This introductory chapter provides an overview of the study of international relations in the Middle East. The two disciplines of international relations and Middle East studies are highly interdependent. No book on the contemporary politics of the Middle East can possibly ignore the way in which external forces have shaped the development of the region's politics, economics, and societies. Similarly, no international relations text can ignore the rich cases that the Middle East has supplied, and how they illuminate different theories and concepts of the discipline, whether in respect of patterns of war and peace, identity politics, or international political economy. The chapter then looks at some of the particular problems that arise in studying the international relations of the Middle East.
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Introduction: The Middle East and International Relations
Louise Fawcett
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11. The Arab–Israeli Conflict
Charles Smith
This chapter deals with the most central and contentious security issue in the international relations of the modern Middle East: the conflict between Arab states and Israel. It traces the characteristics of the Arab–Israel conflict and how these have changed over time. It also demonstrates how both realism and identity politics have informed the position of different parties to the conflict. The chapter explains how the 1967 war or the Arab–Israel conflict was as much about Arab identity and leadership as it was about the struggle with Israel, even at its high point. It shows how from 1948 to the present, the unresolved Palestinian question has remained at the heart of debates about regional relations, even as more Arab states have signed accords with Israel.
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1. International Relations Theory and the Middle East
Fred H. Lawson
This chapter offers a detailed survey of international relations (IR) approaches, including the particular difficulties that IR in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region shares with other parts of the Global South. It highlights the creation of the modern states system in the Middle East that closely coincided with the development of international relations as an independent discipline. This discussion constitutes both an essential starting point and a useful set of tools for understanding the Middle East’s international relations and the relevant theoretical underpinnings. The chapter looks at vital and enduring points of entry into understanding the international politics of the Middle East via its twentieth-century history. It highlights the unending dialogue with the past that was underlined by the unanticipated course of events surrounding the Arab uprisings and their consequences.
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10. Foreign Policymaking in the Middle East: Complex Realism
Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami
This chapter provides an analysis of foreign policymaking by major regional states based on a complex realist approach. It explains how a complex realist approach acknowledges the weight of realist or power-based arguments and highlights other factors, such as the level of dependency on the US, processes of democratization, and the role of leadership in informing states’ foreign policy choices. It also examines decision-making by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt in relation to the key events and crises of the last decade. The chapter lays out a framework of the factors that shape the foreign policies of Middle East states, including their external environments and policy processes. It covers the 2003 Iraq War; the 2006 Hezbollah War; and the post-2014 War with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS), which indicated the states’ foreign policies that respond to threats and opportunities and their relative power positions.
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13. The Arab Spring: The ‘People’ in International Relations
Larbi Sadiki
This chapter details the seminal events surrounding the Arab uprisings and their outcomes, approaching them from a bottom-up perspective of the peoples of the Middle East. It highlights the conception of popular uprisings against aged and mostly despotic governments that have long silenced popular dissent. It also argues that the Arab uprisings demonstrate the weakness of traditional international relations (IR) by showing how much the people matter. The chapter points out how the Arab world continues to be subject to external interference and persistent authoritarian rule, even if the Arab uprisings have not delivered on popular expectations. It discusses the part of the Arab world in the ongoing processes of global protest and change that are facilitated by new media and technology.
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4. The Middle East since the Cold War: Movement without Progress
Bahgat Bahgat
This chapter covers the post-Cold-War period, the late twentieth, and early twenty-first century with a focus on the major challenges the Middle East has faced in moving into the twenty-first century era. It introduces the key themes that have come to dominate the contemporary international relations of the Middle East, which includes oil, new and old conflicts, the variable impacts of globalization, and religio-politics. It also employs the term ‘intermestic’ to highlight the multiple linkages between domestic and international politics which are vindicated and reinforced by the events of the Arab Spring. The chapter reviews the 2020-Abraham Accords, the impact of Covid-19, and impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It discusses the arguments about the primacy of domestic governance issues that is confirmed by current problems in Lebanon and Tunisia.
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3. The Cold War in the Middle East
Louise Fawcett and Peter Sluglett
This chapter highlights the legacy of the Cold War in the Middle East and shows how it continues to resonate, including Russia’s ‘return’ to the region via its presence in Syria. It examines traditional interpretations in the historiography of the Cold War which are linked to dominant realist paradigms in international relations and attribute great importance to external agency. It also covers the US policy which was viewed both by contemporaries and subsequent scholars as a reaction to the Soviet threat. The chapter reviews accounts released from post-Cold-War archives, which add more nuance and detail to the role played by domestic actors in shaping the conflict. It emphasizes the persuasive power of realism and the dominance of material interests and recognizes the role of local actors and forces in determining the trajectory the states of the Middle East.
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8. Regionalism and Shifting Alliances in the Middle East
Louise Fawcett
This chapter offers an overview of the changing dynamics of regionalism and alliance-making in the Middle East, covering processes that are closely related to states’ foreign and domestic policy choices. It examines practices of regionalism alongside international relations approaches that consider the varied explanations of the roles of ideas, interests, and domestic and external agency. It also demonstrates the loose fit between traditional, international relations concerns and regional realities, citing the EU as an example that cannot be considered a useful model for a region like the Middle East. The chapter combines domestic, regional, and international factors to review the Middle East’s slow record in terms of successful institution-building and alliance volatility. It considers the theory and practice of regional cooperation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and how the Middle East experience relates to comparative studies of regionalism.
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14. The United States in the Middle East
Andrew Payne and Michael C. Hudson
This chapter contributes to the in-depth study of the evolution of US policy towards the Middle East. It reviews the origins and development of US policy over the past century, stressing the crucial and interdependent relationship between different domestic constituencies in the US and the conduct of US foreign policy. It also gives an implicit critique of realist approaches and analyses the neo-conservative revolution under George W. Bush. The chapter offers assessments of the records of the most recent administrations, such as President Barack Obama’s attempt to reset relations with the region included an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program. It talks about how President Donald Trump upended US Middle East policy in several significant ways, while his successor President Joe Biden, sought to undo parts of his predecessor’s legacy.
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2. The Emergence of the Middle East into the Modern State System
Eugene L. Rogan
This chapter traces the origins and the entry of the Middle East states into the international system after the First World War. It draws on the ideas of the ‘English School’ for whom international relations is understood in terms of an ‘international society’ in which shared norms, values, and practices develop that states find in it their interests to nurture and preserve. The chapter also explores the emergence of the Middle East, which saw states entering and participating in society, though on very unequal terms. The chapter analyzes visible elements of resistance and revolt, wherein the state system and the regimes it sponsored failed to meet the needs of different peoples and became synonymous with oppression and inequality. It covers the experience of Ottoman reforms that left an important legacy of statecraft in the Arab world, but the Arab people had little prior experience of diplomacy.
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Introduction: The Middle East and International Relations
Louise Fawcett
This chapter offers a comprehensive, up to date, and accessible guide to understanding the international relations of the modern Middle East. It points out two issues on studying the international relations of the Middle East: The first relates to the definition of the region itself and second is the appropriateness of scholarly approaches. It also concerns the mechanisms and institutions of formal interstate relations and the multiple informal interactions and networks operating above and below the level of states. The chapter considers how the Middle East is still seen as an ‘unfinished’ region where territory and borders are contested, and interstate conflict persists. It discusses the Pan-Arabism that has slowly declined as a dominant ideology and the Arab uprisings that gave rise to further fragmentation and inter-Arab sectarian divides.
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5. Oil and Political Economy in the International Relations of the Middle East
Giacomo Luciani
This chapter tackles the omnipresent question of oil and its relation to the Middle East’s political economy and international relations. It demonstrates the compelling links between oil and the consolidation and evolution of the modern state system. It also points out how outside powers have invariably used oil in their dealings with the Middle East yet this has figured less prominently in the foreign policies of Arab states, whose concerns remain of a more parochial kind. The chapter analyzes a rentier model that shows how oil has conditioned economic and political outcomes in oil-rich and oil-poor states, slowing down the prospects for reform. It emphasizes how oil has given states huge power and resistance to political change.
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6. The Politics of Identity in Middle East International Relations
Raymond Hinnebusch
This chapter focuses on Arabism and other regional ethnicities as sources of political identity. It emphasizes the importance of regional identities within the Middle East, which have been accentuated because of the poor fit between identity and states and regimes and this remains pertinent today. The chapter also argues that the persistence of conflict in the Middle East must be understood through the incongruence of identity and material structures. The chapter highlights pan-Arabism and the irredentist and separatist movements that have characterized the history and political development of the Middle East. It shows how the interaction of identity with state formation and development has contributed to numerous wars and to the evolution of regional developments following the Arab Spring.
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11. Foreign Policymaking in the Middle East: Complex Realism
Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami
This chapter studies foreign policymaking by regional states in the Middle East based on a ‘complex realist’ approach. This acknowledges the weight of realist arguments but highlights other factors such as the level of dependency on the United States, processes of democratization, and the role of leadership in informing states' foreign policy choices. To illustrate this approach, the chapter examines decision-making by four leading states — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt — in relation to the key events and crises of the last decade: the 2003 Iraq War; the 2006 Hezbollah War; and the post-2014 War with the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS). The cases indicate that, as realists expect, states' foreign policies chiefly respond to threats and opportunities, as determined by their relative power positions.
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17. Russia, China, and the Middle East
Roland Dannreuther
This chapter addresses the important relationships that are currently evolving between Russia, China, and the Middle East. Russia and China have emerged as increasingly powerful actors in the Middle East and their presence and influence in the region has grown significantly. While both states have had longstanding historical links with the region, the twenty-first-century panorama is a quite distinctive one, with new economic and geopolitical factors driving a return to Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In addition, significant Muslim populations in both countries add another dynamic to contemporary Russian and Chinese relations with MENA. The chapter then identifies the challenges this presents for the United States and the West, and how the states and peoples of the Middle East are responding to the resurgence of Russian and Chinese power in the region.
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3. The Cold War in the Middle East
Peter Sluglett and Andrew Payne
This chapter examines the effects of the Cold War upon the states of the Middle East. Although the region was not so profoundly affected as other parts of the world in terms of loss of life or major revolutionary upheaval, it is clear that the lack of democracy and many decades of distorted political development in the Middle East are in great part a legacy of the region's involvement at the interstices of Soviet and American foreign policy. After a brief discussion of early manifestations of USSR–US rivalry in Greece, Turkey, and Iran at the beginning of the Cold War, the chapter uses Iraq as a case study of the changing nature of the relations between a Middle Eastern state and both superpowers from the 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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10. Middle East Security: The Politics of Violence after the 2003 Iraq War
Marina Calculli
This chapter explores contemporary security in the Middle East by highlighting the nexus between the uses and justification of violence. Focusing on the post 9/11 reordering of the Middle East, it shows how state and non-state actors use the rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’ to depoliticize military interventions against political rivals. More specifically, it argues that such actors mobilize the politics of shame to contain and undermine their rivals. Such efforts are met with attempts to counter-shame and re-politicize the use of violence, producing a cycle of action and counter-action that seeks to legitimize and delegitimize competing visions of security and order in the Middle East. In this context, security and insecurity are two sides of the same coin that fluctuate according to the prevailing balance of power.
Book
Edited by Louise Fawcett
International Relations of the Middle East provides a guide to the subject of international relations in this important region. It combines the analysis of the key themes, actors, and issues with the history of the region, and insights from international experts. The text provides a thematic overview of the subject, combining history with analysis, as well as topical material and perspectives. The text also offers a wide range of perspectives, encouraging readers to think critically to formulate their own arguments and opinions. Finally, it provides current, topical insights, including developments such as the Syrian conflict, the increasing importance of Russia and China in the region, and the impact of the Trump administration. One chapter looks at Russia, China, and the Middle East and examines the role of these increasingly important actors in the region. The text also includes coverage of the most recent developments, including those relating to the conflict in Syria, the refugee crisis, so-called Islamic State, and the impact of Trump.
Book
Edited by Louise Fawcett
International Relations of the Middle East provides a guide to the subject of international relations in this important region. It combines the analysis of the key themes, actors, and issues with the history of the region, and insights from a leading team of international experts. The text provides a thematic overview of the subject, combining history with analysis, as well as topical material and perspectives. The text also offers a wide range of perspectives, encouraging students to think critically to formulate their own arguments and opinions. Finally, it provides current, topical insights, including developments such as the Syrian conflict, the increasing importance of Russia and China in the region, and the impact of the Trump administration. One chapter looks at Russia, China, and the Middle East and examines the role of these increasingly important actors in the region. The text also includes coverage of the most recent developments, including those relating to the conflict in Syria, the refugee crisis, so-called Islamic State, and the impact of the Trump administration.
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20. The Arab/Persian Gulf as a subregional security complex
Allan Hassaniyan and Gareth Stansfield
The Arab/Persian Gulf, a strategic subcomplex of the Middle East and North Africa, is a dynamic region experiencing a wide range of changes. Using the concept of the subregional security complex, this chapter focuses on security, inter-state rivalry and relationships within the Gulf, and how they affect regional security. It explains the regional security complex in the Arab/Persian Gulf through reflection on past and present foreign policy choices and behaviours of states in the region. The regional security complex theory is used to analyse the complex dynamics caused by inter-state alignment and cooperation, rivalry and competition, and foreign penetration. The chapter then examines regional activities, inter-state rivalry and competition, and how these interrelated factors have affected security and stability in the Gulf subregion.
