The New Middle East Cold War

Contributor(s): F. Gregory Gause, III | The contest for influence in the post-Arab Spring Middle East is being played out in the domestic politics of states where governance is weak, collapsing or collapsed. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Israel and other states seek to gain influence and check each other by finding allies in the domestic political struggles of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and elsewhere. Meanwhile, ideological struggles in both Sunni and Shia Islam and between more Islamist and more secular forces complicate the already difficult task of reconstructing state authority, inviting foreign intervention and influence across the region. F. Gregory Gause, III is professor of political science at the University of Vermont and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. From 1997 to 2008 he was director of the university's Middle East Studies Program and from 2010 to 2013 he was chair of the Political Science Department. He was previously on the faculty of Columbia University (1987-1995) and was Fellow for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1993-1994). During the 2009-10 academic year he was Kuwait Foundation Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In spring 2009 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the American University in Kuwait. In spring 2010 he was a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Islamic Studies and Research in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His research interests focus on the international politics of the Middle East, with a particular interest in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.