Attempting to Decypher the Middle East in 2007
The new year will be one marked both by continuity and change. The continuity is a given. It stems from the fact that the key crises and concerns such as developments in the wider Middle East, the nuclear capabilities of North Korea and Iran, the security of our energy supplies, the Darfur and other African crises and the gradual shift of US foreign policy in favour of a more multilateralist approach, will continue to necessitate (and grab) our attention. The change will be due to the transformation of US foreign policy away from the neoconservative and neoliberal approach of reshaping the wider Middle East toward a model that allows for the input of allies (especially the EU), Russia, and a greater role by multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. In many ways, the November 2006 midterm election in the United States served as a wake up call or, if one assumes that alarm bells have been ringing for some time now, as an impetus for policy reevaluation and reassessment as the