The Middle East and North Arica (MENA) are one of the most conflict-prone regions. The armed conflicts in which Western powers intervened, such as the Middle East Wars (1948–1973), the Palestinian-Israeli War (ongoing), the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), and the Gulf War of 1991, resulted in the most significant political turmoil in this region. The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 caused the Afghanistan War of 2001 and the Iraq War of 2003, and confrontation with Islamic fundamentalist forces became a primary agenda in the international community and the Middle East. Twenty years after US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, these countries are still plagued by political instability.

According to the UN’s Arab Human Development Report 2016, the Middle East is home to only 5% of the world’s population but, in 2014, accounted for 45% of the world’s terrorist attacks, 68.5% of its battle-related deaths and 57.5% of its refugees.Footnote 1 The number of refugees seeking asylum worldwide since 2011 is unknown; in 2018, two out of five refugees worldwide, or 8.7 million, came from the Arab region.Footnote 2

Indeed, the question of political instability has fascinated many researchers. One of the big and classical answers was the so-called oil economy or rentier state (Beblawi & Luciani, 1987; Ross, 2011). These studies consider the effects of political disputes in the Middle East on oil revenue. Control over oil revenue has helped autocrats stay in power in three main ways. First, it has allowed them to buy off citizens by providing them with many benefits with virtually no taxation. Second, autocrats who receive most of their funding from national oil industries find it easier keep their countries’ finances secret. Secrecy helps give oil wealth its democracy-repelling powers: citizens are satisfied with low taxes and seemingly generous benefits only when they do not realize how much of their country’s wealth is being lost to theft, corruption, and government incompetence. The lack of civil society would make it challenging for new democracies to build solid coalitions among the old regime’s opponents—coalitions necessary to lead the new governments and resist a return to an authoritarian political system.Footnote 3

On the other hand, some scholars think that energy is a crucial element in national security which has furthermore served as an opportunity: military attributes of power and allowing Middle East governments to modernize countries through industrialization, economic expansion, and social development (Khan & Haque, 2019). Therefore, geopolitical risk significantly impacts energy security driven by the economic crisis, conflicts between nations, political instability, and terrorism, which have caused energy supply disruptions and increased energy insecurity (Khan et al., 2023).

There is also an argument to explain historical and ethnic tensions (Collier & Hoeffler, 1998, 1999; Collier et al., 2005). The Middle East has a history of deep-rooted historical and ethnic tensions, with conflicts arising from differences in ethnicity, religion, and tribal affiliations; for the people of Arab countries, the first half of the twentieth century was oppressed and exploited by imperialism, and the second half was oppressed and exploited by their politicians. They could never become subjects as citizens (Anderson, 1985, 1987, 2017; Talbi, 2000).

However, there is only limited scholarly discussion of what distinguishes the Middle East from other regions other than oil and Islam and how external factors―mainly United States foreign policy under the Cold War―affect political instability and generate dictatorship and war.

Did the colonial experience of the Middle East and the US-Soviet Cold War significantly negatively impact Middle East politics, as Middle East researchers have said? Are there issues other than oil revenues influencing Middle East politics?

This study is designed to clarify these points using quantitative methods from multiple external and internal factors. We examine how external geopolitical factors have influenced politics in the Middle East from two perspectives: the colonial era and the Cold War era.

Next, we would like to clarify from a geopolitical perspective what kind of problems the political economy of the Middle East is facing, mainly focusing on internal factors. After empirically analysing the causes of political instability in the Middle East using various data, the study suggests that manufacturing weakness due to the oil economy, resulting in high unemployment rates, and lack of democracy are all critical explanatory variables for political instability. There has yet to be a study that combines external and internal factors to clarify geopolitical issues in the Middle East. It is a novel attempt.

In the final part, we discuss the Middle East's geopolitical crisis in recent years. In recent years, the United States has increased its energy self-sufficiency rate through the shale oil and gas revolution. The Middle East is an option for the United States to buy oil. We will demonstrate that, however, the Middle East is essential for arms exports to the United States. It would be better for the United States to have a war in the Middle East.

Tragedy of history

The definition of political instability is a function of a lack of consensus, which may arise due to colonial influence, a failure to materialize a sense of ‘nationhood’ in the citizenry, dictatorship, economic instability, or foreign influence. Frequent changes of government (or attempts to do so), internal dissensions and ethnic disputes, and involvement in border clashes with neighbouring countries may also contribute to the political instability of a country. Political instability may hinder progress through repression and negative change and lead to foreign intervention or increased foreign influence.

Even among the sovereign nations of the world today, there are numerous cases which fail to meet the classic Weberian definition of state: ‘A compulsory political association with continuous organization [whose] administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of force in the enforcement of its order such as financial and tax collection within a given territorial area.’

According to Lisa Anderson, most of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa probably fall somewhere along the spectrum between those with well-established states and those which are virtually stateless. Here, the distinction between the historical patterns of patrimonialism and the more recent legal-bureaucratic norms which permit equality of access to the state administration becomes significant.

With the exceptions of Iran, Morocco, and the periphery of the Arabian peninsula, all of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa are successors of the Ottoman Empire. Apart from Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen, and Turkey, all the countries of the region experienced decades of European rule during this century. Many, including Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, owe their existence as separate entities to the European dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Syria knew various forms of French rule; apart from Italian Libya and the Spanish possessions in Morocco, most of the rest of the region came under British control.Footnote 4

Based on Weber’s classical definition of state, Anderson emphasizes the disintegration of unified and fraternal socio-economic communities by demarcating artificial borders. She says that this kind of past had various influences on the process of nation-building after the war. Considering the process of demarcation of borders in Syria, Jordan, and Iraq, as well as the Kurdish people, no one would dispute this. In the MENA countries, which had just gained independence, economic and social networks were fragmented, and loyalty to the nation needed to be fostered. Nevertheless, MENA has constantly been embroiled in the vortex of world politics, such as the Cold War, and thrown into the international capital development process of economic globalization.Footnote 5

In the countries of the Arabian peninsula, for example, where family patronage networks constitute government bureaucracies and where much of the labour force is excluded from the ‘compulsory political association’, the state in its modern bureaucratic form must be considered less well entrenched and differentiated than its counterparts in the Fertile Crescent or North Africa. The role of familial, sectarian, and regional loyalties in the Fertile Crescent, while less marked than in the peninsula, nonetheless reflects ambiguities in the administrative norms and legitimacy of the existing states.Footnote 6

Even in countries where politics is not a family business, administrative structures have embraced the people on behalf of the party. Political parties also succeeded in politicizing the administrative system by encouraging public participation in the administrative system, which has a wide range of receptacles. For example, the Neo-Destour Party in Tunisia, the Ba'ath Party in Syria and Iraq, and the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria in the 1960s are typical examples. Also, regarding the Mohammed V government in Morocco and the Shah government in Iran, a patron-client relationship was built in the elite network, contributing to social stability and blind obedience.Footnote 7

In addition, in MENA, the ruling class enjoyed further geographical benefits, accumulated wealth and power, and eventually became kings. When recruiting military personnel, there was a bias toward people from specific tribes, regions, and ethnicities. The military has abandoned its mission to maintain national order and protect itself from foreign threats, becoming the royal family’s private army and an intelligence-gathering agency.Footnote 8

Oil-producing countries in the Middle East have supported their economic activities with exogenous income such as oil income, foreign aid (grant), overseas remittance and borrowing rather than taxing and collecting taxes from their citizens and making taxpayers aware of themselves as citizens. As noted above, the politicization of public administration and unequal taxation and exemptions have been used to build patronage, with acquiesce obtained through distribution instead of support gained through tax collection.Footnote 9

Also, even if they are not oil-producing countries, large amounts of remittances flow into their countries of origin due to migration to oil-producing countries and Europe, such as Egyptians, Yemenis, Moroccans, Algerians, and Tunisians. This mechanism acted as a so-called safety valve, suppressing the growing discontentment and demands of the government from the unemployed and the poor.Footnote 10

In that sense, Anderson says that, in MENA, social commonality and demand for citizenship are weak, and secular patriotism and loyalty to the state are weak, too. In the absence of national loyalty, pan-Arabism has given way to regional nationalist movements: Nasser’s Arab nationalism, the Ba’athist coalition in Iraq and Syria, Libya’s ‘Green’ coalition and revolution, and the Iranian Islamic movement all evoked ethnicity, ideology, and religion. This is because, just as the economic and political spheres of MENA are out of alignment, so are the social structure, identity, and political spheres.Footnote 11

In order to measure the impact of colonial experience, the level of social stability is measured with the Fragile States Index (FSI; formerly the Failed States Index) which we used as a dependent variable. Then, we used the Colonial Dates Dataset (COLDAT) which aggregates information on the reach and duration of European colonial empires from renowned secondary sources as an explanatory variable. Even a quick overview reveals that the experience of colonization had a substantial impact on the subsequent political system in modern Middle Eastern politics.Footnote 12

Having been a French colony worsens the FSI by 8.8 points, a British colony, by 7.1 points, and an Italian colony, by 2.3 points. As Anderson notes, the negative effects on the Middle East colonized by Britain, France, and Italy were found to be statistically significant.

As we will see below, artificial frontiers sparked not only wars against Israel, but also conflicts within Arab countries (Saudi Arabia-Yemen-Egypt conflict, Algeria-Morocco-Mauritania conflict, Iraq-Kuwait Gulf War). Domestically, the civil war in Yemen (inter-tribal conflict) and the Algerian Civil War (government versus Islamic extremist groups) both had unfortunate consequences.

Political instability in MENA after World War II

Even after the colonial period ended, geopolitical issues dominated the Middle East. After World War II, four large-scale wars broke out between Israel and neighbouring Arab states between 1948 and 1973. In the aftermath of World War II, the US government fought the Soviet Union for global leadership, influence, and security in the Middle East within the context of the Cold War. Under the Eisenhower administration, the US government, fearing that its national security would be jeopardized by a government backed by the Soviet Union’s involvement in subverting the regime, promoted the domino theory, with later presidents following Eisenhower’s precedent. Thereafter, the United States expanded the geographic scope of its actions beyond its traditional area of operations in Central America and the Caribbean.

Western countries have been reluctant to allow Russians to enter the region and have ‘selected’ Israel as a ‘bulwark’ for the West. The United States is investigating the Syrian Soviet fighter plane shot down by Israel to capture the technological capabilities of the Soviet Union. Israel was indispensable for Western countries to win against communist forces. Moreover, until the First and Second Middle East Wars, the United States, Great Britain, and France provided support and weapons to Israel. In contrast, the Soviet Union provided support and arms to the Arabs, giving the appearance of a proxy war. After the Third Middle East War, economic motives such as oil concessions and arms sales dominated, and Britain and France, which had provided support and arms to Israel, turned to the Arab side. In addition, after the Iranian Revolution, the US also supported the Arab side in arms supply and military equipment; thus, depending on the situation at that time, Western countries and the Soviet Union changed the countries they supported and the countries they hated.Footnote 13

The relationship between Iran and the United States was very ‘close’. Although Iran narrowly escaped becoming a colony of the imperial powers, British and American capital moved into Iran before and after World War II. The United States established a puppet government led by the Shah to absorb oil resources. The US needed Iran geopolitically and economically to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply after this ‘Islamic Revolution’. Ayatollah Khomeini’s hostility toward Israel and his threat to stop oil flow from the Persian Gulf to the United States also played a role.

The conclusion of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979 was also significant. The United States succeeded in getting Egypt to recognize the existence of Israel in return for the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had ruled in the Third Middle East War. Egypt’s choice meant that the Palestinian issue would be left untouched.Footnote 14 The shock of the conclusion of the peace treaty aroused resentment toward the United States, and it spread concentrically throughout the Middle East. In Libya, Colonel Gaddafi declared the overthrow of the United States, and hatred against the United States was also gaining momentum in Iran. In November of the same year, the hostage crisis at the US embassy occurred due to suspicion of spying aimed at the collapse of the Khomeini regime. Although all fifty-two hostages were later released, the two countries severed diplomatic ties after the incident, and the US and Iran antagonized each other by calling each other ‘Devil’.

What seems tragic is that Arab citizens had to face not only external enemies but also internal ones. The leader’s vision of unification has been far from reality, and Arab nationalism transformed into unilateral nationalism led by populist military governments such as the Ba'ath Party. Moreover, even Egypt, a self-proclaimed leader for its history, population, and influence, introduced socialism in its rush to modernize. Worse, the centralized economy has created a dysfunctional and bloated bureaucracy and has failed to build a society with secure, free, and democratic politics and a developed economy.

Table 1 below eloquently illustrates how politically unstable the region has been. A series of wars brought about the rise of the military organization, the development of the Ministry of Intelligence and Public Security, and the solidification of the position of policymakers from the military, which is why the regime was not overthrown despite its political instability.

Table 1 Multiple linear-regression analysis: Colonial experience
Full size table

In 2000, defence spending averaged 6.7% of GDP in the MENA region. Compared to the global average of 3.8%, NATO countries spent 2.2%, non-NATO European countries, 2.8%, East Asia/Australia, 3.3%, Sub-Saharan/Africa, 4%, and Caribbean/Central/Latin America, 1.6%, with Middle East defence spending being the highest of any region.Footnote 15

Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan are still in a state of political unrest over the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Egypt remained under a state of emergency from 1981, and Algeria from 1992 until February 2011. Syria has been under a state of emergency since 1963 (Table 2).

Table 2 MENA political instability
Full size table

Fareed Zakaria laments that these failures were massive for the Arab world. What became decisive after the setback of pan-Arabism was the split into two pro-Soviet blocs, such as the pro-United States. It is a matter of confrontation over and again. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the pan-Arab dream of sweeping the Arab world came to nothing. What remained was a corrupt state without public popularity and legitimacy and an authoritarian regime that suppressed speech under the guise of suppressing Islamic fundamentalism.Footnote 16

US involvement in regime change

According to Lindsey A. O’Rourke, Washington’s Cold War behaviour suggests that a desire to promote democracy has not always been a major factor driving US foreign policy. He found that the United States attempted ten times as many regime changes via covert (rather than overt) action during the Cold War—sixty-four covert regime change campaigns compared to six overt ones. American-backed forces assumed power in twenty-five covert campaigns, whereas the remaining thirty-nine covert missions failed in that goal. Washington’s liking for covert regime change was not limited to either political party. During the Cold War, each administration engaged in at least three covert campaigns to replace the political leadership of another state at some point in their respective presidencies, and numerous covert actions continued across governments.Footnote 17

During this period, Washington supported authoritarian forces in forty-four out of its sixty-four covert interventions, and only eight cases (12.5 per cent) aimed to promote a democratic revolution within an authoritarian regime.Footnote 18 According to one study, the US undertook at least eighty-one overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period 1946–2000.Footnote 19 Moreover, Daniel Berger et al.’s analysis of America’s covert interventions—which in their sample included both regime change and regime maintenance operations—determined that Washington’s covert operations decreased the likelihood that a targeted state would become a democracy by roughly 30 per cent over the next twenty years.Footnote 20

At the overt level as well, multiple quantitative studies confirm Washington’s poor record for democracy promotion throughout the twentieth century.Footnote 21 During its covert Cold War operations, for instance, Washington violated norms of justified intervention in many ways, such as overthrowing democracies and installing leaders known to have committed human rights violations.Footnote 22 For example, the United States overthrew the Mossadegh regime in Iran and installed the Shah to control Iran. In addition, Gaddafi of Libya eventually became a dictator and pursued self-interest; at first, he was a revolutionary man who was supported by the people, but the United States was particularly hostile to him and wanted to remove him from power.

The existing security-based theories focusing on capabilities and territory cannot explain missions against states of little geostrategic importance, such as weak states with fragile ties to a great power rival. However, most of America’s covert Cold War interventions were located outside buffer zones; many targeted states had weak ties to Moscow and more than a third were US allies.Footnote 23 America’s interventions shared the common objective of protecting US national security and increasing America’s relative military power within the international system. As with the causes of war, no single motive drove the United States to intervene, and some covert campaigns had overlapping motives. Nevertheless, America’s interventions fall into three broad categories: offensive, preventive, and hegemonic, depending on the primary political objective of the campaign.Footnote 24

Offensive regime changes aimed to overthrow a current military rival or break up a rival alliance. While offensive operations target current military adversaries, preventive regime changes attempt to stop a government from taking certain actions—like increasing their military capabilities or joining a rival alliance—that may make their state more of a threat in the future. By installing a leader who will not take those actions, Washington hoped to maintain the status quo and minimize its future security threats.

In many Cold War cases, the United States was not particularly concerned about a direct shift in the relative balance of power toward the target state, which often was weak and non-threatening on its own. Instead, US policymakers feared that if the target government were to collaborate with Moscow, the Soviet alliance network would gain power compared to the American-led alliance network. To prevent this circumstance, Washington attempted to install a foreign leader who would ally with the United States instead, thereby eliminating a future threat, decreasing the military power of the Soviet alliance network, and bolstering the American alliance network’s relative power.Footnote 25

O’Rourke argues that policymakers decide whether and how to conduct a regime change operation by weighing the potential benefits of an intervention against the mission’s potential costs and its likelihood of success. When confronted with these trade-offs, he found that US policymakers generally preferred to conduct regime changes covertly to minimize the regime change’s potential military, economic, and reputational costs, even though they understood covert operations were less likely to overthrow their targets than their overt alternatives successfully. During the Cold War, US policymakers overwhelmingly chose the former option. American leaders appear to have believed the low potential costs of covert conduct made it worth the higher chance of failure.Footnote 26

Our multiple regression analysis can also trace the above explanation. US and USSR joint involvement in crises assesses combined US and USSR (or Russia after 1991) involvement in crises in the post-World War II period. The US and the USSR were superpowers from 1945–1989 (Table 3).

Table 3 Linear regression analysis of DURATION OF INTERNATIONAL CRISIS and INTENSITY OF VIOLENCE as dependent variables
Full size table

Thereafter, the US was the sole superpower. However, we continue to code joint US and USSR (later Russian) involvement in crises because Russia remained, by virtue of its nuclear stockpile, the second power in the global system. Low-level involvement includes verbal, political, and economic acts. High-level involvement includes covert, semi-military, and direct military acts. One power may be a crisis actor, and the other, a high-involvement actor (the US was a crisis actor in the Guatemala Crisis of 1953–54 while the USSR was highly involved, dispatching military aid to Guatemala). Alternatively, both powers may be crisis actors (the US and USSR were engaged in direct confrontation in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962).

The data show that the longer a conflict lasts, the higher the intensity of the violence. However, when both the United States and the Soviet Union intervene in a conflict, the intensity of violence tends to decrease. This implies that both sides have nuclear weapons and have avoided exacerbating the conflict. However, if both parties engage in conflict separately, the conflict will be prolonged, and the intensity of the conflict will also worsen.

In the Middle East, although the two sides clashed in Afghanistan, unilateral intervention and assistance have been provided in the same manner as in other conflicts and disputes like in Iraq, Iran, and Libya. In that sense, the data results are satisfactory.

The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan amid the Cold War was of great concern to the United States and Western countries. Originally, Afghanistan was founded as a kingdom in 1747, and, in 1880, like other Gulf countries, came under British protection. In 1919, it achieved independence again, and, in July 1973, it transitioned from a monarchy to a republic in a military coup. After that, a coup d’état established a communist government, the Afghan People’s Democratic Party. The government of Babrak Kalmar was established under the Soviet Union and came under the influence of the Soviet Union.

If Pakistan, geographically directly beneath Afghanistan, were to fall into the hands of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union would be able to deploy battleships at the exit of the Persian Gulf. The only thing the United States could do to maintain a safe supply of oil from the Persian Gulf to support the Western economy was to overthrow the communist regime in Afghanistan. The United States enlisted the cooperation of Pakistani authorities and the Arab powerhouse Saudi Arabia and launched military assistance to rebels in Afghanistan. This began a long war with Islamic fighters (Mujahideen), who would later become the Taliban. While the United States despised the Islamic Revolution in Iran and viewed its leader Ayatollah Khomeini as an enemy in neighbouring Afghanistan, it was a completely selfish act of supporting Islamic forces.

Taken together, this suggests that, when faced with this trade-off between minimizing costs and maximizing the likelihood of success during the Cold War, US policymakers opted for the former, which explains why they pursued covert action more than ten times more frequently than overt interventions. Indeed, in Libya and Iran, in many cases, covert conduct lowered the regime change’s anticipated costs to such an extent that it shifted the cost–benefit calculation from the point where intervention was not desirable to the point where it became worthwhile. The Gaddafi regime eventually collapsed with overt intervention in 2011 (Fukutomi, 2021).

Internal factors

So far, we have looked at how external geopolitical factors have influenced politics in the Middle East from two perspectives: the colonial era and the Cold War era. In what follows, We would like to clarify from a geopolitical perspective what kind of problems the political economy of the Middle East is facing, mainly focusing on internal factors.

Our strategy of empirical study exploits the variation in the indicators of Ongoing War, Democracy, Secondary School Enrolment Rate, Internet Access, Unemployment, Manufacture, Religion, Gas Rent, Oil Rent, Rural Population, and Number of Frontiers using the FSI and the Global Peace Index (GPI) which is measured by the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict, and the degree of Militarization.

The FSI is an index mainly published and supported by the United States think tank, the Fund for Peace. The list aims to assess states’ vulnerability to conflict or collapse, ranking all sovereign states with membership in the United Nations where there is sufficient data available for analysis. The index’s ranks are based on twelve indicators of state vulnerability, grouped by category: Cohesion, Economic, Political, and Social & Cross-Cutting. Ranking is based on the sum of scores for the twelve indicators (see below). Each indicator is scored on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest intensity (most stable) and 10 being the highest intensity (least stable), creating a scale spanning 0 − 120.

  • C1: Security Apparatus

  • C2: Factionalized Elites

  • C3: Group Grievance

  • E1: Economic Decline

  • E2: Uneven Economic Development

  • E3: Human Flight and Brain Drain

  • P1: State Legitimacy

  • P2: Public Services

  • P3: Human Rights and Rule of Law

  • S1: Demographic Pressures

  • S2: Refugees and IDPs

  • X1: External Intervention

Considered together in the index, the indicators are a way of assessing a state’s vulnerability to collapse or conflict, ranking states on a spectrum of categories labelled sustainable (0.0–29.9), stable (30.0–59.9), warning (60.0–89.9), and alert (90.0–120.0).Footnote 27

On the other hand, the GPI is produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. The GPI covers 99.7% of the world’s population, and is calculated using twenty-three qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources, and measures the state of peace across three domains:

  • Level of Societal Safety and Security

  • Extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict

  • Degree of Militarization

The Global Peace Index measures a country’s level of negative peace using three domains of peacefulness. It comprises twenty-three indicators of the absence of violence or fear of violence.

The first domain, Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict, uses six statistical indicators to investigate the extent to which countries are involved in internal and external conflicts and their role and duration of implication in conflicts.

The second domain evaluates the level of harmony or discord within a nation; eleven indicators broadly assess what might be described as Societal Safety and Security. The assertion is that low crime rates, minimal terrorist activity and violent demonstrations, harmonious relations with neighboring countries, a stable political scene, and a small proportion of the population being internally displaced or made refugees can be identical with peacefulness.

The third domain is related to a country’s Militarization —reflecting the link between a country’s level of military build-up and access to weapons and its level of peacefulness, both domestically and internationally. Comparable data on military expenditure as a percentage of GDP and the number of armed service officers per head are measured, as are financial contributions to UN peacekeeping missions.Footnote 28

Since the GPI can more clearly indicate the belligerence of contemporary states, in Model C, we examine its relationship with contemporary political-economic variables.

The definition of Ongoing War is one of three GPI domains: Militarization, Societal Safety and Security, and Ongoing Conflict. This indicator measures the number and duration of extraterritorial conflicts a country is involved in. Information for this indicator is sourced from the UCDP’s Battle-Related Deaths Dataset. We aggregated the scores from 2008 to 2022 and used the average as an index.

Democracy is sourced from the Freedom House indicator. Internet, Natural Rent, Manufacture, Unemployment Rate, and Rural Population are from World Development Indicators (WDI) which is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional, and global estimates.

Internet indicates individuals using the Internet (% of population), average in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021; Natural Rent is calculated from the average of total natural resource rents (% of GDP) from 1972 to 2021; and Oil Rent is calculated from the average of total natural resource rents (% of GDP) from 1972 to 2021.Footnote 29

Manufacture and Unemployment Rate indicate the ratio of manufacturing industries and the youth unemployment rate due to inability to absorb employment because the rentier economy depends on imports to pay for oil exports. The former consists of the average of Manufacture’s exports (% of merchandise exports) from 1972 to 2021, and the latter consists of the average of Unemployment, youth total (% of the total labour force age 15– 24) (modelled ILO estimate) from 1991 to 2021.

The data on religion is sourced from the Pew Research Center.Footnote 30 Frontier indicates the number of borders between land and sea.

Results and implication

We start with a comprehensive model of factors that potentially influence the risk of becoming a failed state. We then delete stepwise the variables that are not significant to arrive at our model B described in Table 4. A more extensive discussion of all variables will follow in the results section. Model C looks at the relationship between the GPI and economic and political variables.

Table 4 Linear regression analysis of the FSI and GPI
Full size table

The test quantitatively clarifies the impact. The paper found a positive relationship between the FIS and Democracy, Enrollment, and Internet. It is revealed that the Internet and Democracy also improve the GPI. Unemployment will worsen the FSI by 0.2 points. If the share of the manufacturing industry increases, the FSI will be lowered. However, we did not see any significant effect on the FSI and GPI with Natural Resources Rent and Oil Resources Rent. It is thought that this is because data from democratic oil-producing countries such as the United States, Canada, and Norway is not excluded. Oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran rely on oil revenues for their economies. We should not ignore its effects. Oil remains the basic source of revenue for both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Governments of oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran have to change the nature of their economies from the sole dependency on oil to multi-sectorial reliance. Development of the banking sector is required to maintain internal flows. Governments of oil-producing countries should divert their expenditures from non-developmental areas to the economy’s developmental sector.Footnote 31

Islam or Christianity had no significant implications for the FSI; however, Christianity has significant implications for the GPI. We found that the more neighboring countries there are, the higher the GPI score and the greater the chance of conflict. The results are consistent with the Shatter belt theoryFootnote 32 in geopolitics that are deeply internally divided and encompassed in competition between the great powers in geostrategic areas and spheres.Footnote 33

Looking at the economic data of the Middle East, we found that it has characteristics not found in other regions. These are the meagre ratio of the manufacturing industry to GDP and the exceptionally high youth unemployment rate compared to other regions.

The Middle East democratization movement, the Arab Spring, has been evaluated as a revolution by the youth. However, it has also been said that the cause is the high unemployment rate of the youth. Because the oil economy can import products from other countries, the manufacturing sector remains fragile, and the capital-intensive industry cannot create jobs.

The data also show that lowering unemployment contributes to improving the FSI. Growth in manufacturing contributes to the GPI. For Middle East countries to build their future, it is necessary to foster manufacturing to improve unemployment rates (see Figs. 1, 2).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Manufacturing industry and regions

Full size image
Fig. 2
figure 2

Youth unemployment and regions. E Asia = East Asia Latin A = Latin America North A = North America Russia C Asia = Russia and Central Asia S Asia = South Asia

Full size image

Unfortunately, we were not able to investigate the role of women in our quantitative research, but Women in Arab countries still face a life of discrimination. According to UNDP, society’s support for the better treatment of women has increased notably over the last five decades. However, their ordeal starts in traditional early childhood and runs through male-oriented family environments and education systems to confining marriages or underpaid work. The definitive elimination of all forms of discrimination against women is a struggle against a rooted historical injustice that will take more years to complete.Footnote 34

Merchant of death and the Middle East

Finally, one more issue regarding geopolitical risks in the Middle East exists. The United States is less dependent on energy security in the Middle East than it used to be. Before, the United States has relied heavily on the Middle East for oil. Since the 2000s, however, the United States has increased its energy self-sufficiency rate through the shale oil and gas revolution. At the same time, it has reviewed its energy security and has made efforts to reduce its dependence on the Middle East as much as possible. As a result, in 2022, only 980,000 barrels/day of oil from the Persian Gulf (mainly Saudi Arabia) was imported. OPEC as a whole imported only 1,250,000 barrels/day in the same year. Overall, the United States imports 7.86 million barrels/day, but imports 4.37 million barrels/day from its ally Canada. The United States is limiting imports from OPEC (Fig. 3).Footnote 35 Because Iran, which is hostile to the United States, is a member.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Full size image

On the other hand, the Middle East is now an option for the United States to buy oil. The Middle East is essential for the United States to export weapons. In the conflict between Israel and Gaza that has erupted since October 2023, the United States has been supplying weapons to Israel. It would be better for the United States to have a war in the Middle East.

The study of Riyazuddin Khan and Mohammad Imdadul Haque categorized oil-exporting countries into three groups: countries with above-average oil export, below-average oil export, and no export. The study finds a significant reduction in military spending over time in all three categories and in the Middle East. This declining military expenditure in all the categories can be interpreted as a reduction in the conflict in the Middle East from previous years. A significant decline was observed in the countries where oil export is above the average of the Middle East. The study also found that, on average, from 1986–2016, military expenditure in the Middle East declined by 5.22 per cent of the total GDP, followed by the military expenditure of countries with the export of crude oil above average declining by approximately 11 per cent. Moreover, the military expenditure of countries with exports of crude oil below average declined by 3.4 per cent, and that of countries with no crude oil exports declined by 4 per cent.Footnote 36

However, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Among arms exporters by country from 2017 to 2021, the United States ranks first, accounting for 39% of the world's arms exports (Figs. 4).Footnote 37 Almost half (47%) of US arms exports went to the Middle East in 2016–20. There were substantial increases in US arms exports to three countries in the region between 2011–15 and 2016–20: Israel (335%), Qatar (208%) and Saudi Arabia (175%). Saudi Arabia was the primary recipient of US arms transfers in 2016–20, accounting for 24% of US arms exports. Qatar and Israel were the sixth and seventh largest importers of US arms, respectively.Footnote 38 Saudi Arabia, which has been involved in the Yemeni Civil War, is using this weapon in its defense strategy against Iran.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Source: SIPRI

Full size image

SIPRI’s Arms Industry Database shows that arms sales by the world’s 25 largest arms-producing and military services companies (arms companies) totalled US$361 billion in 2019. This represents an 8.5 per cent increase in real terms over the arms sales of the top 25 arms companies in 2018.

In 2019 the top five arms companies were all based in the United States: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. These five together registered $166 billion in annual arms sales. In total, 12 US companies appear in the top 25 for 2019, accounting for 61 per cent of the combined arms sales of the top 25. The top 25 also includes four Chinese companies. Three are in the top 10: Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC; ranked 6th), China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC; ranked 8th) and China North Industries Group Corporation (NORINCO; ranked 9th). The combined revenue of the four Chinese companies in the top 25—which also include China South Industries Group Corporation (CSGC; ranked 24th)—grew by 4.8 per cent between 2018 and 2019.Footnote 39

Conclusion

Henry Kissinger says in his book that ‘the Middle East is caught in confrontation akin to―but broader than―Europe’s pre-Westphalian wars of religion. Domestic and international conflicts reinforce each other. Political, sectarian, tribal, territorial, ideological, and traditional national-interest disputes merge’.Footnote 40

He does not seem to feel any responsibility of America for that. Countries such as European countries and Japan, which were under the control of US security, may be also responsible. The Middle East has more conflicts than anywhere else. Colonial experience, their vital geographical location, and lack of democracy are all explanatory variables of the political instability in the Middle East.

The Middle East, so close to Europe and blocking the way to India and Africa, was divided and ruled as an imperialist territory after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Even after the colonial period ended, geopolitical issues dominated the Middle East. After World War II, four large-scale wars broke out between Israel and neighbouring Arab states between 1948 and 1973. The United States and the Soviet Union entered the Cold War, but they fought for spheres of influence in the Middle East.

After the Cold War, the Gulf War broke out and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States occurred, followed by the invasion of Afghanistan and the United States taking over the Hussein regime in Iraq. Global terrorism by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State swept the world. At the same time, the Arab Spring plunged most of the Middle East into political instability.

The United States sells weapons to Israel, which continues its invasion of Gaza, and helps them kill Palestinians. The United States is indirectly killing Yemenis by supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia, which continues to fight against the Houthis in Yemen. Yemen fell into political instability, and a large-scale famine broke out, with many children dying of starvation. Libya remains politically unstable due to the civil war. States like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are in a state of failure.

The US is pulling troops from Iraq and Afghanistan to prepare for a confrontation with China. After America withdraws from the Middle East, will China invade as well? Due to its geopolitical position and oil production, the Middle East has always been the trump card in the game, both before World War II and during the Cold War. In the US-China conflict, the critical geographical location may cast a large shadow on the history and life of the Middle East again. We hope that history does not repeat itself.