NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome to our first 2022 issue in the 185^th volume of World Affairs journal (WAJ)!

Quite by coincidence, our first four articles this spring focus on ongoing political affairs in the Middle East. Each article was submitted individually to the journal. However, when read together in this issue of WAJ, they form a detailed set of inter-related arguments, information, and observations that serve as a useful symposium on recent and current events in the region. All converge in illustrating and commenting on some of the most pressing concerns that face the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region today, update previous WAJ articles in the area (see, for example, Choksy and Choksy 2016; Hama 2020; Hayden 2016; Pope 2018; Totten 2016), and offer useful recommendations and advice for policy practitioners both within and beyond the Middle East.

In our first article, Alon Ben-Meir (2022) presents an extended and powerful “Case for an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian Confederation”—a topic that forms a key theme in the Policy Studies Organization Middle East Dialogue Conference to be held (virtually) in Washington, D.C., on March 18, 2022. ¹ Ben-Meir gives a detailed policy proposal, taking into account multiple perspectives, policy dimensions, and potential pitfalls. He also offers policy advice tailored individually not only to the key players involved (Israel, Palestine, and Jordan), but also specifically to policy makers in the United States, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Truly an excellent read for all WAJ readers! The proposal will especially appeal to those wishing to broaden their knowledge on past and present issues involved in the ongoing troubled relations between Israel and Palestine; those who wish to understand the stark differences in the situations of each country and the region since prior peace attempts in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; and those who appreciate a focus on practical policy initiatives from multi-lateral and multi-dimensional perspectives. Comments, further policy development, and critiques are especially welcome for future issues of WAJ.

Second, Azad Deewanee (2022) gives a critical breakdown of how Turkish official discourse has negatively constructed narratives that cast two key Kurdish Parties—the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People's Protection Units (YPG)—as terrorist organizations. The author goes on to outline the consequences of this discursive construction as a tool for justifying belligerent policy against the Kurds in Turkey and farther afield. The article introduces several points of contention involved in the disputes between Turkish authorities and the Kurds inside Turkey and their alliances with nationalist/separatist Kurdish groups spread across Iran, Iraq, and Syria. This piece therefore serves as a highly informative introduction to the next two articles in our spring 2022 lineup which problematize the tensions between the Turkish authorities and the Kurds and the central role these tensions have had in the ongoing conflict in Syria.

The third article is entitled “Order versus Justice in the Middle East: The Kurdish Question in the English School Perspective.” Here, Hawre Hasan Hama (2022) makes a deeper foray into the Kurdish question by contrasting how it illustrates the pluralist and solidarist camps of the English School in international relations theory and their approach to order and justice. The author applies these two strands of theory to the international community's approach to the Kurdish nation and the problems engendered by their division across four states. He argues that, while seeming to champion a solidarist emphasis placed on human rights protection, the international system has permitted the pluralist priority of order to trump human rights at every turn in the case of the Kurdish nation. The author examines the Kurdish situation in each host state, and the human rights violations that have occurred. He concludes that, because they lack a sovereign state, the Kurds have been habitually rejected as part of the international community and, as such, have been accorded neither the privileges that full members of sovereign states enjoy nor, in their absence, the protection that a serious commitment to human rights ought to afford.

While the author does not mention the link with Arendt (1966) here, the Kurdish case vividly reminds me of the paradox of human rights (and international law) she explicated in The Origins of Totalitarianism. As is well known, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) attempted to make human rights ‘inalienable’: i.e., independent of all governments. “To function as a protective safety net against arbitrary government acts or neglect, human rights were tied to humanity, not governments or states. Only this, it was thought, could make them truly irreducible to other rights and laws” (Norman 2013, 67). The paradox is that human rights still function in a system of international law in which sovereign states are required to claim those rights on behalf of the humans who purportedly possess them. If the home state does not observe such rights against their own citizens, then the UDHR was meant to mandate that other states could and should do so. If and when they do not, large groups of people have historically found themselves falling into the cracks that open up when people's sovereignty challenges state sovereignty (Arendt 1966; Norman 2013). Given that the system of international law indubitably favors the latter, the state usually wins. As Hama notes, in the case of the human rights of the Kurds, observing the sovereign rights of other states and the (pluralist) order that such nonintervention in state sovereignty promotes seems to almost always trump the human rights themselves even in cases where they are very clearly being violated. The point (and Arendt's paradox) of course, applies most strongly to cases of genocide which a later article in this issue of WAJ focuses on via the case of Rwanda (see Szandzik 2022).

Our fourth article is entitled “Erdoğan's Endless Dreams: The Theoretical and Operational Framework of Turkey's New Foreign Policy.” In it, Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi and Reza Rezaei (2022) explore critically how Turkey's foreign policy is becoming increasingly ‘offensive realist’ in the MENA in an attempt for the country to posit itself as the new regional leader in the wake of the instability caused by the Arab Spring and the Syrian crisis. Turkey's numerous recent attempts to maximize its power in the region may well increase tensions that Turkey is unlikely to be able to control in the long run. This is particularly so given that former strong and friendly bilateral cooperation with other regional powerhouses like Saudi Arabia, or external powers like Russia, has all but disappeared. Dolatabadi and Rezaei argue that, while Erdoğan is firing out accusations in every direction—especially at the Kurdish parties inside Turkey and in Syria—and has mounted several invasive operations in Syria plus other policies that have irked the international community, he only has himself to blame for the scant friendships that remain open to Turkey in the Middle East and more widely. In the absence of sustainable international cooperation and a viable nuclear arms program, Turkey's self-interested bid for regional dominance is unlikely to prevail.

Akin to the framework used by Dolatabadi and Rezaei, our fifth article uses the conceptual approaches of neorealism and neoliberalism with a similar focus contrasting international cooperation versus national self-interest. These theoretical strands are then applied to explain state responses to the COVID-19 outbreak and crisis. Abdullah Alhammadi (2022) shows, in “The Neorealism and Neoliberalism Behind International Relations during COVID-19,” that both approaches have informed the key efforts the United States and China, among others, as well as key practices of the World Health Organization (and state and international responses to it). However, the author finds that continued emphasis on neorealist behavior on the international stage still appears to have the upper hand as the pandemic prepares to enter its third year.

In our sixth article, Eric James Szandzik (2022) discusses what President Clinton claimed was the ‘greatest regret of his presidency’: his decision not to intervene in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. In “President Clinton's Nonintervention in the Rwanda Genocide: An Analysis of U.S. Presidential Foreign Policy Decisions,” Szandzik collates compelling evidence that Clinton's nonaction was not due to the failed Black Hawk mission in Somalia six months earlier—which is often assumed to be the case. It was also not because he or his staff were unaware of the severity of the situation in Rwanda at the time. Indeed, Clinton appears to have been conscious that a genocide was taking place and likewise aware that timely U.S. military intervention would probably have stopped the genocide and saved tens of thousands of lives. So why did he fail to take an initiative? Szandzik's piece takes us through the evidence now available and demonstrates how the confluence of domestic and foreign policy concerns, as well as scant popular support for intervention at home, led to his fateful decision to avoid intervening in Rwanda.

Finally, Nairita Roy Chaudhuri (2022) offers a critical, in-depth review essay and comment on Giorgos Kallis’ recent book, Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care (2019). The review will be of particular interest to those interested in the grounds of environmental policy, as well as its connections with gender issues, from a developing country context.

As always, I encourage you to submit to WAJ your responses, critiques, commentaries, and book reviews on these and other issues of importance in today's world affairs. Our determined aim is to add to the array of alternative perspectives and stimulate provocative debate on contemporary policy and current affairs. You are cordially invited to submit your scholarly articles, critical and topical commentaries, review essays, and book reviews to World Affairs at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/waf.

Please keep safe and well!