PERSPECTIVES ON MIDDLE EAST SECURITY (original) (raw)
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Security in the Middle East: Enduring and Emerging Challenges
Global Security in an Age of Crisis, 2023
The Middle East occupies the minds of policymakers, security experts, and geopolitical pundits arguably far beyond what the region’s territorial scope and economic heft appear to warrant. Why the Middle East seems to grab outsized attention can perhaps be pinned to the seemingly imponderable array of security problems occurring in the region. To the casual observer and area specialist alike, the scale of violence can seem bewildering. Stories about the Middle East over the past decade all too often have had conflict at the center. This chapter seeks to bring some analytical clarity to the endless array of seemingly primordial conflicts, geopolitical maneuverings, and freshly imported security challenges that define the region’s character. A central theme that emerges is that the sources of insecurity are a combination of longstanding issues as well as new, emerging challenges. In what is necessarily no more than a summary of the most significant factors shaping the regional security environment, this chapter also broaches the important role played by technology. While we in no way posit a technologically deterministic account of security trends in the region, there is little doubt that rapid technological developments are having an important shaping effect, creating new vectors for rivals to target one another, and spurring profound social, political, and economic change.
Regional Security in the Middle East
E-International Relations Publishing, 2022
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 demography, geography, the environment, available resources, migration patterns as well as science and technology on Middle Eastern security dynamics. The third part focuses 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. stephan.lorenz@jura.uni-muenchen.de
Regional security in the Middle East— what is that we seek?
2015
Summary While we cannot all agree on our visions for ‘regional security’, it is important, for the purposes of furthering dialogue, to clarify our points of disagreement. In my previous work, I adopted a critical security framework for studying regional security by opening up both ‘region’ and ‘security’ to inquire into the mutually constitutive relationship between the two. These perspectives were the ‘Middle East, ‘Arab regional system’, ‘Mediterranean’, and ‘Muslim Middle East’. In what follows, I revisit this framework in light of the developments of the past decade and consider two new perspectives: Turkey’s ‘Ottoman geopolitical space’ and ‘al Midan’.
The Middle East: Thinking About and Beyond Security and Stability
Rome, IAI, March 2019, 27 p. (Documenti IAI ; 19|06), 2019
On 7-8 February 2019, the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration (PSPA) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) organised a two-day international conference within the framework of the New-Med Research Network. Several leading scholars and prominent journalists gathered at AUB to address a number of security-related issues, all connected to one main question: What does (in)security mean from the perspective of people living in the Middle East and North Africa?
Securing the Middle East: Critical Perspectives - MA level (2015-16)
This course is designed as a postgraduate level introduction to regional security in the Middle East. Students will be introduced to key concepts and debates on regional security, and critical perspectives on security in the Middle East. By the end of this course, students are expected to have become familiar with the key literature on regional security in the Middle East from multiple perspectives, and demonstrate competence in discussing their strengths and weaknesses.
Lorenzo Kamel Introduction -- Nader Hashemi Chapter 1: From Sectarianization to De-Sectarianization: How to Advance Human Security in the Middle East -- Coralie Pison Hindawi Chapter 2: Selective Arms Flows and Arms Control: Producing Insecurity in the Middle East … and Beyond -- Waleed Hazbun Chapter 3: Insecurity, Order and Pluralism in the Middle East: An Agenda for a Critical Approach to Security Studies -- Elijah J. Magnier Chapter 4: Beyond Security and Stability -- Arshin Adib-Moghaddam Chapter 5: Contra-Identity: Psycho-Nationalism After the ‘Middle East’ -- Abdullah Al-Arian Chapter 6: Islamists and the Arab Counter-Revolutions -- Youssef Cherif Chapter 7: Dahlan vs Belhaj: The Maghreb in the Arab War of Narratives -- Morten Valbjørn Chapter 8: Dialogues in New Middle Eastern Politics: On (the Limits of) Making Historical Analogies to the Classic Arab Cold War in a Sectarianized New Middle East -- Lorenzo Kamel Chapter 9: Whose Stability? Assessing the ‘Iranian Threat’ through History --- In this edited book, several leading scholars address a number of security-related issues, all connected to one main research question: What (in)security means from the perspective of people living in the Middle East and North Africa? In doing so, the contributors shed light on the contours of a stable and legitimate order that responds to the needs of the peoples in the region, on what history tells us about the ongoing debates on security and stability in the region, and, last but not least, on "human security", which encompasses the dimension of human rights, political rights and social-economic security. https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/71741
Regional Insecurity After the Arab Uprisings: Narratives of Security and Threat, 2015
This chapter revisits a framework I offered in the early 2000s for studying ‘regional security’ in the ‘Middle East’ from a critical security studies perspective. I analysed four regional conceptions (the Middle East, the Arab world, the Mediterranean, and the Muslim world) and teased out four perspectives on regional security that have shaped (and been shaped by) these spatial conceptions. All four perspectives on ‘regional security’ assumed threats to stem from outside the ‘region’. However, depending on their regional definition, what constituted the threatening ‘outside’ was understood differently. Here, I revisit this framework in light of the developments of the past decade (including 9/11, the Arab Spring and the so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’ set up in 2014). I will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the four aforementioned perspectives and consider two new ones: Turkey’s ‘Ottoman geopolitical space’ and ‘al Midan’. I define ‘al Midan’ as a bottom-up perspective shaped by people in this part of the world and beyond, who are ‘reclaiming the political’ (Jabri) in Midan al Tahrir (Liberation Square) of Egypt and in Turkey’s Taksim Meydanı [Taksim Square].