Senior Advisor, Gulf State Analytics, Washington DC

Areas of Expertise: Russia, Middle East, Arabian Peninsula

Dr. Karasik is currently a Senior Advisor to Gulf State Analytics and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Lexington Institute, both located in Washington, D.C. Dr. Karasik is also a Principal Investigator on Jamestown Foundation’s “Russia in the Middle East” Project. For the past 30 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 it’s financing. Libya has been a key focal point of his public and proprietary efforts.

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 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 geoeconomics for the MENA and Eurasia regions and frequently conducts studies and assessments of future security trajectories and military requirements. 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.

Publications:

Libyan General Haftar's visit to Saudi Arabia