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Regional Security in the Middle East Sectors, Variables and Issues BETTINA KOCH & YANNIS A. STIVACHTIS Eds. This e-book is provided without charge via free download by E-International Relations (www.E-IR.info). It is not permitted to be sold in electronic format under any circumstances. If you enjoy our free e-books, please consider leaving a small donation to allow us to continue investing in open access publications: http://www.e-ir.info/about/donate/ i Regional Security in the Middle East Sectors, Variables and Issues EDITED BY BETTINA KOCH AND YANNIS A. STIVACHTIS ii E-International Relations www.E-IR.info Bristol, England 2019 ISBN 978-1-910814-51-2 This book is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license. You are free to: • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material Under the following terms: • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. • NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission. Please contact [email protected] for any such enquiries, including for licensing and translation requests. Other than the terms noted above, there are no restrictions placed on the use and dissemination of this book for student learning materials/scholarly use. Production: Michael Tang Cover Image: P.V.R Murty via Shutterstock A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. iii E-IR Edited Collections Series Editors: Stephen McGlinchey, Marianna Karakoulaki & Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska Books Editor: Cameran Clayton Editorial assistance: Bastian Harth, Daniele Irandoost, Khalil Lezzaik and Adeleke Olumide Ogunnoiki E-IR’s Edited Collections are open access scholarly books presented in a format that preferences brevity and accessibility while retaining academic conventions. Each book is available in print and digital versions, and is published under a Creative Commons license. As E-International Relations is committed to open access in the fullest sense, free electronic versions of all of our books, including this one, are available on our website. Find out more at: http://www.e-ir.info/publications About the E-International Relations website E-International Relations (www.E-IR.info) is the world’s leading open access website for students and scholars of international politics, reaching over 3 million unique readers annually. E-IR’s daily publications feature expert articles, blogs, reviews and interviews – as well as student learning resources. The website is run by a registered non-profit organisation based in Bristol, UK and staffed with an all-volunteer team of students and scholars. iv Abstract This book employs the comprehensive approach to security to identify and analyse security dynamics in the Middle East. To this end, it is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the identification of threats operating in the political, societal, economic and environmental sectors. It argues that due to security interdependence these security sectors are inextricably connected to the extent that threats originating in one sector have the potential of causing – through a spillover process – the emergence of security threats in other sectors. The second part investigates the impact of a set of factors, such as demography, geography, the environment, available resources, migration patterns as well as science and technology on Middle Eastern security dynamics. It is suggested that all these factors will have a significant impact on Middle East security in the very near future. The third part provides a thorough examination of salient political, economic and security issues in the Middle East by focusing on topics such as the role and effectiveness of regional human rights organizations, the causes of religious radicalisation, the use of religion to justify political conflicts, the role and strategy of regional violent non-state actors, and how the Arab Spring has challenged institutional structures and relationships in the Middle East. v Bettina Koch is Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She has published widely on political theory and the history of Western and non-Western political thought. Her work focuses on issues related to the interaction of politics and religion, political violence in transcultural comparison, the concept of terrorism as a topic in political theory, state decline and failure, mass surveillance, and state terrorism. Her most recent monograph is Patterns Legitimizing Political Violence in Transcultural Perspectives: Islamic and Christian Traditions and Legacies (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015; paperback 2016). She is editor of the volume State Terror, State Violence – Global Perspectives (Springer: Wiesbaden, 2016) and co-editor (with Cary J. Nederman) of Inventing Modernity in Medieval European Thought, c. 1100 – c. 1550 (Medieval Institute Publications, 2018). In 2016/17 she was Caltech-Huntington Humanities Collaborations Fellow, California Institute of Technology and Huntington Library and Caltech Visiting Associate in the Humanities, California Institute of Technology. Yannis A. Stivachtis is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Studies Program at Virginia Tech. He has published widely on international relations and security. His research interests include the global order and contemporary sub-global international societies (Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East), and the application of the comprehensive security approach to regional security in the Middle East. He currently serves as Director of the Center for European & Mediterranean Affairs (CEMA) of the Athens Institute for Education & Research (ATINER), editor of the Critical European Studies book series published by Routledge, and co-editor of the Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies. His publications include Conflict and Diplomacy in the Middle East (editor, Bristol: E-International Relations, 2018); The Road to EU Membership: The Economic Transformation of Turkey (co-editor; Brussels: Brussels University Press, 2011); Turkey-European Union Relations: Dilemmas, Opportunities and Constraints (co-editor, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008); European Union’s Mediterranean Enlargement (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002); Co-operative Security and Non- Offensive Defense in the Zone of War (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2001); and Non-Offensive Defense in the Middle East (co-author, New York: United Nations Publications, 1998). vi Contributors Hassan Ahmadian, Assistant Professor, Department of West Asia and North Africa Studies, University of Tehran. Catherine Baylin Duryea, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Stanford University and Charles W. McCurdy Fellow in Legal History, School of Law, University of Virginia. Christopher P. Dallas-Feeney, Professorial Lecturer in Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University. Stefanie Georgakis Abbott, Assistant Director of Presidential Studies, Miller Center, University of Virginia. Johannes Grow, Adjunct Professor of International Studies, Radford University. Akis Kalaitzidis, Professor of Political Science, Department of Government, International Studies and Languages (GISL), University of Central Missouri (UCM). Dina Ibrahim Rashed, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago. Adriana Seagle, Assistant Professor and Intelligence & Security Studies Program Director, Bellevue University. vii viii Regional Security in the Middle East: Sectors, Variables and Issues Contents INTRODUCTION Bettina Koch & Yannis A. Stivachtis 1 PART I - A SECTORAL APPROACH TO MIDDLE EAST SECURITY 1. POLITICAL (IN)SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST Yannis A. Stivachtis 23 2. SOCIETAL (IN)SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: RADICALISM AS A REACTION? Hassan Ahmadian 45 3. ECONOMIC (IN)SECURITY AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST Johannes Grow 61 4. ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST Adriana Seagle 80 PART II - VARIABLES AFFECTING MIDDLE EAST SECURITY 5. DEMOGRAPHY, MIGRATION AND SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST Stefanie Georgakis Abbott & Yannis A. Stivachtis 99 6. GEOGRAPHY, RESOURCES AND THE GEOPOLITICS OF MIDDLE EAST CONFLICTS Dina Rashed 131 7. SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST Yannis A. Stivachtis 146 PART III - ISSUES IN MIDDLE EAST SECURITY 8. UNMASKING ‘RELIGIOUS’ CONFLICTS AND RELIGIOUS RADICALISATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST Bettina Koch 168 ix 9. VIOLENT NON-STATE ACTORS IN THE MIDDLE EAST: ORIGINS AND GOALS Christopher P. Dallas-Feeney 185 10. ELITE CHOICES, PATH DEPENDENCY AND THE ARAB SPRING Akis Kalaitzidis 204 11. HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST: GLOBAL NORMS AND REGIONAL PARTICULARITIES Catherine Baylin Duryea 217 NOTE ON INDEXING 230 1 Regional Security in the Middle East: Sectors, Variables and Issues Introduction Regional Security in the Middle East BETTINA KOCH & YANNIS A. STIVACHTIS As a term, Middle East, albeit still contested in its meaning, did not gain much currency until after the Second World War. Especially during the Cold War, the terminology was popularised in US contexts (Adelson 2012, 47–50). Here, we use the neologism Middle East as referring to the geographical area situated at the junction of Europe, Asia, and Africa and of the Mediterranean Sea and the
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