The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

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Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario and Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario and Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa.

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Location:

Singapore

Genres:

News & Politics Podcasts

Description:

Twitter:

@mideastsoccer

Language:

English

Contact:

91138061

Website:

http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/

Email:

jmdorsey@questfze.com

Episodes

Shaping the new world order: The battle for human rights

1/18/2019

China is leading the charge in a bid to undermine accepted concepts of human rights accountability and justice. The Chinese effort backed by autocrats elsewhere has turned human rights into an underrated, yet crucial battleground in the shaping of a new world order.

Duration:00:10:25

Jonathan Fulton, "China's Relations with the Gulf Monarchies"

1/17/2019

Jonathan Fulton‘s China’s Relations with the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2018) sheds light on China’s increasing economic role at a moment that the traditionally dominant role in international oil markets of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producers is changing as a result of the United States having become more or less self-sufficient, China replacing the US as the Gulf’s foremost export market, and members of the Organization of Oil-Producing Export Countries (OPEC) becoming increasingly...

Duration:01:04:10

Pompeo visit to Saudi Arabia

1/16/2019

JMD interview on Radio Islam about US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's talks in Riyadh

Duration:00:05:46

Inside the Beltway: Iran hardliners vs Iran hardliners

1/16/2019

Alarm bells went off last September in Washington's corridors of power when John Bolton’s national security council asked the Pentagon for options for military strikes against Iran.

Duration:00:17:30

Syria’s Kurds: The new frontline in confronting Iran and Turkey

1/14/2019

US President Donald J. Trump’s threat to devastate Turkey’s economy if Turkish troops attack Syrian Kurds allied with the United States in the wake of the announced withdrawal of American forces potentially serves his broader goal of letting regional forces fight for common goals like countering Iranian influence in Syria.

Duration:00:08:37

Managing minefields: Saudi/UAE aid puts Pakistan-Iran relations on the spot

1/11/2019

Pakistan is traversing minefields as it concludes agreements on investment, balance of payments support and delayed payment oil deliveries with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates worth USD$13 billion that are likely to fawn growing distrust in its relations with neighbouring Iran.

Duration:00:09:59

Detained Bahraini Footballer Caught in Geopolitical Web

1/10/2019

The Australian Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, is currently meeting with Thai officials in Bangkok, advocating for the release of detained Bahraini footballer Hakim al Araibi, who holds official refugee status in Australia. Al Araibi was one of 150 athletes allegedly detained in Bahrain following the Arab Spring in 2011. If not incarcerated and allegedly tortured at that time, Al Araibi would most likely be playing in his national team tonight, in its Asian Cup clash with Thailand....

Duration:00:06:02

Turkic Chinese soup: A barometer of anti-Chinese sentiment

1/10/2019

A heavy soup made of pulled noodles, meat, and vegetables symbolizes Central Asia’s close cultural and/or ethnic ties with China’s repressed Turkic and Hui Muslims. It also explains growing Central Asian unease with China’s re-education campaign in its north-western province of Xinjiang and its signature infrastructure and energy driven-Belt and Road initiative.

Duration:00:09:07

The rise of Eurasia: Geopolitical advantages and historic pitfalls

1/6/2019

Asian players are proving to be conceptually and bureaucratically better positioned in the 21st century’s Great Game that involves tectonic geopolitical shifts with the emergence of what former Portuguese Europe minister Bruno Macaes terms the fusion of Europe and Asia into a “supercontinent.”

Duration:00:11:55

Indian Muslims: A rich hunting ground for Middle Eastern rivals

1/4/2019

When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently declared that Turkey was “the only country that can lead the Muslim world,” he probably wasn’t only thinking of Middle Eastern and other Islamic states such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Increasingly, there is evidence that Indian Muslims, the Islamic world’s fourth largest community after Indonesia and the South Asian states, is on Mr. Erdogan’s radar.

Duration:00:10:10

Saudi Arabia and the West’s right wing: A dubious alliance

1/2/2019

Traditionally focussed on ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim Islam, Saudi funding in the era of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has been streamlined and finetuned to ensure that it serves his geopolitical ambitions, primarily stymying the expansion of Iranian influence in the Middle East and North Africa and enhancing the kingdom’s global impact.

Duration:00:10:25

Jonathan Fulton and Li-Chen Sim, "External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies" (Routledge, 2018)

12/29/2018

JONATHAN FULTON AND LI-CHEN SIM, EDS. External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies ROUTLEDGE 2018 December 28, 2018 James M. Dorsey Jonathan Fulton and Li-Chen Sim’s edited volume, External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2018) is a timely contribution to understanding the increasingly diversified relations between the Gulf’s six oil-rich monarchies and external powers. Traditionally reliant on the United States for their security, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait...

Duration:00:57:56

US’s Iran Sanctions: Mixed Prospects and a Beyond-SWIFT Question

12/28/2018

The jury is out on the likely effectiveness of crippling sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States aimed altering Tehran’s regional policy. Similarly, the fate of the 2015 agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear agreement hangs in the balance.

Duration:00:24:02

Efforts to return Syria’s Assad to Arab fold amount to hollow victory for autocrats

12/27/2018

Two developments, the pending return of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to the Arab fold and protests in Sudan, Jordan and Tunisia, send contradictory messages of where the Middle East and North Africa are headed.

Duration:00:08:21

US troop withdrawals threaten to fuel greater, potentially problematic Gulf assertiveness

12/25/2018

As far as Gulf leaders are concerned, President Donald J. Trump demonstrated with his announced US troop withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan that his insistence that the “world is a dangerous place” has never been truer.

Duration:00:09:16

Alessandro Arduino and Xue Gong, "Securing the Belt and Road" (Red Globe Press, 2018)

12/21/2018

Alessandro Arduino and Xue Gong’s Securing the Belt and Road: Risk Assessment, Private Security and Special Insurances Along the New Wave of Chinese Outbound Investments (Palgrave, 2018) significantly contributes to an understanding not only of China’s ambitious infrastructure and energy driven Belt and Road Initiative, but also the increasing challenges it poses for China itself. The multiple security issues the initiative poses, including political instability, religious and ethnic...

Duration:00:56:45

Crackdown in Xinjiang: China and the Islamic world’s Achille Heel

12/19/2018

A disagreement between major Indonesian religious leaders and the government on how to respond to China’s crackdown on Turkic Muslims raises questions about the Islamic World’s ability to sustain its silence about what amounts to one of the most concerted assaults on the faith in recent history.

Duration:00:07:42

Stepped up US military posture in the Gulf threatens Indian hopes for Iran’s Chabahar port

12/18/2018

Things may be heating up in the Gulf as the United States increases pressure on Iran with the arrival of the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier group in the Gulf to deter Iran from further testing ballistic missiles. The dispatch of the carrier group is likely to dampen Indian hopes that the Trump administration’s exemption of the port of Chabahar from sanctions against the Islamic republic would help it tighten economic relations with Central Asia and further regional integration.

Duration:00:09:06

Gulf rivalries spill onto the soccer pitch

12/16/2018

With the 2018 World Cup in Russia behind it, the soccer world’s focus shifts to the 2022 tournament in Qatar. Politics and the Gulf’s internecine political and legal battles have already shaped debate about FIFA’s controversial awarding of World Cup hosting rights to Qatar. The battles highlight not only the sport’s dominance in the Middle East by autocratic leaders but also the incestuous relationship between politics and sports that is at the root of multiple scandals that have rocked the...

Duration:00:23:58

JMD on NBN: Aasim Sajjad Akhtar's The Politics of Common Sense

11/30/2018

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar’s The Politics of Common Sense: State, Society and Culture in Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is an incisive study of continuity as well as change in Pakistan that has moved the country towards religious conservatism and increased authoritarianism. Akhtar, a political scientist and self-confessed left-wing activist, documents the development of political power in Pakistan that with the military dictatorship in the 1980s of General Zia ul-Haq ended an era of...

Duration:00:56:19