Middle East & North Africa / Comment
Iraq and after: setting the scene for rethinking Europe's role in the Middle East
09/01/2008 By John Sloboda
How should we think productively about Europe’s role in the Middle East? The key areas around which agreement are needed are:
- What are the facts on the ground?
- What outcomes do we desire (ie: what do we want future facts to be)?
- What policies will achieve these outcomes?
- What incentives are there to encourage players to implement the needed policies?
Disagreement can exist at any level, and we need to know where the agreement and disagreement lies before we can strategise a role for Europe, and work out what the role of civil society could be in promoting that role.
This is an updated version of a paper presented at a roundtable entitled “The Middle East in 2008: A European Agenda” held in Madrid on 19 October 2007, jointly hosted by FAFO (Norway) and FRIDE.
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Keywords
Conflict Europe Iraq MEPP Middle East United StatesBio author: John Sloboda
John Sloboda is Executive Director of Oxford Research Group (ORG). He is also Professor of Psychology and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of International Relations, Politics and the Environment at Keele University. He co-founded and manages the Iraq Body Count project, which quickly became a key source of information about civilian casualties during the Iraq war and its aftermath.
