The Islamic Republic of Iran faced a favorable strategic environment following the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Its leadership attempted to exploit this window of opportunity by assertively seeking to expand Iran's interests throughout the Middle East. It fell far short, however, of fulfilling its long-standing ambition of becoming the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and a leading regional power in the broader Middle East.In Squandered Opportunity

The book aims to improve our understanding of what it means to create high-quality analytical products by focusing on the concept of relevance for policy-makers. Despite variations in context, strategic analysts in different sectors (in both intelligence and non-intelligence government organizations, private consultancies, think tanks, and academia) face similar problems in identifying the needs of their clients and setting up organizations with the mandates, structures, and personnel nece...

This edited volume, the second volume in this collection, provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates and issues in Canadian defence policy studies. The contributors examine topics including sexual misconduct and the crisis of defence culture, personnel retention in the CAF, the impacts of climate change, NORAD modernization, policy trade-offs in the wake of the war in Ukraine, defence spending, procurement, as well as the defence policy making process.

The emergence of COVID-19 has raised urgent and important questions about the role of Canadian intelligence and national security within a global health crisis. Some argue that the effects of COVID-19 on Canada represent an intelligence failure, or a failure of early warning. Others argue that the role of intelligence and national security in matters of health is—and should remain—limited. At the same time, traditional security threats have rapidly evolved, themselves impacted and influenc...

This edited volume provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates and issues in Canadian defence policy studies. The contributors examine topics including the development of Canadian defence policy and strategic culture, North American defence cooperation, gender and diversity in the Canadian military, and defence procurement and the defence industrial base. Emphasizing the process of defence policy-making, rather than just the outcomes of that process, the book focuses on how p...

How do countries across the Middle East adjust their foreign policy strategies in response to external pressures, regional rivalries, and domestic politics? At a time when the region is undergoing profound transformation, Grand Strategies of Middle East States advances a new framework for understanding why Middle Eastern states respond differently to similar challenges.Ranging from the Arab uprisings and the Abraham Accords to the wars and crises that followed the October ...

Canada is a key member of the world's most important international intelligence-sharing partnership, the Five Eyes, along with the US, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Until now, few scholars have looked beyond the US to study how effectively intelligence analysts support policy makers, who rely on timely, forward-thinking insights to shape high-level foreign, national security, and defense policy.Intelligence Analysis and Policy Making provides the first in-depth look ...

The Middle East has not, historically, been a first-order priority for Canadian foreign and defence policy. Most major Canadian decisions on the Middle East have come about through ad hoc decision-making rather than strategic necessity. Balancing international obligations with domestic goals, Canadian relations with this region try to find a balance between meeting alliance obligations and keeping domestic constituents content.Middle Power in the Middle East delves into so...

While counterterrorism has been the primary focus of the defence and security policies of major Western countries in the last two decades, recent years have seen the re-emergence of states as the major threat. Intelligence Cooperation under Multipolarity offers a timely analysis of the challenges and opportunities for intelligence cooperation, characterized by the re-emergence of great power competition, particularly between the United States, China, and Russia.This collec...

National security in the interest of preserving the well-being of a country is arguably the first and most important responsibility of any democratic government. Motivated by some of the pressing questions and concerns of citizens, Top Secret Canada is the first book to offer a comprehensive study of the Canadian intelligence community, its different parts, and how it functions as a whole. In taking up this important task, contributors aim to identify the key players, explain thei...

**From the scholar who coined the term “soft power,” a bracing examination of what it means to lead in the digital age“Nye is a master of his field at the height of his powers.” —The Washington Post**Power evolves. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, unsurpassed in military strength and ownership of world resources, the United States was indisputably the most powerful nation in the world. But the information age is creating new opportunities for developin...

For two decades, militant jihadism has been one of the world's most pressing security crises. In civil wars and insurgencies across the Muslim world, certain Islamist groups have taken advantage of the anarchy to establish political control over a broad range of territories and communities. In effect, they have built radical new jihadist proto-states. Why have some ideologically-inspired Islamists been able to build state-like polities out of civil war stalemate, while many other armed gro...