Understanding Security in the Middle East and North Africa
a traditional International Relatonions approach superficially accepts that anarchic international is less secure than what?
A traditional International Relations namely western security logic accepts that hierarchic domestic society is much more secure than anarchic international
Traditional approach to security issues fail to explain the issues most part of the world. To understand and explain such issues one must take into account some factors. What those factors could be?
Western security logic sometimes cannot explain issues in nonwestern security issues. To manage this problem one must take the factors like historical and political diversity, socially stratified nature of the domestic realm and its impact on secrutiy issues into account.
What reasons can be listed as sources for non western security logic and issues?
underdevelopment,
weak state structures/institutions,
state collapse,
instable social-political orders, and material scarcity in the economy, military, and technology,
can be listed
What state making means?
State making means, the construction of credible and legitimate political apparatuses with the capacity to provide order.
In western security logic, what does, match between state security and citizen security, end up with?
It does end up with Domination of ruling civilian domination over military
Which factors can be listed below about why non western states failed to establish states in western sense?
Because mainly unity of social groups inside nonwestern states merely has been lacking.
Factors can be listed as,
the late entry into the modern state system,
late emancipation from their colonial rulers,
and persistent external interventions;
the non-western states lack political, racial, linguistic, or religious commonalities that can overcome the differences to establish a unitary and stable state and society relations
What degree of statehood means?
It means, ‘demonstrated centralized control over territory and population, monopoly over the means of violence within the state’s boundaries, and the capacity to significantly permeate the society encompassed by the state’
In non western security formulation what are the factors, the regional and local conflicts primarily stemming from ?
They are domestic and transnational factors such as unfinished state-formation, weak state-society integration, the changing regional balance of power, economic underdevelopment, competition for political legitimacy, and international intervention.
How can you define a security dilemma?
A security dilemma is a relation of conflict, which forces parties to enter a war even if they do not like to.
What kind of conflict relations does the regional security include?
Regional security includes conflictual relations such as international and intra-state (civil) wars, arms race, civil-military relations, regime security, and alliance politics
How can you define identity politics?
It can be defined as one states strategic intention of mobilizing ethnic, religious or other groups in another state by utilizing transnational links to create unrest or conflict in the target state.
Can you name two collective security organizations in Middle East?
They are Arab League and Baghdad Pact
What are the three primary forms of Alliances?
They are,
defense (against external attackers),
non-aggression (between members),
entente pacts (just providing security coordination and information)
Why the British interest in Middile East significantly increased after 1912?
Because after that date British navy started using oil instead of coal.
What was the result of formal withdrawal of Ottoman Empire and Britain from Middle East?
It opened up a space for US to step in and perform a crucial balancing role against Russia, Iran and Iraq in Cold War era.
What kind of politics did the US conducted in the Middle East in the last decade?
US, in the name of combating terrorism, preferred to the status quo and helped authoritarian and dictatorial rulers in the Middle East. Even the Arab Uprisings did not change this overall strategy.
How can you define China's relation to Middle East?
China gets nearly %55 oil import from Gulf region and it has increasing interest in Middle East but China simply does not prefer a security-related presence in the region since this presence would endanger its economic activities.
To which date can be Arab-Israeli conflict rooted back to?
It has a nearly century long history. It can be dated back to 1917 Balfour Decleration
In the Middle East after 1980's what kind of conflicts added to Arab-Israeli conflicts?
After 1980's many conflicts added to Arab-Israeli conflict such as intra-Arab or Arab-non Arab conflicts as well as civil (Lebanon 1975-1990) and international wars (Gulf War, 1990-1).
Iran, since the revolution in 1979, facilitated the nonstate armed actors spread can you name some of them?
Some of the nonstate armed actors Iran facilitate spreading are Hezbollah in Lebanon; the Hashd al-Sha’abi in Iraq with sprinter sub-groups such as the Badr Organization, Kata’ib Hezbollah, and Asaib Ahl al- Haq; Shia militia in Syria; the Houthis in Yemen; Liwa Fatemiyoun from Afghanistan; Liwa Zainabyoun from Pakistan; and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Palestine.