Episode 8 : THE HORN OF AFRICA Gateway to geostrategic power rivalries

This time our guest is Dr. Theodore Karasik and we will be speaking about geostrategic power rivalries in the Middle East and Africa.

In this series of interviews with Dr. Stephen Blank, our guest is Dr. Theodore Karasik. Our discussion will turn to Africa, where we will discuss geostrategic power rivalries in the Middle East and Africa, for influence and access to  energy, military bases, trade and strategic positioning. 

Dr. Theodore KARASIK is currently a Fellow, Russia and Middle East Affairs at the Jamestown Foundation and a Senior Advisor to Gulf State Analytics.  He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Lexington Institute, all located in Washington, D.C.   He is the co-author of “Russia in the Middle East” published in 2018.

For the past 35 years, Karasik worked for a number of US agencies involved in researching and analyzing defense acquisition, the use of military power, and religio-political issues across MENA and Eurasia including the evolution of violent extremism and financing networks.

Dr. Karasik lived in Dubai, UAE from 2006 until 2016 where he worked on Arabian Peninsula foreign policy and security issues surrounding cultural awareness, cybersecurity, maritime security, counter-piracy, counter-terrorism, and infrastructure and national resilience. Dr. Karasik worked for a number of UAE ministries and think-tanks covering regional and homeland security issues.

Dr. Karasik was an Adjunct Lecturer at the Dubai School of Government where he taught graduate level international relations and also an Adjunct Lecturer at University Wollongong Dubai where he taught labor and migration. Karasik was a Senior Political Scientist in the International Policy and Security Group at RAND Corporation.  From 2002-2003, he served as Director of Research for the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy.  He is a specialist in geopolitics and geo-economics for the MENA and Eurasia regions and frequently conducts studies and assessments of future security trajectories and military requirements in addition to cultural awareness issues surrounding traditionalism and tribalism in policymaking.

Dr. Karasik received his Ph.D in History from the University of California, Los Angeles in four fields:  Russia, Middle East, Caucasus and an outside field in cultural anthropology focusing on tribes and clans from Central Asia to East Africa.  He wrote his dissertation on military and humanitarian operations in the northern port city of Arkhangel’sk and their impact on political institutions during the Russian civil war.

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