Middle East Politics

Changing Dynamics

Mahmood Monshipouri

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429594151
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica mediorientale

Aimed at undergraduate-level courses, this brand-new textbook provides an overview of Middle Eastern politics, offering in-depth examination of the forces of stability, change, uncertainty, and progress in the region.

Building on both historical and contemporary analysis, the chapters are timely, engaging, and provocative, covering topics such as:

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• Turmoil and transition in Middle Eastern politics

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• The Arab-Israeli conflict

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• The Persian Gulf and global security

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• The rise of the internet

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• Terrorism and the Islamic State

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• US-Iran relations

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• The role of new regional players, such as China, India, and Russia

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• Increasing investment in wind and solar energy in the post-carbon era.

Providing a unique perspective on the major themes and current state of knowledge about the region, this new textbook will be invaluable to students of Middle Eastern politics.

1
TURMOIL AND TRANSITION IN MIDDLE EAST POLITICS

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continues to face multiple, explosive crises and staggeringly complex challenges that could threaten regional stability and the global political and security order should they be allowed to fester and metastasize. Known as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of the three Abrahamic monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the MENA region is currently one of the most turbulent areas in the world. In the past three decades alone, it has seen protests, uprisings, burgeoning sectarian tensions, civil wars, profound acts of terrorism, and a dramatic increase in the number of refugees and migrants spilling across regional and international borders.

The region has yet to recover from the 2011 uprisings of the Arab Spring that exploded in a fierce demand for liberty, economic security, social justice, and change that challenged, however transiently, the gerontocratic, corrupt, and authoritarian rule over increasingly young and alienated populations from Morocco to Syria. One expert has aptly described these uprisings as a refreshing departure from the past fixation with the ability of despots to enjoy uncontested power: “A revolutionary moment of political emancipation and self-determination challenges conventional ways and dominant thinking about the region, such as the durability and resilience of authoritarianism and the ability of autocratic rulers to police the status quo.”¹ While these uprisings have led to new struggles for democratic freedoms, ensuing events have left many young protesters with a deep sense of disillusionment, uncertainty, and unease about their future. A string of new political, socioeconomic, and cultural challenges has sounded the alarm throughout the region since the 2011 uprisings that authoritarian regimes and their external patrons may not have been ready or willing to hear.

The historical and cultural topography of the MENA region, specifically the pan-Islamist and pan-Arabist trends, once a formidable basis of popular, non-sectarian strength, have in recent years contained the seeds of divisions—sectarian and otherwise—and an inherent threat to its stability. Increasingly, the national identity of forward-looking individuals and elites has come into direct conflict with the traditional, transnational, ideational goals, and religious identities of these regional states.

FIGURE 1.1 Map of North Africa and the Middle East

Several major quandaries signify the substantial uncertainty and the emerging challenges of the near future. How can these states meet the challenge of peacefully reconciling their eroding legitimacy with popular domestic movements and more socially responsive modes of governance? In other words, how can a new social contract between the rulers and the ruled be conceived of and implemented that enjoys mass support and is conducive to the creation of political stability and democratic governance? What are the component parts of this new social contract and its corroborating new political order that should follow from the region’s socioeconomic and political realities? What kinds of alliances—domestic, regional, and transregional—are likely to emerge in this shifting political environment?

The changing geopolitics of oil presents a further challenge to the region. Wide and tumultuous fluctuations in, and at times rapidly declining, oil prices are likely to curtail government spending, increase taxation, and inaugurate new austerity programs, thus reducing the capability of states to provide social welfare, and pay their way out of political distress. Economic models based largely on oil revenues, which worked for several decades, are no longer appropriate when a majority of the population is 30 years of age or younger, oil prices are volatile, and the world as a whole has become smaller, more competitive, and increasingly linked by the Internet and other methods of global communication.²

This uncertainty may portend a significant fractiousness of the social and demographic orders that underpin these regimes. By far the most important question remains: Can these states stay the course by relying on old authoritarian institutions and security regimes, or must they allow some form of political and economic reforms to survive? If they must develop new governing principles for regime survival, what are the necessary elements of governance that these new institutions require to ensure their social and political viability?

Several dramatic political dynamics have come to reshape the region’s political order in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States and the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. The region has since been swept up in a wave of unrest and contentious politics, traumatized by the Syrian civil war and its ensuing refugee crisis, stymied by the counter-revolutionary forces in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf monarchies, entrapped by the resurgence of authoritarianism, and terrorized by the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as ISIL and by its Arabic acronym as Daesh).

These new dynamics have led to spillover effects of regional crises in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq, while contributing to a refugee crisis in Syria that has dramatically strained the governmental and social response in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. The increasingly sectarian tensions, exacerbated by the spread of global Jihadists and the flow of terrorists, have illustrated the extent to which these new dynamics have adversely affected regional stability. Add to this mix the increasing significance of social interactive technologies, which have presented new challenges to the absolute sovereignty of states, while, ironically, at the same time strengthening the repressive capacity of many states. This has left the broader international community with a less stable and clear stance with which to engage the states of the region.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, the MENA region has witnessed the dominant presence of the West, including, on numerous occasions, military interventions by Western countries. The efforts of the United States to protect its regional standing and interests, as well as to reassert its hegemony following its largely unilateral military intervention in Iraq in the post-September 11 era, have encountered an increasing resistance and a wide range of political and military obstacles. The strategic consensus of “bipartisanship” in Washington concerning a sustained US engagement in the Middle East has increasingly given way. The sense of US retrenchment under President Barack Obama and the ensuing nuclear deal with Iran—officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—clearly sent a signal to traditional US regional allies, such as Saudi Arabia, that US foreign policy had embarked upon a different path.³ This move irritated the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Israelis who saw the rapprochement with Iran as strengthening Tehran’s leverage in the region.

The Trump administration’s subsequent policy of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal signified a radical departure from the Obama-era policy of engaging Iran, while avoiding and resisting further entanglements in the Middle East region. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo established 12 conditions for renegotiating the nuclear deal with Iran. These conditions included, among others, ending Iran’s ballistic missiles, ending support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and the Palestinian groups including Hamas, allowing nuclear inspectors “unqualified access to all sites throughout the country,” ending Iran’s involvement in Syria and Iraq, disarming Shia militia in the region, and shutting down the country’s nuclear enrichment program.

Most of these conditions went beyond the scope of the country’s nuclear program and reflected the Trump administration’s interest in rolling back strategic regional concerns. In response to this new policy, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini pointed out that the US new policy fell well short of showing how these conditions can be fulfilled outside the nuclear deal:

Secretary Pompeo’s speech has not demonstrated how walking away from the JCPOA has made or will make the region safer from the threat of nuclear proliferation or how it puts us in a better position to influence Iran’s conduct in areas outside the scope of the JCPOA. There is no alternative to the JCPOA.⁴

Trump’s policy toward Iran, along with the broader US policy of retrenchment from the region, has opened up new opportunities for other great powers to escalate their engagement in the region. This explains why, in recent years, the MENA region has seen a steady rise of Chinese, Indian, and Russian influences. The trilateral Russian–Iranian–Turkish summit in late 2017 in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi to promote stability and the prospect of a real settlement to the Syrian civil war indicated the resurgent role that Russia has assumed in the Middle East.⁵

The shifting geopolitics

The decision by US foreign policymakers to reduce if not diminish America’s role, influence, and scope of its military operations in the MENA region can be explained by several factors, including its reduced dependence on Middle Eastern petroleum, its involvement in a streak of complex wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) that lack clear endgames, the ongoing civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and the resurgence of violence, and lastly, the political turmoil in the region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings. The negative consequences that US interventions have produced have been widely debated and often marked by many uncertainties and complexities. The US withdrawal from further involvement in the region is likely to weaken the region’s long-standing alliances forged since the postwar era.

The region’s tumultuous political history poses new challenges for the new players in the region at a time when rapidly shifting political contexts call for a more calculated and prudent foreign policy. To better explain both cooperation and competition between and/or among the new players in the region, especially leading Asian countries such as China, India, and Russia, we need to analyze their attempts to develop long-term strategic plans in the Middle East and Asia. It is equally important to examine the implication of the Asia–Mideast economic and political dynamics. Although the trade between major Asian economies and the Middle East should include Japan and South Korea, in terms of their primary exports to and imports from the region, we devote special attention to the cases of China, India, and Russia, hoping to reveal new dynamics, trends, and trajectories in the region.

The evolution of Russian policy toward the Middle East has been demonstrated by a more assertive political posture Moscow has opted for under President Vladimir Putin. This development, when combined with expanding Chinese and Indian ties with the region, points to a potential realignment of power, whereby China, and to a lesser extent India, are filling the void created by declining US power. Consequently, we may be witnessing the early manifestation of a new reality in which the MENA region is undergoing an “Asianization” process, whereby many countries are likely to turn to new and powerful actors in Asia that have emerged as their most significant economic partners and are assuming a larger voice in shaping the new order on the global political scene.

Russia’s muscle-flexing in Syria and its growing influence in Turkey indicate that Moscow appears poised to reshape political trajectories in the Middle East. Perhaps even more telling is that, as Vali Nasr notes, in the face of the US backing away from the nuclear deal, a consensus has emerged in Tehran around closer ties with Russia. Iran may look to increase its trade ties with Russia and purchase sophisticated weaponry from it to counter the growing military power of Saudi Arabia and its regional allies. The possibility of signing a defense pact with Russia no longer seems far-fetched, an agreement which would entail close military and intelligence cooperation and Russian access to Iranian military bases, an alternative that Iran has historically resisted.⁶ Ironically, Nasr concludes, the US policy of isolating and punishing Iran through crippling sanctions may end up empowering Russia without eroding Iran’s influence.⁷

Similarly, given the broader US retreat from the Middle East, China may equally entertain the possibility of entering into a strategic partnership with Iran. China’s increasing oil consumption and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Turmoil and transition in Middle East politics
• Part I Historical and contemporary contexts
• Part II Changing dynamics and evolving challenges
• Part III Prospects for the future
• Glossary
• Select bibliography
• Index