The Middle East In World Affairs

The Middle East is, and has always been, of major global economic and political importance. First published in 1981, this edited collection analyses many of the crucial issues that have had international repercussions during the second half of the twentieth century, with each paper considering the particular regional problems within the widest possible political framework. Internationally renowned authors consider such areas as the relationship between Israel and the Middle East, the influence of oil on global decision-making, Afghanistan and its neighbours, and the economic issues that the region has faced. A timely and relevant reissue, dealing with problems of continued importance, this volume will be of particular interest to students researching the history of the Middle Eastern conflict and the region’s variety of relationships with the West.

This book investigates how ecology and politics meet in the Middle East and how those interactions connect to the global political economy. Through region-wide analyses and case studies from the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf of Aden, the Levant and North Africa, the volume highlights the intimate connections of environmental activism, energy infrastructure and illicit commodity trading with the political economies of Central Asia, the Horn of Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The book's nine chapters analyze how the exploitation and representation of the environment have shaped the history of the region--and determined its place in global politics. It argues that how the ecological is understood, instrumentalized and intervened upon is the product of political struggle: deconstructing ideas and practices of environmental change means unravelling claims of authority and legitimacy. This is particularly important in a region frequently seen through the prism of environmental determinism, where ruling elites have imposed authoritarian control as the corollary of 'environmental crisis'. This unique and urgent collection will question much of what we think we know about this pressing issue.

In many respects this book represents a considerable departure from traditional works on international relations in the Middle East. Instead of offering partial explanations based on conventional approaches, this book attempts to incorporate studies with different methodological approaches and with the Middle East. Foreign affairs specialists offer balanced and linguistically neutral commentaries, while marshalling empirical data to support their analyses. The result is a broad synthesis which helps the reader see the larger picture despite its complexity. The Middle East is considered as a subordinate system of the international political system in Part 1. The chapters in this section focus on the nations of the area and their interactions within the subsystem. The papers also examine the implications of these interactions to the nations outside the Middle East. In Part 2 the scope of inquiry is enlarged to treat interactions between the major world powers and the nations of the Middle East. Papers in Part 3 focus upon American foreign policy in the Middle East. This portion examines the roles of various special-interest groups such as the oil companies, Zionists, the United States Congress, newspapers, and religious bodies as they relate to the formation of American policy for the Middle East. In essence, The Middle East is an "international relations" study of the Middle East. Additionally, it has new material--the treatment of religious influences upon the Middle East, the attitudes of some major newspapers towards the middle East conflict, and the domestic position of Israel regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict--seldom discussed in other works.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Middle East international politics in the light of international relations theory. It assesses the impact of international penetration, including the historic formation of the regional state system, the continued role of external great powers, and the incorporation of the region into the international capitalist market. It examines the region’s distinctive dialect between trans-state identities, Arabism and Islam, and the consolidation of a sovereign state system. It looks at the consequences of state formation for the ability of state elites to manage the external and domestic arenas in which they must operate; and it analyzes the impact of the foreign policy process in individual states.