The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology (The Contemporary Middle East, Series Number 4)

The international relations of the Middle East have long been dominated by uncertainty and conflict. External intervention, interstate war, political upheaval and interethnic violence are compounded by the vagaries of oil prices and the claims of military nationalist and religious movements. Fred Halliday sets this region and its conflicts in context, providing on the one hand, a historical introduction to its character and problems, and, on the other, a reasoned analysis of its politics. In an engagement with both the study of the Middle East and the theoretical analysis of international relations, Halliday, one of the best known and most respected scholars writing on the region today, offers a compelling and original interpretation. Written in a clear, accessible and interactive style, the book is designed for students, policymakers, and the general reader. Fred Halliday is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. He is the author and editor of several publications including Two Hours that Shook the World: September 11, 2001: Causes and Consequences (Tauris, 2002), Islam & the Myth of Confrontation (Tauris, 2002), The World at 2000: Perils and Promises (Macmillan, 2001), and Nation and Religion in the Middle East (Lynne Rienner, 2000). Cover 1 Half-title 3 Series-title 4 Title 5 Copyright 6 Contents 7 Maps 9 Tables 10 Acknowledgements 11 Introduction: world politics, the Middle East and the complexities of area studies 15 Part I Concepts, regions and states 33 1 International Relations theory and the Middle East 35 Analysing the IR of the Middle East: five approaches 35 Historical analysis 37 The most enduring paradigm: realism, systems and states 39 How ‘decisions’ are ready made: foreign policy analysis 41 The force of ideas: ideologies, perceptions and norms 44 Historical and international sociology 49 2 The making of foreign policy: states and societies 55 Starting with the state 55 Autonomy and context 59 Leadership model: the ruler decides 64 Domestic context 68 Bureaucratic interests 69 Public opinion 70 State capacity 73 Norms 76 External context 80 Back to the state 85 Part II History 87 3 The modern Middle East: state formation and world war 89 The Middle East and the formation of Europe 89 Confrontation with Europe, 1600–2000 92 Colonialism and independence 96 State formation and social change 100 The impact of colonialism 104 World War II and its consequences 107 4 The Cold War: global conflict, regional upheavals 111 Global confrontation, asymmetric interests 111 Phases of the Cold War 113 Iran 115 Turkey 120 The Arab–Israeli dispute 124 Regional turning point: the consequences of 1967 130 The Middle East and the Cold War: regional and global conflict 137 The Cold War in the Middle East: a balance sheet 141 5 After the Cold War: the maturing of the Greater West Asian Crisis 144 Into the 1990s: international change, regional consequences 144 End of the Cold War: global dimensions 147 End of east–west strategic rivalry 147 The contraction of Russia 149 Hegemon without a history: the USA and the region 152 Festival of state autonomy: the Middle East in the 1990s 157 Confrontation with Iraq 1990–1991: the occupation of Kuwait 157 Regional realignments 164 The Greater West Asian Crisis and confrontation with 'Islam': 11 September 2001, Afghanistan and Iraq 168 A margin of political choice: global structure, regional actors 176 Part III Analytic issues 179 6 Military conflict: war, revolt, strategic rivalry 181 Wars, old and new, and the formation of the Middle East 181 Armed conflicts: strategic, regional, internal 188 Strategic 188 Regional rivalries 191 Internal warfare 196 The failure of negotiation 199 War and the politics of the region 202 7 Modern ideologies: political and religious 207 ‘Agents’ and ‘plots’: values, explicit and implicit 207 Nationalisms 213 Middle Eastern variations 216 Fundamentalisms: modernity and the state 225 Fundamentalism and international relations 229 Informal ideologies: perception and beliefs 234 8 Challenges to the state: transnational movements 243 The state and beyond: three general perspectives 243 The ‘transnational’ in question 248 Inter-state or transnational: five case studies 250 (i) Nationalist movements 250 (ii) Islamism: the return of the state 253 (iii) Political violence 258 (iv) Culture and media 261 (v) Diasporas 267 The state in question: long-term transnationalism 270 9 International political economy: regional and global 275 In the kingdom of international political economy 275 Onslaughts of the world market: the impact of modernity 281 The curses of black gold 284 The state in command: political economy within 290 Political economy in the international arena: regional and strategic 293 The economics of coercion 298 The economic record: competing explanations 301 A new era on the horizon: towards the post-oil epoch 306 Part IV Conclusion 315 10 The Middle East in international perspective 317 Regional concerns, global context: pretexts and potentialities 317 Contesting ‘globalisation’ 327 Middle Eastern states: structural constraints, real options 330 In lieu of conclusion: three valedictory maxims 333 Appendices 339 Appendix 1 340 Appendix 2 Chronologies 352 (i) The Middle East and western powers, 1600–2004 352 (ii) Arab nationalism 354 (iii) Iran 358 (iv) Kurdish nationalism 361 (v) Palestine and Israel 362 (vi) Conflict in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf 364 (vii) Islamism 366 Select bibliography 370 Index 381 The international relations of the Middle East have long been dominated by uncertainty and conflict. External intervention, interstate war, political upheaval and interethnic violence are compounded by the vagaries of oil prices and the claims of military, nationalist and religious movements. The purpose of this book is to set this region and its conflicts in context, providing on the one hand a historical introduction to its character and problems, and on the other a reasoned analysis of its politics. In an engagement with both the study of the Middle East and the theoretical analysis of international relations, the author, who is one of the best known and most authoritative scholars writing on the region today, offers a compelling and original interpretation. Written in a clear, accessible and interactive style, the book is designed for students, policymakers, and the general reader. Fred Halliday is one of the most authoritative scholars writing on the Middle East today. His book has been composed as an introduction to the subject for students, and those new to the field, with the objective of setting the Middle East within the broader context of contemporary international relations The end of the twentieth century and the onset of the twenty-first have not been kind to students of International Relations, let alone to those of the Middle East.