The international politics of the Middle East

The international politics of the Middle East

Raymond Hinnebusch

Manchester University Press

This study takes the Middle East to be constituted around an Arab core, with a shared identity but fragmented into multiple territorial states; the core is flanked by a periphery of non-Arab states – Turkey, Iran and Israel – which are an intimate part of the region’s conflicts and an integral part of its balance of power (Cantori and Spiegel 1970; Ismael 1986: 5–13). Because the Middle East’s unique features defy analyses based on any one conceptual approach to international relations, this study will deploy a combination of several to capture its complex reality.

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Contents

List of abbreviations page / viii
Map of the Middle East / ix

1 Introduction to the international politics of the / 1
Middle East

2 Core and periphery: the international system and / 14
the Middle East

3 Identity and sovereignty in the regional system / 54

4 State formation and international behaviour / 73

5 Foreign policy making in the Middle East / 91

6 Comparative foreign policies: explaining foreign / 121
policy variation

7 War and order in the regional system / 154

8 The Middle East in a decade of globalisation / 204
(1991–2001)

Bibliography / 240
Index / 257

1

Introduction to the international politics of the Middle East

This book and the study of the Middle East

This study takes the Middle East to be constituted around an Arab core, with a shared identity but fragmented into multiple territorial states; the core is flanked by a periphery of non-Arab states – Turkey, Iran and Israel – which are an intimate part of the region’s conflicts and an integral part of its balance of power (Cantori and Spiegel 1970; Ismael 1986: 5–13). Because the Middle East’s unique features defy analyses based on any one conceptual approach to international relations, this study will deploy a combination of several to capture its complex reality.

The Middle East is arguably the epicentre of world crisis, chronically war-prone and the site of the world’s most protracted conflicts. It appears to be the region where the anarchy and insecurity seen by the realist school of international politics as the main feature of states systems remains most in evidence and where the realist paradigm retains its greatest relevance. Yet neo-realism’s1 a-historical tendency to assume states systems to be unchanging, made up of cohesive rational actors, and everywhere the chief determining factor in shaping state behaviour is quite inadequate to understand the Middle East. The regional system, recent and unconsolidated, has been contested by its units as much as it has shaped them and realism’s assumption that conflict is chiefly the inevitable byproduct of a states system’s anarchy misses the main causes of the Middle East’s exceptional war and instability.

Rather, this study will argue that the roots of conflict and much state behaviour are to be found in the peculiar historical construction of the regional system. One aspect of this was an extremely …

Raymond Hinnebusch

The international politics of the Middle East

Manchester university press

Manchester university press
The international politics of the Middle East
Raymond Hinnebusch

Regional International Politics series

Already published in the series:

Anderson: The international politics of Central Asia
Calvert: The international politics of Latin America
Hewitt: The new international politics of South Asia
Hyde-Price: The international politics of East Central Europe
Pinkney: The international politics of East Africa
Webber: The international politics of Russia and the successor states

Manchester University Press
Manchester and New York

Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave

Copyright © Raymond Hinnebusch 2003

The right of Raymond Hinnebusch to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press
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and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

Distributed exclusively in the USA by
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Distributed exclusively in Canada by
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

First published 2003
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset in Sabon
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester
Printed in Great Britain
by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

To Yuki

ISBN 0 7190 5345 5 hardback
0 7190 5346 3 paperback