Latest from Frederic C. Hof
People-Driven Policy in the Middle East
A Middle East ruled illegitimately by the criminally violent will always produce security threats to Americans, especially if the U.S. government is seen in the region as consorting with the enemy.
Parting the Seas
With Lebanon’s political class promising that untold riches were right around the corner, Hezbollah, apparently, did not wish to be the proverbial skunk at the garden party.
Fifty Years after Lebanon’s Last State-builder
Chehab’s central idea – replace the missing sultanate with a modern nation-state and a government guided by the consent of the governed – remained fixed in the minds of his most fervent supporters. Yet even they found themselves either exiled or politically marginalized within Lebanon.
Legitimacy, Consent, and the Search for a Successor
A century after the end of the Ottoman Empire, no successor to Istanbul’s sultan-caliph has emerged