle East under the Obama administration. While it remains unlikely that direct diplomatic relations will be established between Israel and GCC states in the near future, regional realignments are expanding the scope for unofficial contact and tangible cooperation in numerous policy spheres.

What strategy should the U.S. pursue in confronting ISIL and addressing the broader challenges of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, stability in the Persian Gulf, and the ever-present Israeli-Palestinian dispute? Leadership and engagement play a part, of course, but they must be subservient to a U.S. strategy whose objective is to protect and, if possible, advance our core interests in the region.