Sounds Strategic

In this special episode recorded at the IISS Manama Dialogue 2019, Kori Schake is joined by Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, and Maggie Feldman-Piltch, Founder and Managing Director of #NatSecGirlSquad, for a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation.Recent popular protests in Lebanon and Iraq have shaken the Middle East. Such political turmoil suggests a deep level of dissatisfaction with the status quo in these, and many other, countries in the region. In the cases of Iraq and Syria, government mismanagement and corruption have been perpetuated by external interference by either Iran or Russia, or both. For Maggie, Tamara and Kori, such interference has been, in part, enabled by a general retreat from the region by the US that has allowed emerging powers such as Russia, Iran and even China, to flex their soft power credentials. As Maggie and Tamara argue, the rise of these revisionist powers has profound implications not only for regional