A Framework for Renewal in the Middle East?

Abstract

This book is intended to provide insight into the overall situation in the Middle East today. The need for such analysis arises from two major developments which occurred at the turn of the 1990s, and which have changed some of the parameters within which the politics of the region have moved. The first of these developments was external to the region itself: the transformation in the global system which occurred with the break-up of the Soviet Union. Middle Eastern states found themselves in a world where the superpower which was most overtly supportive of Arab regional ambitions (albeit suspected by many Arab governments of harbouring subversive intentions) had effectively disappeared from the scene. The transformation in the global system has forced regional states to review and restructure their relationship to the outside world — responding to a new balance of strategic power, taking cognizance of a range of new international actors (especially the new Caucasian and Central Asian republics), finding themselves engulfed by new sources of instability, and forging new patterns of alliance and cooperation.

This introduction has been developed from a chapter entitled ‘Emerging Patterns of Conflict and Order in the Middle East’, which the writer contributed to Muller-Syring, R. and Furtig, H. (eds), Ursachen gewalt-formiger Konflikte in der Golfregion (Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1993). The writer wishes to thank Drs Muller-Syring and Furtig for permission to reprint some of the material.