Authors: Dr. Dalia Dassa Kaye, Senior Fellow and Director, Initiative for Regional Security Architecture, UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and Dr. Sanam Vakil, Director, Middle East and North Africa Programme
(Photo: Color line contacts Middle East by color line on Openverse.) CC License CC BY 2.0.
September 26, 2023
Unprecedented recent levels of diplomatic activity have facilitated de-escalation and greater cooperation across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Responding to geopolitical shifts, regional challenges and domestic pressures, Middle Eastern governments have been working to find their own mechanisms to reduce conflict, mend ties with former rivals and increase cooperation with neighbouring states.
While these are positive developments in a region marred by conflict and instability, it is unclear whether de-escalation will prove sustainable or whether existing cooperation initiatives can move beyond the transactional. Yet given the cross-border nature of so many global challenges today – from climate change to food security to maritime security – regional cooperation has become an imperative, not a luxury.
This paper argues that the present de-escalatory dynamic offers a historic opportunity to build sustainable multilateralism in the MENA region. It proposes the establishment of a new official multilateral forum for sustainable dialogue and engagement. A MENA-led forum of this nature – initially focusing on climate change, energy policy and emergency response – would add a critical cooperative layer to the region’s largely competitive security architecture.
This paper is part of the ‘Building a Cooperative Regional Security Architecture in the Middle East’ project, a partnership between Chatham House’s MENA Programme and the Burkle Center for International Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Dalia Dassa Kaye, Senior Fellow and Director, Initiative for Regional Security Architecture, UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations
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Dr. Dalia Dassa Kaye is currently a senior fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations and directing its Initiative for Regional Security Architectures. In 2020-2021 she was a visiting scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Kaye served as the director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation from 2012-2020 and as a senior political scientist at RAND since 2005. Before joining RAND, she lived in The Netherlands where she was an international affairs fellow at the Dutch Foreign Ministry, a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam and a research scholar at The Netherlands Institute of International Studies. Kaye began her academic career as a professor of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and recipient of many other awards and fellowships, she is a frequent public speaker and commentator on international affairs and Middle East policy in a wide range of media outlets. Kaye is the author of two books, Talking to the Enemy: Track Two Diplomacy in the Middle East and South Asia and Beyond the Handshake: Multilateral Cooperation in the Arab-Israeli Peace Process, as well as numerous journal articles, op-eds, and RAND studies.
Dr. Sanam Vakil, Director, Middle East and North Africa Programme
Dr. Sanam Vakil was appointed director of the Middle East and North Africa programme in 2023. She was previously the programme’s deputy director and senior research fellow, and led project work on Iran and Gulf Arab dynamics.
Sanam’s research focuses on regional security, Gulf geopolitics, and on future trends in Iran’s domestic and foreign policy.
She is also the James Anderson professorial lecturer in the Middle East Studies department at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS Europe) in Bologna, Italy.
Before these appointments, Sanam was an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at SAIS Washington. She served as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations also providing research analysis to the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa department.
Sanam is the author of Action and Reaction: Women and Politics in Iran (Bloomsbury 2013). She publishes analysis and comments for a variety of media and academic outlets.
Sanam received her BA in political science and history from Barnard College, Columbia University and her MA/PhD in international relations and international economics from Johns Hopkins University.