Category Archives: Progress

- Phase 3 pivotal trial evaluating apitegromab in patients with non-ambulatory Type 2 and Type 3 SMA on track to initiate by year-end 2021

- Update from Part A of the DRAGON Phase 1 trial evaluating SRK-181s ability to overcome primary resistance to checkpoint inhibitors being presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 36th Annual Meeting

- Initiated Part B dose expansion portion of the DRAGON trial

- U.S. patent issued providing additional product protection for SRK-181 to May 2040

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., November 09, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Scholar Rock (NASDAQ: SRRK), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the treatment of serious diseases in which protein growth factors play a fundamental role, today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2021, and highlighted recent progress and upcoming milestones for its pipeline programs.

"The DRAGON trial addresses two key questions; first, can the selectivity of SRK-181 for TGF1 increase the therapeutic window for inhibition of this signaling pathway thereby enabling higher doses safely, and second, does SRK-181 exhibit anti-tumor activity effective in overcoming resistance to checkpoint inhibitors in solid tumors. We are pleased with the results of Part A, as will be provided this week at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting, and we look forward to exploring the efficacy dimension of our therapeutic hypothesis in Part B," said Nagesh Mahanthappa, Ph.D., Interim CEO of Scholar Rock. "Building on the momentum from the first half of this year, we are also excited about the progress with apitegromab and are on track to initiate by year-end the Phase 3 pivotal trial evaluating its efficacy in patients with non-ambulatory Type 2 and Type 3 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)."

Company Updates and Upcoming Milestones

Apitegromab is a selective inhibitor of myostatin activation being developed as the potential first muscle-directed therapy for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

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Additional Exploratory Responder Analyses and Pharmacologic Data from the TOPAZ Phase 2 Trial were Presented at Various Medical Congresses. In September 2021, two posters were presented at the World Muscle Society Virtual Congress, including a late-breaker poster featuring an exploratory analysis evaluating time to achieving various thresholds of improvement in Hammersmith Functional Motor Scale Expanded (HFMSE) scores, which are consistent with the observed dose response in clinical efficacy. In October 2021, a poster presented at the 25th World Congress of Neurology (WCN) described the positive correlation between the magnitude of target engagement and motor function improvements following apitegromab treatment. At the 50th Child Neurology Society Annual Meeting, additional exploratory responder analyses on Hammersmith scale scores were presented, including time to achieve different thresholds of improvement in HFMSE scores.

Phase 3 Trial Evaluating Apitegromab in Patients with Non-Ambulatory Type 2 and 3 Patients Remains on Track to Initiate by Year-End 2021. Scholar Rock is preparing to announce the design of the Phase 3 pivotal study later this month. The company is on track to initiate by the end of 2021 the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial evaluating apitegromab as add-on therapy for patients on either nusinersen or risdiplam with non-ambulatory Type 2 and Type 3 SMA. This patient population comprises an estimated two-thirds of the overall prevalence of SMA, and the greatest improvements in motor function (as measured by HFMSE) observed in the TOPAZ Phase 2 trial were in patients with non-ambulatory Type 2 and Type 3 SMA receiving apitegromab as add-on therapy to background nusinersen.

SRK-181 is a selective inhibitor of latent TGF1 activation being developed with the aim of overcoming primary resistance to and increasing the number of patients who may benefit from checkpoint inhibitor therapy.

Update from Part A of the DRAGON Phase 1 Trial and Part B Dose to be Presented at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 36th Annual Meeting. A poster titled, "First-in-Human Phase 1 Trial of SRK-181: A Latent TGF1 inhibitor, Alone or in Combination with Anti-PD-(L)1 Treatment in Patients with Advanced Solid Tumors (DRAGON trial)" will be presented at the SITC meeting on November 12, 2021. The poster will include initial clinical data from Part A of the DRAGON trial as well as the rationale for the identified Part B dose.

The Company has initiated the Part B dose expansion portion of the trial, which consists of multiple cohorts, each enrolling up to 40 patients with various solid tumors who have demonstrated primary resistance to anti-PD-(L)1 therapy.

U.S. Patent Issued Providing Composition of Matter Product Protection for SRK-181. In September 2021, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued U.S. Patent No. 11,130,803 with an expiry of May 2040, including 313 days of Patent Term Adjustment (PTA). The European counterpart has also been granted.

Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results

For the quarter ended September 30, 2021, net loss was $37.5 million or $1.02 per share compared to a net loss of $23.6 million or $0.79 per share for the quarter ended September 30, 2020.

Revenue was $5.5 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $3.0 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2020 and was related to the Gilead Collaboration Agreement that was executed in December 2018.

Research and development expense was $31.3 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $18.4 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2020. The increase year-over-year primarily reflects manufacturing costs associated with apitegromab, clinical trial costs for SRK-181, and additional personnel and facility-related costs.

General and administrative expense was $11.3 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, compared to $8.3 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2020. The increase year-over-year was primarily attributed to additional personnel, professional fees, and facility-related costs.

"As we approach the end of 2021, I am incredibly proud of the execution by the entire Scholar Rock team this year. Not only have we initiated Part B of the DRAGON trial, but were also very close to initiating our Phase 3 pivotal trial for apitegromab," said Ted Myles, CFO and Head of Business Operations of Scholar Rock. "We ended the third quarter with approximately $246 million in cash and cash equivalents and are well-funded to continue executing on our development programs while continuing to invest in our robust discovery platform."

About Scholar Rock

Scholar Rock is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of innovative medicines for the treatment of serious diseases in which signaling by protein growth factors plays a fundamental role. Scholar Rock is creating a pipeline of novel product candidates with the potential to transform the lives of patients suffering from a wide range of serious diseases, including neuromuscular disorders, cancer, and fibrosis. Scholar Rocks approach to targeting the molecular mechanisms of growth factor activation enabled it to develop a proprietary platform for the discovery and development of monoclonal antibodies that locally and selectively target these signaling proteins at the cellular level. By developing product candidates that act in the disease microenvironment, the Company intends to avoid the historical challenges associated with inhibiting growth factors for therapeutic effect. Scholar Rock believes its focus on biologically validated growth factors may facilitate a more efficient development path. For more information, please visit http://www.ScholarRock.com or follow Scholar Rock on Twitter (@ScholarRock) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/scholar-rock/).

Scholar Rock is a registered trademark of Scholar Rock, Inc.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to, statements regarding Scholar Rocks future expectations, plans and prospects, including without limitation, Scholar Rocks expectations regarding its growth, strategy, progress and timing of its clinical trials for apitegromab, SRK-181, and other product candidates and indication selection and development timing, its cash runway, the ability of any product candidate to perform in humans in a manner consistent with earlier nonclinical, preclinical or clinical trial data, and the potential of its product candidates and proprietary platform. The use of words such as "may," "might," "will," "should," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "project," "intend," "future," "potential," or "continue," and other similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include preclinical and clinical data, including the results from the Phase 2 trial of apitegromab or Part A of the Phase 1 trial of SRK-181, are not predictive of, are inconsistent with, or more favorable than, data generated from future clinical trials of the same product candidate, including the planned Phase 3 trial of apitegromab in SMA and Part B of the Phase 1 trial of SRK-181, respectively, Scholar Rocks ability to provide the financial support, resources and expertise necessary to identify and develop product candidates on the expected timeline, the data generated from Scholar Rocks nonclinical and preclinical studies and clinical trials, information provided or decisions made by regulatory authorities, competition from third parties that are developing products for similar uses, Scholar Rocks ability to obtain, maintain and protect its intellectual property, the success of Scholar Rocks current and potential future collaborations, including its collaboration with Gilead, Scholar Rocks dependence on third parties for development and manufacture of product candidates including to supply any clinical trials, Scholar Rocks ability to manage expenses and to obtain additional funding when needed to support its business activities and establish and maintain strategic business alliances and new business initiatives, and the impacts of public health pandemics such as COVID-19 on business operations and expectations, as well as those risks more fully discussed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Scholar Rocks Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2021, as well as discussions of potential risks, uncertainties, and other important factors in Scholar Rocks subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any forward-looking statements represent Scholar Rocks views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing its views as of any subsequent date. All information in this press release is as of the date of the release, and Scholar Rock undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law.

Scholar Rock Holding Corporation

Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations

(unaudited)

(in thousands, except share and per share data)

Three Months Ended September 30

Nine Months Ended September 30

2021

2020

2021

2020

Revenue

$

5,464

$

3,037

$

14,767

$

11,967

Operating expenses

Research and development

31,265

18,383

79,417

52,282

General and administrative

11,276

8,272

29,907

20,459

Total operating expenses

42,541

26,655

109,324

72,741

Loss from operations

(37,077

)

(23,618

)

(94,557

)

(60,774

)

Other income (expense), net

(430

)

57

(1,328

)

862

Net loss

$

(37,507

)

$

(23,561

)

$

(95,885

)

$

(59,912

)

Net loss per share, basic and diluted

$

(1.02

)

$

(0.79

)

$

(2.62

)

Continued here:

Scholar Rock Reports Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results and Highlights Business Progress - Yahoo Finance

Rail News Home Railroading Supplier Spotlight

11/9/2021

Rail News: Railroading Supplier Spotlight

Wabtec yesterday signed contracts with Egyptian National Railways (ENR) to supply 100 ES30ACi Evolution Series Locomotives, as well as a multiyear service agreement to maintain the fleet. The agreement supports ENRs continued modernization effort by providing the latest fuel-efficient locomotives needed for the growing demands on Egypts rail infrastructure. The locomotive supply contract is funded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Wabtec officials said in a press release.

Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. received an order from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and shipped an assortment of cables for the Red Line Construction Project, a plan involving the building of a new commuter railway route in the Kingdom of Thailand. The government is promoting the Bangkok Mass Transit System Project to alleviate traffic congestion, improve air pollution and respond to increasing transportation demand in the Bangkok metropolitan area.

Progress Rail marked 125 years of manufacturing at its facility in Sandiacre, United Kingdom. Founded by the Taylor Brothers in 1896, the Sandiacre site was developed in the Nottingham area to meet the growing demand for specialized products to support the developing railway transportation network in the U.K. Over the past 125 years, the Sandiacre site has earned a reputation for providing high quality, sustainable, industry-leading switches, castings, crossings and associated products for Network Rail, London Underground and railways around the world.

PSI Repair Services Inc. a subsidiary of Phillips Service Industries, has entered into a service partnership with Dinghan SMART Railway Technology GmbH of Germany. Dinghan develops and manufactures innovative auxiliary power converters for international rolling stock. The product portfolio ranges from single devices, such as battery chargers or air conditioning inverters, to complete auxiliary power converters for passenger cars and multiple-unit trains. The partnership will provide a local expert for time-sensitive part repairs and engineering services for U.S. rail operators that rely on Dinghan SMART Railway Technology products.

Alstom and National Authority for Tunnels announced an agreement for 55 Metropolis trains (nine cars per train) and an eight-year maintenance contract, valued at 876 million euros, for the upgrade of Cairo Metro Line 1. Launched in 1987, Cairo Metro line 1 is the oldest metro line in Egypt.

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Rail News - Rail supplier news from Wabtec, Sumitomo, Progress Rail, PSI and Alstom (Nov. 9). For Railroad Career Professionals - Progressive Rail...

Country

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IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

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United Way making progress toward $500000 goal, but more donations needed - Herald and News

Wendy Williams took to Instagram to give her fans a health update.

The latest season of The Wendy Williams Show was delayed and kicked off October 18, but Williams has not been able to host due to ongoing health issues, including a breakthrough case of COVID-19. Stars like Sherri Shepherd, Leah Remini, Michael Rapaport and Jerry Springer are stepping in to guest host as she recovers.

Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.

Now, Wendy writes to her fans, HOW YOU DOIN? I MISS YOU ALL! As everyone knows, my health has been a hot topic. Im making progress but its just one of those things thats taking longer than we expected.

The 57-year-old said of returning to her show, Im a woman of a certain age, and I know enough to listen to my doctors and will return to my purple chair as soon as we all agree Im ready.

Nick Cannon Gets Candid About Celibacy and Rumors Hes Replacing Wendy Williams View Story

She thanked everyone who helped her along the way, saying, I want to thank all of my staff and our guest hosts for stepping up and stepping in while I cant be there. I also want to thank Debmar-Mercury and our stations for being so understanding and supportive while I work my way back. Most of all, I want to thank my fans.

Williams shared, I have heard your prayers and comments and feel all the love! You are everything to me. I love spending my mornings with you all and Im doing everything I can to get back to work, but right now Wendy has to focus on Wendy. I love you for watching.

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Wendy Williams Gives Health Update: Im Making Progress - Extra

The Public Utility Commission is working to overhaul the Texas power market to make the power grid more reliable. How much progress have they made?

TEXAS, USA A University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll of 1,200 registered voters reveals only 18 percent of respondents approved of how state leaders are handling the power grid issue. That poll was conducted in October.

The Public Utility Commission (PUC) held another meeting to discuss improvements to the grid last Thursday. 6 News looked into how much progress the state was making the following Monday.

On Nov. 4, the PUC signed an "Order Granting Exception" to allow the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to procure emergency response service intended to be deployed during an energy emergency alert.

According to the order, the Commission agreed ERCOT must be able to deploy emergency response service before an energy emergency alert is declared to keep the grid reliable. ERCOT had to wait until declaring an energy emergency alert before usingemergency response services according to current rules.

The PUC also requested an assessment of alternative Operating Reserve Demand Curve options from The Brattle Group

This curve dictates how much power producers are paid depending on the current supply of electricity to the market and and close the grid is to failing to meet it's demand.

According to a draft of that assessment, shown below, the current ORDC curve will pay a maximum of $9,000 MWh as the grid is less than 2000 MW away from meeting demand. Other suggested price curves would pay more leading up to an emergency situation and would pay less during that emergency situation. Commissioners hope paying more before the state reaches and energy crisis will help avoid that crisis.

Commissioner Lori Cobos told other commissioners last Thursday she would like to see the PUC take action on the ORDC curve by the beginning of next year.

"I want to stress that I would really like to take action on the ORDC in place by the beginning of January. I think it is prudent to do so to drive reserves online earlier, especially as some reports out there say we might get colder weather in January," Cobos said.

The PUC will also need to incentivize companies to invest in new power plants in the state but they don't have a solution in place as of yet. PUC Chairman Peter Lake said the above change won't go far enough to meet that goal.

"There's zero evidence that it drives new investment. Like I said before I think it helps retain existing units (power plants) and helps justify delaying retirement but it certainty nothing anyone is going to build a new business model on or new infrastructure," Lake said.

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New poll shows Texans aren't happy with power grid progress. What has the PUC done so far? - CBS19.tv KYTX

In light of the coverage surrounding the Jan. 6 committee and its fight to hear from Donald Trump's allies, it may be tempting to think the bipartisan select committee has been stymied in its work.

As NBC News reported, there's fresh evidence to the contrary.

Members of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have interviewed more than 150 people so far, ranking member Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Thursday. Cheney, the top Republican on the select committee, said that the panel spoke to "a whole range of people connected to the events, connected to understanding what happens."

The select committee's co-chair added, "It is a range of engagements some formal interviews, some depositions.... There really is a huge amount of work underway that is leading to real progress for us."

It led Politico to note, "The public has just seen the tip of the iceberg.... [Cheney's reference to more than 150 interviews] is an indication that the vast majority of the committee's work is happening out of public view."

In related news:

If Clark's name sounds familiar, it's not your imagination. As regular readers may recall, in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, as Donald Trump explored ways to weaponize the Justice Department to help him hold power he hadn't earned, Clark became a person of great importance to the then-president.

Clark was the acting head of the Justice Department's civil division at the time, and he used his office to sketch out a map for Republican legislators to follow in which they could try to overturn the will of the state's voters. Trump was impressed enough with Clark's reported anti-election efforts that the then-president considered making Clark the acting attorney general as part of a possible Justice Department overhaul with only two weeks remaining in Trump's term.

We now know, of course, that Clark's proposed scheme was not implemented, but it's hardly a surprise that the Jan. 6 investigatory committee wants to have a chat with him.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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How (and why) the Jan. 6 committee is making 'real progress' - MSNBC

A formerly stateless family display their newly-obtained identity documents at their home in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. UNHCR/Didor Saidulloyev

More action is needed to resolve the plight of millions around the world who are still without citizenship, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, urged today as it marked seven years since the launch of its #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness.

Significant progress has been made over the past few years, but governments must do more to close the legal and policy gaps that continue to leave millions of people stateless or allow children to be born into statelessness, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

Statelessness, or the situation of not being recognized as a citizen by any country, affects millions of people around the world. Stateless people cannot often access the most basic of rights, including being able to go to school, work legally, access health services, marry, or register the birth of a child.

Since UNHCR launched its #IBelong campaign in 2014 to raise attention and advocate for an end to global statelessness,more than 400,000 stateless people in 27 countries have acquired nationality, while tens of thousands of people across Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas now have a pathway to citizenship as a result of newly enacted legislative changes.

Over the past seven years, 29 states have acceded to the Statelessness Conventions, signalling strengthened political will to end statelessness.

We are encouraged by this global momentum to tackle statelessness, which with concerted efforts by States, we can eradicate. But unless progress accelerates, the millions who remain deprived of a nationality will be stuck in a human rights limbo, unable to access the most basic rights, said Grandi.

Statelessness has many causes which are typically the result of gaps or flaws in nationality laws, and how they are implemented. Discrimination - including on the basis of ethnicity, religion and gender - is a major driver of statelessness.

Because they are not recognized as citizens, stateless people are often deprived of legal rights or basic services. This leaves them politically and economically marginalized and vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation, and abuse. They may also not be able to access COVID-19 testing, treatment or vaccination, and may have little access to support or protection in the face of climate risks.

Governments hold power to enact legal and policy reforms that can help stateless people on their territory acquire citizenship or prevent statelessness from occurring in the first place, sometimes with the stroke of a pen, or a relatively simple legal change. It remains an easily avoidable and solvable issue.

UNHCRs decade long #IBelong campaign calls on states to end statelessness by 2024.

Background notes for editors:

Worldwide, UNHCRs statistical reporting counts 4.2 million stateless people in some 94 countries. Given that most countries do not collect any data on statelessness, the actual figure is believed to be substantially higher.

To date, 96 States are party to the 1954 UN Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, and 77 are party to the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Since the start of the #IBelong Campaign:

For more information on this topic, please contact:

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UNHCR urges governments to accelerate progress and resolve plight of world's stateless - UNHCR

A close look at the primary mirror of a Worldview Legion satellite during assembly and inspection.

Maxar

Maxar Technologies' stock jumped on Thursday after reporting third-quarter results, with Wall Street analysts welcoming the space company's progress toward the launch of key satellites next year.

The company reported an adjusted EBITDA profit of $113 million for the third quarter, above the $109.9 million expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet, while Maxar's revenue came in below predictions at $437 million, versus $447.7 million expected.

But the focus of Wall Street is Maxar's headway on its WorldView Legion satellites.

A WorldView Legion satellite in the final stages of assembly.

Maxar

Legion is the company's constellation of six imagery satellites and is crucial to the company continuing to win lucrative contracts from U.S. defense and intelligence agencies. Maxar in August announced a delay to the launch of the first two Legion satellites, with the company targeting between March and June of 2022 a timeline the company reiterated in its latest report.

Baird upgraded its rating on Maxar to outperform from neutral, with a $39 price target that represents a 44% climb from the stock's most recent close.

"The outlook has been considerably de-risked given visibility to Legion's first launch, and current prices provide a safer entry point," Baird analyst Peter Arment wrote in a note to clients.

Shares of Maxar climbed nearly 18% in trading from their previous close of $27.05.

Baird said its previous neutral rating "was largely out of caution around potential" further Legion delays, but "line of sight to first launches is now much clearer."

JPMorgan analyst Seth Seifman, who has an overweight rating and $47 price target, similarly emphasized that Legion's launch is "the most important event" for Maxar.

"We see a clear path to operational improvement, with strong cash flow generation in 2023, driven largely by the launch of Maxar's WorldView Legion," Seifman wrote to clients.

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Space stock Maxar jumps after Q3 results, as Wall Street welcomes progress on key satellites - CNBC

When Mark Wahlberg helped ring in the grand opening of Walmarts second health clinic in Calhoun, Ga., alongside a raucous crowd of customers in January 2020, the world was a very different place. It was a celebrated moment at an exciting time in Walmarts push to open a string of new clinics scattered across America. The plan to build out its health care footprint seemed to have a shot at success: What busy parent wouldnt jump at the chance to tackle the grocery list and their childs earache in a single trip?

The pandemic that soon followed has blurred the prospect of that success. Today, with Covid-19 curbing foot traffic and giving virtual care a clear, if temporary, edge, Walmart appears to be facing a reality check on its lofty visions of high-touch, in-person care. The retailer has opened just 20 of the 125 clinics it planned to have operational by the end of the year, Insider reported. The efforts of Best Buy, another retail giant with health aims, are meanwhile gaining steam after an acquisition of remote monitoring company Current Health. Analysts and industry observers say that for all the progress and setbacks, its clear that major retail players are still committed to using their multibillion-dollar budgets to position themselves for a long game in hybrid health care.

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A progress report on Walmart and Best Buy's ambitions in health care - STAT

Middle East and North Africa

Steven A. Cook, Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies and director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars at CFR, leads a conversation on geopolitics in the Middle East.FASKIANOS: Welcome to todays session of the CFR Fall 2021 Academic Webinar Series. Im Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Todays discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you want to share it with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.Todays topic is geopolitics in the Middle East. Our speaker was supposed to be Sanam Vakil, but she had a family emergency. So were delighted to have our very own Steven Cook here to discuss this important topic. Dr. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies, and director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of several books, including False Dawn; The Struggle for Egypt, which won the 2012 Gold Medal from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Ruling But Not Governing. And hes working on yet another book entitled The End of Ambition: Americas Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East. So keep an eye out for that in the next year or so. Hes a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine and contributor and commentator on a bunch of other outlets. Prior to coming to CFR, Dr. Cook was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. So, Dr. Cook, thank you for being with us. I thought you could justIm going to give you a soft question here, to talk about the geopolitical relations among state and nonstate actors in the Middle East. And you can take that in whatever direction you would like.COOK: Well, thanks so much, Irina. Its a great pleasure to be with you. Good afternoon to everybody whos out there whos on an afternoon time zone, good morning to those who may still be in the evening, and good evening to those who may be somewhere where its the evening. Its very nice to be with you. As Irina mentioned, and as Im sure its plenty evident, I am not Sanam Vakil, but Im happy to step in for her and offer my thoughts on the geopolitics of the Middle East.Its a small topic. That question that Irina asked was something that I certainly could handle effectively in fifteen to twenty minutes. But before I get into the details of whats going on in the region, I thought I would offer some just general comments about the United States in the Middle East. Because, as it turns out, I had the opportunity last night to join a very small group of analysts with a very senior U.S. government official to talk precisely about the United States in the Middle East. And it was a very, very interesting conversation, because despite the fact that there has been numerous news reporting and analytic pieces about how the United States is deemphasizing the Middle East, this official made it very, very clear that that was practically impossible at this time. And this was, I think, a reasonable position to take. There has been a lot recently, in the last recent years, about withdrawing from the region, from retrenchment from the region, reducing from the region, realignment from the region. All those things actually mean different things. But analysts have essentially used them to mean that the United States should deprioritize the Middle East.And it seems to me that the problem in the Middle East has not necessarily been the fact that we are there and that we have goals there. Its that the goals in the region and the resources Washington uses to achieve those goals need to be realigned to address things that are actually important to the United States. In one sense that sound eminently reasonable. We have goals, we have resources to meet those goals, and we should devote them toand if we cant, we should reassess what our goals are or go out and find new resources. That sounds eminently reasonable.But thats not the way Washington has worked over the course of the last few decades when it comes to the Middle East. In many ways, the United States has been overly ambitious. And it has led to a number of significant failures in the region. In an era when everything and anything is a vital interest, then nothing really is. And this seems to be the source of our trouble. For example, when we get into trying to fix the politics of other countries, were headed down the wrong road. And I dont think that theres been enough real debate in Washington or, quite frankly, in the country about whats important in the Middle East, and why were there, and what were trying to achieve in the Middle East.In part, this new book that Im writing called the End of Ambition, which, as Irina pointed out, will be out hopefully in either late 2022 or early 2023, tries to answer some of these questions. There is a way for the United States to be constructive in the Middle East, but what weve done over the course of the last twenty years has made that task much, much harder. And it leads us, in part, to this kind of geostrategic picture or puzzle that Im about to lay out for you.So let me get into some of the details. And Im obviously not going to take you from Morocco all the way to Iran, although I could if I had much, much more time because theres a lot going on in a lot of places. But not all of those places are of critical importance to the United States. So Ill start and Ill pick and choose from that very, very large piece of geography.First point: There have been some efforts to deescalate in a region that was in the middle of or on the verge of multiple conflicts. There has been a dialogue between the Saudis and the Iranians, under the auspices of the Iraqis, of all people. According to the Saudis this hasnt yielded very much, but they are continuing the conversation. One of the ways to assess the success or failure of a meeting is the fact that theres going to be another meeting. And there are going to be other meetings between senior Iranian and Saudi officials. I think that thats good.Egyptians and Turks are talking. Some of you who dont follow these issues as closely may not remember that Turkey and Egypt came close to trading blows over Libya last summer. And they pulled back as a result of concerted diplomacy on the part of the European Union, as well as the Egyptian ability to actually surge a lot of force to its western border. Those two countries are also talking, in part under the auspices of the Iraqis. Emiratis and Iranians are talking. That channel opened up in 2019 after the Iranians attacked a very significanttwo very significant oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia, sort of scaring the Emiratis, especially since the Trump administration did not respond in ways that the Emiratis or the Saudis had been expecting.The Qataris and the Egyptians have repaired their relations. The Arab world, for better or for worse, is moving to reintegrate Syria into is ranks. Not long after King Abdullah of Jordan was in the United States, he and Bashar al-Assad shared a phone call to talk about the opening of the border between Jordan and Syria and to talk about, among other things, tourism to the two countries. The hope is that this de-escalation, or hope for de-escalation coming from this dialogue, will have a salutary effect on conflicts in Yemen, in Syria, in Libya, and Iraq. Thus far, it hasnt in Yemen, in particular. It hasnt in Syria. But in Libya and Iraq, there have been some improvements to the situation. All of this remains quite fragile. These talks can becan break off at any time under any circumstances. Broader-scale violence can return to Libya at any time. And the Iraqi government still doesnt control its own territory. Its sovereignty is compromised, not just by Iran but also by Turkey. But the fact that a region that was wound so tight and that seemed poised to even deepen existing conflicts and new ones to break out, for all of these different parties to be talkingsome at the behest of the United States, some entirely of their own volitionis, I think, a relatively positive sign. You cant find anyone whos morelets put it this way, whos darker about developments in the Middle East than me. And I see some positive signs coming from this dialogue.Iran, the second big issue on the agenda. Just a few hours ago, the Iranians indicated that theyre ready to return to the negotiating table in Vienna. This is sort of a typical Iranian negotiating tactic, to push issues to the brink and then to pull back and demonstrate some pragmatism so that people will thank for them for their pragmatism. This agreement to go back to the negotiating table keeps them on decent terms with the Europeans. It builds on goodwill that they have developed as a result of their talks with Saudi Arabia. And it puts Israel somewhat on the defensive, or at least in an awkward position with the Biden administration, which has very much wanted to return to the negotiating table in Vienna.What comes out of these negotiations is extremely hard to predict. This is a new government in Iran. It is certainly a harder line than its predecessor. Some analysts believe that precisely because it is a hardline government it can do the negotiation. But well just have to see. All the while this has been going on, the Iranians have been proceeding with their nuclear development, and Israel is continuing its shadow campaign against the Iranians in Syria, sometimes in Iraq, in Iran itself. Although, theres no definitive proof, yesterday Iranian gas stations, of all things, were taken offline. Theres some suspicion that this was the Israelis showing the Iranians just how far and deep they are into Iranian computer systems.It remains unclear how the Iranians will retaliate. Previously they have directed their efforts to Israeli-linked shipping in and around the Gulf of Oman. Its conventional responses up until this point have been largely ineffective. The Israelis have been carrying on a fairly sophisticated air campaign against the Iranians in Syria, and the Iranians have not been able to mount any kind of effective response. Of course, this is all against the backdrop of the fact that the Iranians do have the ability to hold much of the Israeli population hostage via Hezbollah and its thousands of rockets and missiles. So you can see how this is quite worrying, and an ongoing concern for everybody in the region, as the Israelis and Iranians take part in this confrontation.Let me just continue along the line of the Israelis for a moment and talk about the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that has not been high on the agenda of the Biden administration, it hasnt been high on the agenda of many countries in the region. But since the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020, there have been some significant developments. The normalization as a result of the Abraham Accords continues apace. Recently in the Emirates there was a meeting of ministers from Israel, the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan. This is the first kind of face-to-face meeting of government officials from all of these countries.Now, certainly the Israelis and the Emiratis have been meeting quite regularly, and the Israelis and the Bahrainis have been meeting quite regularly. But these were broader meetings of Cabinet officials from all of the Abraham Accords countries coming together in the United Arab Emirates for talks. Rather extraordinary. Something that thirteen monthsin August 2020 was unimaginable, and today is something that doesnt really makeit doesnt really make the headlines. The Saudis are actually supportive of the normalization process, but theyre not yet willing to take that step. And theyre not willing to take that step because of the Palestinian issue. And it remains a sticking point.On that issue, there was a lot of discussion after the formation of a new Israeli government last June under the leadership, first, of Naftali Bennett, who will then hand the prime ministership over to his partner, Yair Lapid, who are from different parties. That this was an Israeli government that could do some good when it comes to the Palestinian arena, that it was pragmatic, that it would do things that would improve the lives of Palestinians, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, and seek greater cooperation with both the United States and the Palestinian authority toward that end.And that may in fact turn out to be the case. This government has taken a number of steps in that direction, including family reunification, so that if a Palestinian on the West Bank who is married to a Palestinian citizen of Israel, the Palestinian in the West Bank can live with the family in Israel. And a number of other things. But it should also be clear to everybody that despite a kind of change in tone from the Israeli prime ministry, theres not that much of a change in terms of policy. In fact, in many ways Prime Minister Bennett is to the right of his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu. And Yair Lapid, who comes from a centrist party, is really only centrist in terms of Israeli politics. He isin any other circumstances would be a kind of right of center politician. And Ill just point out that in recent days the Israeli government has declared six Palestinian NGOslong-time NGOsterrorist organizations, approved three thousand new housing units in the West Bank, and worked very, very hard to prevent the United States from opening a consulate in East Jerusalem to serve the Palestinians. That consulate had been there for many, many, many years. And it was closed under the Trump administration when the U.S. Embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Biden administration would like to reopen that consulate. And the Israeli government is adamantly opposed. In the end, undoubtably Arab governments are coming to terms with Israel, even beyond the Abraham Accords countries. Egypts flag carrier, Egyptair, announced flights to Tel Aviv. This is the first time since 1979. You couldyou could fly between Cairo and Tel Aviv, something that Ive done many, many times. If you were in Egypt, youd have to go and find an office that would sell you a ticket to something called Air Sinai, that did not have regular flights. Only had flights vaguely whenever, sometimes. It was an Egyptair plane, stripped of its livery, staffed by Egyptair pilots and staff, stripped of anything that said Egyptair. Now, suddenly Egyptair is flying direct flights to Tel Aviv. And El-Al, Israels national airline, and possibly one other, will be flying directly to Cairo. And there isand that there is talk of economic cooperation. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in Sharm al-Sheikh not long ago. That was the first meeting of Israeli leadersfirst public meeting of Israeli leaders and Egyptian leaders in ten years. So there does seem to be an openness on the part of Arab governments to Israel.As far as populations in these countries, they dont yet seem to be ready for normalization, although there has been some traffic between Israel and the UAE, with Emiratis coming to see Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and so on and so forth. But there are very, very few Emiratis. And there are a lot of Egyptians. So as positive as that all is, this isthis has not been a kind of broad acceptance among the population in the Arab world for Israels legitimate existence.And the kind of issue du jour, great-power competition. This is on everybodys lips in Washington, D.C.great-power competition, great-power competition. And certainly, the Middle East is likely to be an arena of great-power competition. It has always been an arena of great-power competition. For the first time in more than two decades, the United States has competitors in the region. And let me start with Russia, because theres been so much discussion of China, but Russia is the one that has been actively engaged militarily in the region in a number of places.Vladimir Putin has parlayed his rescue of Hafez al-Assad into influence in the region, in an arc that stretches from NATO ally Turkey, all the way down through the Levant and through Damascus, then even stretching to Jerusalem where Israeli governments and the Russian government have cooperated and coordinated in Syria, into Cairo, and then into at least the eastern portion of Libya, where the Russians have supported a Qaddafist general named Khalifa Haftar, who used to be an employee of the CIA, in his bid for power in Libya. And he has done so by providing weaponry to Haftar, as well as mercenaries to fight and support him. That episode may very well be over, although theres every reason to believe that Haftar is trying to rearm himself and carry on the conflict should the processshould the political process in Libya break down. Russia has sold more weapons to Egypt in the last few years than at any other time since the early 1970s. They have a defense agreement with Saudi Arabia. Its not clear what that actually means, but that defense agreement was signed not that long after the United States rather chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which clearly unnerved governments in the Middle East. So Russia is active, its influential, its militarily engaged, and it is seeking to advance its interests throughout the region.Ill point out that its presence in North Africa is not necessarily so much about North Africa, but its also about Europe. Its bid in Libya is important because its ally controls the eastern portion of Libya, where most of Libyas light, sweet crude oil is located. And that is the largestthe most significant reserves of oil in all of Africa. So its important as an energy play for the Russians to control parts of North Africa, and right on Russiasright on Europes front doorstep.China. Chinas the largest investor and single largest trading partner with most of the region. And its not just energy related. We know how dependent China is on oil from the Gulf, but its made big investments in Algeria, in Egypt, the UAE, and in Iran. The agreement with Iran, a twenty-five-year agreement, coming at a time when the Iranians were under significant pressure from the United States, was regarded by many in Washington as an effort on the part of the Chinese to undercut the United States, and undercut U.S. policy in the region. I think it was, in part, that. I think it was also in part the fact that China is dependent in part on Iranian oil and did not want the regime there to collapse, posing a potential energy crisis for China and the rest of the world. It seems clear to me, at least, that the Chinese do not want to supplant the United States in the region. I dont think they look at the region in that way. And if they did, they probably learned the lesson of the United States of the last twenty-five years, which has gotten itself wrapped around the axle on a variety of issues that were unnecessary and sapped the power of the United States. So they dont want to get more deeply involved in the region. They dont want to take sides in conflicts. They dont want to take sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They dont take sides in the conflict between the United States and Iran, or the competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran. They want to benefit from the region, whether through investment or through extraction, and the security umbrella that the United States provides in the region. Im not necessarily so sure that that security umbrella needs to be so expensive and so extensive for the United States to achieve its goals. But nevertheless, and for the time being at least, we will be providing that security umbrella in the region, from which the Chinese will benefit.I think, just to close on this issue of great-power competition. And because of time, Im leaving out another big player, or emerging player in the region, which is India. Im happy to talk about that in Q&A. But my last point is that, going back to the United States, countries in the region and leaders in the region are predisposed towards the United States. The problem is, is that they are very well-aware of the political polarization in this country. Theyre very well-aware of the political dysfunction in this country. Theyre very well-aware of the incompetence that came with the invasion of Iraq, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, or any number of disasters that have unfolded here in the United States.And it doesnt look, from where they sit in Abu Dhabi, in Cairo, in Riyadh, and in other places, that the United States has staying power, the will to lead, and the interest in remaining in the Middle East. And thus, they have turned to alternatives. Those alternatives are not the same as the United States, but they do provide something. I mean, particularly when it comes to the Chinese it is investment, its economic advantages, without the kind of trouble that comes with the United States. Trouble from the perspective of leaders, so that they dont have to worry about human rights when they deal with the Chinese, because the Chinese arent interested in human rights. But nevertheless, they remain disclosed toward the United States and want to work with the United States. They just dont know whether were going to be there over the long term, given what is going on in the United States. Ill stop there. And I look forward to your questions and comments. Thank you.FASKIANOS: Steven, that was fantastic. Thank you very much.Were going to now to all of you for your questions. So the first raised hand comes from Jonas Truneh. And I dont think I pronounced that correctly, so you can correct me.Q: Yeah, no, thats right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Cook, for your talk. Im from UCL, University College London, in London.COOK: So it is(off mic).Q: Indeed, it is. Yeah. Thats right.COOK: Great.Q: So you touched on it there somewhat particularly with great-power competition, but so my question is related to the current energy logic in the Middle East. The Obama administration perhaps thought that the shale revolution allowed a de-prioritization, if Im allowed to use that word, of the Middle East. And that was partly related to the pivot to Asia. So essentially does the U.S. still regard itself as the primary guarantor of energy security in the Persian Gulf? And if so, would the greatest beneficiary, as I think you indicated, would that not be China? And is that a case of perverse incentives? Is there much the U.S. can do about it?COOK: Well, it depends on who you ask, right? And its a great question. I think that theone of the things thatone of the ways in which the Obama administration sought to deprioritize and leave the region was through the shale revolution. I mean, the one piece of advice that he did take from one of his opponents in 20022008, which was to drill, baby, drill. And the United States did. I would not say that this is something that is specific to the Obama administration. If you go back to speeches of presidents way backbut I wont even go that far back. Ill go to George W. Bush in 2005 State of the Union addressed, talked all about energy independence from the Middle East.This may not actually be in much less the foreseeable future, but in reallyin a longer-term perspective, it may be harder to do. But it is politically appealing. The reason why I say it depends on who you ask, I think that there are officials in the United States who say: Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. But when the Iranians attacked those two oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia, that temporarily took off 50 percent of supply off the marketsgood thing the Saudis have a lot stored awaythe United States didnt really respond. The president of the United States said: Im waiting for a call from Riyadh. That forty years of stated American policy was, like, it did not exist. The Carter doctrine and the Reagan corollary to the Carter doctrine suddenly didnt exist. And the entirety of the American foreign policy community shrugged their shoulders and said: Were not going to war on behalf of MBS. I dont think we would have been going to war on behalf of MBS. We would have been ensuring the free flow of energy supplies out of the region, which is something that we have been committed to doing since President Carter articulated the Carter doctrine, and then President Reagan added his corollary to it. I think that there are a number of quite perverse incentives associated with this. And I think that youre right. The question is whether the competition from China outweighs ourIm talking about ourthe United States compelling interest in a healthy global economy. And to the extent that our partners in Asia, whether its India, South Korea, Japan, and our important trading partner in China, are dependent upon energy resources from the Gulf, and we dont trust anybody to ensure the free flow of energy resources from the Gulf, its going to be on us to do it. So we are kind of hammered between that desire to have a healthy global economy as beingand being very wary of the Chinese. And the Chinese, I think, are abundantly aware of it, and have sought to take advantage of it.FASKIANOS: Thank you. Im going to take the next question, which got an up-vote, from Charles Ammon, who is at Pennsylvania State University. And I think this goes to what you were building on with the great-power competition: What interests does India have in the Middle East? And how is it increasing its involvement in the region?COOK: So India isimports 60 percent of its oil from the region. Fully 20 percent of it from Saudi Arabia, another 20 percent of it from Iran, and then the other 20 percent from other sources. So thats one thing. Thats one reason why India is interested in the Middle East. Second, there are millions and millions of Indians who work in the Middle East. The Gulf region is a region that basically could not run without South Asian expatriate labor, most of which comes from Indiaon everything. Third, India has made considerable headway with countries like the United Arab Emirates, as well as Saudi Arabia, in counterextremism cooperation. This has come at the expense of Pakistan, but as relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and relations between Pakistan and the UAE soured in recent years, the Indians have been able to take advantage of that. And Indian leaders have hammered away at the common interest that India and leaders in the region have in terms of countering violent extremism.And then finally, India and Israel have quite an extraordinary relationship, both in the tech field as well as in the defense area. Israel is a supplier to India. And the two of them are part of a kind of global network of high-tech powerhouse that have either, you know, a wealth of startups or very significant investment from the major tech players in the world. IsraelMicrosoft just announced a huge expansion in Israel. And Israeli engineers and Indian engineers collaborate on a variety of projects for these big tech companies.So theres a kind of multifaceted Indian interest in the region, and the regions interest in India. What India lacks that the Chinese have is a lot more capacity. They dont have the kind of wherewithal to bring investment and trade in the region in the other direction. But nevertheless, its a much more important player than it was in the past.FASKIANOS: Thank you. Im going to take the next question from Curran Flynn, who has a raised hand.Q: How do you envision the future of Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia politics for the next thirty years? Ethiopia controls the Nile dam projects. And could this dispute lead to a war? And what is the progress with the U.S. in mediating the talks between the three countries?COOK: Thank you.FASKIANOS: And that is coming from the King Fahd University in Saudi Arabia.COOK: Fabulous. So thats more than the evening. Its actually nighttime there. I think that the question of the great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is really an important one, and its something that has not gotten as much attention as it should. And for those of you who are not familiar, in short the Ethiopians have been building a massive dam on the Blue Nile, which is a tributary to the Nile. And that ifwhen competed, threatens the water supply to Egypt, a country of 110 million people that doesnt get a lot of rainfall. Ethiopia, of course, wants to dam the Nile in order to produce hydroelectric power for its own development, something that Egypt did when it dammed the Nile River to build the Aswan High Dam, and crated Lake Nasser behind it.The Egyptians are very, very concerned. This is an existential issue for them. And there have been on and off negotiations, but the negotiations arent really about the issues. Theyre talks about talks about talks. And they havent gottenthey havent gotten very far. Now, the Egyptians have been supported by the Sudanese government, after the Sudanese government had been somewhat aligned with the Ethiopian government. The Trump administration put itself squarely behind the Egyptian government, but Ethiopias also an important partner of the United States in the Horn of Africa. The Egyptians have gone about signing defense cooperation agreements with a variety of countries around Ethiopias borders. And of course, Ethiopia is engaged in essentially whats a civil war. This is a very, very difficult and complicated situation. Thus far, there doesnt seem to be an easy solution the problem. Now, heres the rub, if you talk to engineers, if you talk to people who study water, if you talk to people who know about dams and the flow of water, the resolution to the problem is actually not that hard to get to. The problem is that the politics and nationalism have been engaged on both sides of the issue, making it much, much more difficult to negotiate an equitable solution to the problem. The Egyptians have said in the past that they dont really have an intention of using force, despite the fact of this being an existential issue. But theres been somewhat of a shift in their language on the issue.Which recently theyve said if red lines were crossed, they may be forced to intervene. Intervene how? What are those red lines? They havent been willing to define them, which should make everybody nervous. The good news is that Biden administration has appointed an envoy to deal with issues in the Horn of Africa, who has been working very hard to try to resolve the conflict. I think the problem here however is that Ethiopia, now distracted by a conflict in the Tigray region, nationalism is running high there, has beenI dont want to use the word imperviousbut not as interested in finding a negotiated solution to the problem than it might have otherwise been in the past.FASKIANOS: Thank you. Im going to take the next question from Bob Pauly, whos a professor of international development at the University of Southern Mississippi. It got three up-votes.What would you identify as the most significant likely short and longer-term effects of Turkeys present domestic economic and political challenges on President Erdogans strategy and policy approaches to the Middle East, and why?COOK: Oh, well, that is a very, very long answer to a very, very interesting question. Lets see what happens in 2023. President Erdogan is facing reelection. His goal all along has been to reelected on the one hundredth anniversary of the republic, and to demonstrate how much he has transformed Turkey in the image of the Justice and Development Party, and moved it away from the institutions of the republic. Erdogan may not make it to 2023. I dont want to pedal in conspiracy theories or anything like that, but he doesnt look well. There are large numbers of videos that have surfaced of him having difficulties, including one famous one from this past summer when he was offering a Ramadan greeting on Turkish television to supporters of the Justice and Development Party, and he seemed to fade out and slur his words. This is coupled with reports trickling out of Ankara about the lengths to which the inner circle has gone to shield real health concerns about Erdogan from the public. Its hard to really diagnose someone from more than six thousand miles away, but I think its a scenario that policymakers in Washington need to think seriously about. What happens if Erdogan is incapacitated or dies before 2023? Thats one piece.The second piece is, well, what if he makes it and hes reelected? And I think in any reasonable observer sitting around at the end of 2021 looking forward to 2023 would say two things: One, you really cant predict Turkish politics this far out, but if Turkish elections were held today and they were free and fair, the Justice and Development Party would get below 30 percent. Still more than everybody else. And Erdogan would have a real fight on his hands to get reelected, which he probably would be.His approaches to his domestic challenges and his approaches to the region are really based on what his current political calculations are at any given moment. So his needlessly aggressive posture in the Eastern Mediterranean was a function of the fact that he needed to shore up his nationalist base. Now that he finds himself quite isolated in the world, the Turks have made overtures to Israel, to the UAE, to Saudi Arabia. Theyre virtually chasing the Egyptians around the Eastern Mediterranean to repair their relationship. Because without repairing these relationships the kind of investment that is necessary to try to help revive the Turkish economywhich has been on the skids for a number of yearsis going to beis going to be more difficult.Theres also another piece of this, which is the Middle East is a rather lucrative arms market. And during the AKP era, the Turks have had a significant amount of success further developing their defense industrial base, to the point that now their drones are coveted. Now one of the reasons for a Saudi-Turkish rapprochement is that the United States will not sell Saudi Arabia the drones it wants, for fear that they will use them in Yemen. And the Saudis are looking for drones elsewhere. Thats either China or Turkey. And Turkeys seem to work really, really well, based on experience in Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh. So whatTurkish foreign policy towards the region has become really dependent upon what Erdogans particularly political needs are. Theres no strategic approach to the region. There is a vision of Turkey as a leader of the region, of a great power in its own right, as a leader of the Muslim world, as a Mediterranean power as well. But thats nothing new. Turkish Islamists have been talking about these things for quite some time. I think its important that theres been some de-escalation. I dont think that all of these countries now love each other, but they see the wisdom of pulling back frompulling back from the brink. I dont see Turkeys position changing dramatically in terms of its kind of reintegration into the broader region before 2023, at the least.FASKIANOS: Great. Lets go next to, raised hand, to Caleb Sanner. And you need to unmute yourself.Q: Hello, my name is Caleb. Im from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.So, Dr. Cook, you had mentioned in passing how China has been involved economically in North Africa. And my question would be, how is the U.S. taking that? And what are we doing, in a sense, to kind of counter that? I know its not a military advancement in terms of that, but Ive seen what it has been doing to their economiesNorth Africas economies. And, yeah, whats the U.S. stance on that?COOK: Well, I think the United States is somewhat detached from this question of North Africa. North Africas long been awith the exception of Egypt, of course. And Egypt, you know, is not really North Africa. Egypt is something in and of itself. That China is investing heavily in Egypt. And the Egyptian position is: Please dont ask us to choose between you and the Chinese, because were not going to make that choice. We think investment from all of these places is good foris good for Egypt. And the other places where China is investing, and thats mostly in Algeria, the United States really doesnt have close ties to Algeria. There was a tightening of the relationship after the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, recognizing that the Algeriansextremist groups in Algerian that had been waging war against the state there over the course of the 1990s were part and parcel of this new phenomenon of global jihad. And so there has been a security relationship there. There has been some kind of big infrastructure kind of investment in that country, with big companies that build big things, like GE and others, involved in Algeria. But the United States isnt helping to develop ports or industrial parks or critical infrastructure like bridges and airports in the same way that the Chinese have been doing throughout the region.And in Algeria, as well as in Egypt, the Chinese are building a fairly significant industrial center in the Suez Canal zone, of all places. And the United States simply doesnt have an answer to it, other than to tell our traditional partners in the region, dont do it. But unless we show up with something to offer them, Im afraid that Chinese investment is going to be too attractive for countries that are in need of this kind of investment.FASKIANOS: Thank you. Im going to go next to a written question from Kenneth Mayers, who is at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. In your opinion, what would a strategic vision based on a far-sighted understanding of both resources and U.S. goalswith regard to peace and security, prosperity and development, and institutions and norms and values such as human rightslook like in the Middle East and North Africa?COOK: Well, its a great question. And Im tempted to say youre going to have to read the last third of my new book in order to get thein order to get the answer. I think but let me start with something mentioned about norms and values. I think that one of the things that has plagued American foreign policy over the course of not just the last twenty years, but in the post-World War II era all the way up through the present day, you see it very, very clearly with President Biden, is that trying to incorporate American values and norms into our approach to the region has been extraordinarily difficult. And what we have a history of doing is the thing that is strategically tenable, but morally suspect.So what I would say is, I mean, just look at whats happened recently. The president of the United States studiously avoided placing a telephone call to the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The Egyptians, as many know, have a terrible record on human rights, particularly since President Sisi came to power. Arrests of tens of thousands of people in the country, the torture of many, many people, the killings of people. And the president during his campaign said that he was going to give no blank checks to dictators, including to Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. And then what happened in May? What happened in May was that fighting broke out between Israel and Hamas and others in the Gaza Strip, a brutal eleven-day conflict. And Egypt stepped up and provided a way out of the conflict through its good offices. And that prompted the United States tothe president of the United Statesto have two phone calls in those eleven days with the Egyptian leader. And now the United States is talking about Egypt as a constructive partner thats helping to stabilize the region. Sure, the administration suspended $130 million of Egypts annual$130 million Egypts annual allotment of $1.3 billion. But that is not a lot. Egypt got most ofmost of its military aid. As I said, strategically tenable, morally suspect. Im not quite sure how we get out of that.But what I do know, and Ill give you a little bit of a preview of the last third of the bookbut I really do want you to buy it when its doneis that the traditional interests of the United States in the Middle East are changing. And I go through a kind of quasi, long, somewhat torturedbut very, very interestingdiscussion of the origins of our interests, and how they are changing, and how we can tell they are changing. And that is to say that the free flow of energy resources may not be as important to the United States in the next twenty-five years as it was over the course of the previous fifty or sixty years. That helping to ensure Israeli security, which has been axiomatic for the United States, eh, Id say since the 1960s, really, may not be as important as Israel develops its diplomatic relations with its neighbors, that has a GDP per capita thats on par with the U.K., and France, and other partners in Europe, a country that clearly can take care of itself, that is a driver of technology and innovation around the globe. And that may no longer require Americas military dominance in the region.So what is that we want to be doing? How can we be constructive? And I think the answers are in things that we hadnt really thought of too systematically in the past. What are the things that were willing to invest in an defend going forward? Things like climate change, things like migration, things like pandemic disease. These are things that weve talked about, but that weve never been willing to invest in the kind of the resources. Now there are parts of the Middle East that during the summer months are in-habitable. Thats going to produce waves of people looking for places to live that are inhabitable. What do we do about that? Does that destabilize the Indian subcontinent? Does it destabilize Europe? Does it destabilize North Africa? These are all questions that we havent yet answered.But to the extent that we want to invest in, defend and sacrifice for things like climate, and we want to address the issuerelated issue of migration, and we want to deal with the issue of disease and other of these kind of functional global issues in the Middle East is better not just for us and Middle Easterners, but also in terms of our strategicour great-power competition in the region. These are not things that the Chinese and the Russians are terribly interested in, despite the fact that the Chinese may tell you they are. FASKIANOS: Thank you. Im going to go next to Ahmuan Williams, with a raised hand, at the University of Oklahoma.COOK: Oklahoma.Q: Hi. And thank you for being here.You kind of talked about the stabilization of northern Africa and the Middle East. And just a few days ago the Sudanese governmentand they still havent helped capture the parliamentarian therehave recycled back into a militarysomewhat of military rule. And its been since 2005 since the end of their last civil war, which claimed millions of innocent civilians through starvation and strife and, you know, the lack of being able to get humanitarian aid. There was also a huge refugee crisis there, a lot of people who evacuated Sudan. Hows that going to impact the Middle East and the American take to Middle East and northern Africa policy, especially now that the Security Council is now considering this and is trying to determine what we should do?COOK: Its a great question. And I think that, first, lets be clear. There was a coup dtat in Sudan. The military overthrew a transitional government on the eve of having to hand over the government to civilians. And they didnt like it. Theres been tension thats been brewing in Sudan for some time. Actually, an American envoy, our envoy to East Africa and Africa more generally, a guy named Jeff Feltman, was in Khartoum, trying to kind of calm the tension, to get the two sides together, and working to avert a coup. And the day after he left, the military moved. Thats notthat doesnt reflect the fact that the United States gave a blessing for the military to overthrow this government. I think what it does, though, and its something that I think we all need to keep in mind, it demonstrates the limits of American power in a variety of places around the world. That we dont have all the power in the world to prevent things from happening when people, like the leaders of the Sudanese military, believe that they have existential issues that are at stake. Now, whats worry about destabilization in Sudan is, as you point out, there was a civil war there, there was the creation of a new country there, potential forif things got really out of handrefugee flows into Egypt, from Egypt across the Sanai Peninsula into Israel. One of the things people are unaware of is the large number of Sudanese or Eritreans and other Africans who have sought refuge in Israel, which has created significant economic and social strains in that country.So its a big deal. Thus far, it seems we dontthat the U.S. government doesnt know exactly whats happening there. There are protesters in the streets demanding democracy. Its very unclear what the military is going to do. And its very unclear what our regional allies and how they view whats happening. What Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, what Saudi Arabia, what Israelwhich Sudan is an Abraham Accords country nowwhat they are doing. How they view the coup as positive or negative will likely impact how effective the United States can be in trying to manage this situation. But I suspect that were just going to have to accommodate ourselves to whatever outcome the Sudanese people and the Sudanese military come to, because I dont think we have a lot ofwe dont have a lot of tools there to make everybody behave.FASKIANOS: OK. So Im going to take the next question from Elena Murphy, who is a junior at Syracuse Universitys Maxwell School. And shes a diplomatic intern at the Kurdistan Regional Governments Representation in the United States.COOK: Thats cool.FASKIANOS: Thats very cool. So as a follow up, how much do you believe neo-Ottomanism and attempting regional hegemony has affected Erdogans domestic and foreign policy, especially in consideration of Turkeys shift towards the MENA in their foreign policy, after a period of withdrawals and no problems with neighbors policy?COOK: Great. Can I see that? Because thats a long question.FASKIANOS: Yeah, its a long question. Its got an up-vote. Third one down.COOK: Third one down. Elena, as a follow up, how much do you believe neo-OttomanismIm sorry, Im going to have to read it again. How much do you believe neo-Ottomanism and attempting regional has affected Erdogans both domestic and foreign policy, especially in consideration of Turkeys shift towards the MENA in their foreign policy, after a period of withdrawals and no problems with neighbors? OK. Great.So let us set aside the term neo-Ottomanism for now. Because neo-Ottomanism actuallyit does mean something, but people have often used the term neo-Ottomanism to describe policies of the Turkish government under President Erdogan that they dont like. And so lets just talk about the way in which the Turkish government under President Erdogan views the region and views what Turkeys rightful place should be. And I think the Ottomanism piece is important, because the kind of intellectual framework which the Justice and Development Party, which is Erdogans party, views the world, sees Turkey asfirst of all, it sees the Turkish Republic as a not-so-legitimate heir to the Ottoman Empire. That from their perspective, the natural order of things would have been the continuation of the empire in some form or another.And as a result, they believe that Turkeys natural place is a place of leadership in the region for a long time. Even before the Justice and Development Party was founded in 2001, Turkeys earlier generation of Islamists used to savage the Turkish leadership for its desire to be part of the West, by saying that this was kind of unnatural, that they were just merely aping the West, and the West was never actually going to accept Turkey. Which is probably true. But I think that the Justice and Development Party, after a period of wanting to become closer to the West, has turned its attention towards the Middle East, North Africa, and the Muslim world more generally.And in that, it sees itself, the Turks see themselves as the natural leaders in the region. They believe they have a cultural affinity to the region as a result of the legacies of the Ottoman Empire, and they very much can play this role of leader. They see themselves as one of the kind of few real countries in the region, along with Egypt and Iran and Saudi Arabia. And the rest are sort of ephemeral. Needless to say, big countries in the Arab worldlike Egypt, like Saudi Arabiadont welcome the idea of Turkey as a leader of the region. They recognize Turkey as a very big and important country, but not a leader of the region. And this is part of that friction that Turkey has experienced with its neighbors, after an earlier iteration of Turkish foreign policy, in whichone of the earliest iterations of Turkish foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party which was called no problems with neighbors. In which Turkey, regardless of the character of the regimes, wanted to have good relations with its neighbors. It could trade with those neighbors. And make everybodyin the process, Turkey could be a driver of economic development in the region, and everybody can be basically wealthy and happy. And it didnt really work out that way, for a variety of reasons that we dont have enough time for. Lets leave it at the fact that Turkey under Erdoganand a view that is shared by manythat Turkey should be a leader of the region. And I suspect that if Erdogan were to die, if he were unable to stand for election, if the opposition were to win, that there would still be elements of this desire to be a regional leader in a new Turkish foreign policy.FASKIANOS: Steven, thank you very much. This was really terrific. We appreciate your stepping in at the eleventh hour, taking time away from your book. For all of youCOOK: Im still not Sanam. FASKIANOS: (Laughs.) I know, but you were an awesome replacement. So you can follow Steven Cook on Twitter at @stevenacook. As I said at the beginning too, he is a columnist for Foreign Policy magazine. So you can read his work there, as well as, of course, on CFR.org, all of the commentary, analysis, op-eds, congressional testimony are there for free. So I hope you will follow him and look after his next book.Our next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday November 3, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time on the future of U.S.-Mexico relations. In the meantime, I encourage you to follow us, @CFR_Academic, visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for new research and analysis on global issues. And stay well, stay safe, and thank you, again. COOK: Bye, everyone.FASKIANOS: Bye.(END)

Webinar with Steven A. Cook October 27, 2021 Academic and Higher Education Webinars

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COVID-19 Vaccinations: Visualizing a Year of Global Progress and Inequity - Council on Foreign Relations