Research Library

Mark Finley explains the cost-benefit analysis behind the Saudi government's recent move to pause plans to increase spare oil production capacity — and why spare capacity still equates to power in the oil market.

When the OPEC+ group met last week and agreed to extend production cuts through the first quarter of 2024, the market was unimpressed. Fellow in Energy and Global Oil, Mark Finley, outlines the meeting’s outcomes and discusses why the recent agreement “could augur a year of difficult meetings ahead” in a new commentary.

As the number of coronavirus cases rises in Iran, nearby countries are scrambling to prevent the disease from spreading across borders. Read more at the Baker Institute Blog.

With the implementation of the Iran nuclear agreement, many Gulf Cooperative Council states now openly wonder whether U.S. support can still be relied upon, given the speed with which the U.S. government has engaged Iran in negotiation and diplomacy since 2013. This incomprehension may lead to further instability in the Middle East as the Gulf States continue to take increasingly unilateral action in Yemen and other regional conflict zones, fellow for the Middle East Kristian Coates Ulrichsen writes.

The UN adopted new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the end of September 2015. Using data from the Arab Millennium Development Goals Report, research analyst Ariana Marnicio recommends the Arab world primarily focus on three SDGs to improve the lives of women

The range of responses in the six Gulf states to the Iran nuclear deal illustrates both the diversity of regional approaches to Iran and the absence of any monolithic “Gulf position” on the issue.

Whether out of strategic calculations or due to attitude towards women, the outcome is the same: female candidates often do not follow the party route to political office in Bahrain.

Talk of a “pivot to Asia” that supposedly would mark President Obama’s second term is “misplaced and even simplistic,” writes fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. In a globalized world, “key U.S. relationships with strategic and commercial partners … cannot be addressed in isolation from one another. The convergence of U.S. ties and Asian ties with the Middle East is a case in point highlights how regions and issues are interconnected as never before.”

While much media attention recently has focused on the geopolitical fault lines that connect Syria’s violence to wider region-wide trends, the plight of individual women, men, and children displaced within Syria or living in camps beyond its borders shows no sign of ending. As Secretary of State John Kerry has stated, the humanitarian situation in Syria is "an outrage" but the violence only looks set to worsen as opposition groups turn on each other and radical trans-national elements feed off the resulting vacuum of authority and control. This is the task as the international community prepares to reconvene in Switzerland on January 22, writes Baker Institute fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen in the Baker Institute Blog.