Abstract
Security is the most widespread, if not the most basic, concern of states and societies. Yet the actual form which security threats take, as well as their severity, varies considerably from one set of states to another and from region to region. Students of international politics have traditionally concentrated almost entirely on external military and power political problems. As the preceding analyses make clear, these have indeed been serious concerns for virtually all Arab states. However, as this study has also demonstrated, Arab states and societies have faced, and continue to face, a much broader range of pressures and problems, which pose a threat to core interests and values. This is as true after the Gulf crisis as before.
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Notes
By the mid-1980s, the Middle East accounted for 55 per cent of all major power arms transfers to the Third World, and North Africa another 11 per cent. See US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1986 (Washington, DC: ACDA, 1987).
For an analysis of the evolving pattern of power and foreign policy techniques in the Arab system, see Paul Noble, ‘The Arab System: Pressures, Constraints and Opportunities’, in Bahgat Korany, Ali Dessouki et al., The Foreign Policies of Arab States, 2nd edn (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1991).
Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament (Cambridge University Press, 1981);
and Gabriel Ben-Dor, State and Conflict in the Middle East: The Emergence of the Postcolonial State (New York: Praeger, 1983).
See also Tawfic E. Farah (ed.), Pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism: The Continuing Debate (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1987).
Bahgat Korany, ‘Alien and Besieged Yet Here to Stay: The Contradictions of the Arab Territorial State’, in Ghassan Salamé (ed.), The Foundations of the Arab States (London: Croom Helm, 1987);
Ghassan Salamé, ‘Inter-Arab Politics: The Return of Geography’, in William B. Quandt (ed.), The Middle East: Ten Years After Camp David (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1988); and Rex Brynen, ‘Palestine and the Arab State System: Permeability, State Consolidation, and the Intifada’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 24, 3 (September 1991).
On the latter, and in particular on efforts to reshape culture in directions supportive of the socio-political status quo, see Eric Davis and Nicolas Gavrielides, Statecraft in the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory, and Popular Culture (Miami, Fla.: Florida International University Press, 1991).
Giacomo Luciani, ‘Allocation vs. Production States: A Theoretical Framework’, and Hazem Beblawi, ‘The Rentier State in the Arab World’, in Beblawi and Luciani (eds), The Rentier State (London: Croom Helm, 1987); Samih Farsoun, ‘Oil, State and Social Structure in the Middle East’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 10, 2 (Spring 1988); and Giacomo Luciani, ‘Economic Foundations of Democracy and Authoritarianism: The Arab World in Comparative Perspective’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 10, 4 (Fall 1988).
I. William Zartman, ‘Introduction’, and Adeed Dawisha, ‘Conclusion: Reasons for Resilience’, in Zartman and Dawisha (eds), Beyond Coercion: The Durability of the Arab State (London: Croom Helm, 1988).
For an examination of this in the Syrian and Iraqi contexts, see Nikolas van Dam, ‘Minorities and Political Elites in Iraq and Syria’, in Talal Asad and Roger Owen (eds), The Middle East (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983)
By the middle of the decade, more than ninety such groups could be identified in the Arab world, of which more than two-thirds were highly militant. R. Hrair Dekmejian, Islam in Revolution: Fundamentalism in the Arab World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985) pp. 179–91. The fact that Dekmejian’s study was ‘supported and monitored’ by the Defence Intelligence Agency (p. iv) also provides an indication of the extent to which the United States increasingly perceived fundamentalism as a threat to the security interests of itself and its regional allies.
For an overview, see the contributions to Shireen Hunter (ed.), The Politics of Islamic Revivalism: Diversity and Unity (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1988).
For a discussion of this relationship, see Klaus Knorr, Military Power and Potential (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1970) pp. 41–117.
Malcolm Kerr and El Sayed Yassin (eds), Rich and Poor States in the Middle East: Egypt and the New Arab Order (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1982).
World Bank, World Development Report 1990 (Oxford University Press, 1990) Table 23.
For an overview of the contradictions of public-sector-led growth, and the adoption of infitah in response, see Alan Richards and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East: State, Class and Economic Development (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1990) pp. 219–62.
On Lebanon, see Salim Nasr, ‘Lebanon’s War: Is the End in Sight?’ Middle East Report, 162 (January-February 1990). On Iraq, see Kamran Mofid, The Economic Consequences of the Gulf War (London: Routledge, 1990). Mofid puts the total cost of the war at US$644.3 billion and US$452.6 billion to Iran and Iraq respectively.
Rex Brynen, ‘Economic Crisis and Post-Rentier Democratization in the Arab World: the Case of Jordan’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 25, 1 (March 1992); Daniel Brumberg, ‘Democratic Bargains and the Politics of Economic Stabilization: The Case of Egypt in Comparative Perspective’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Toronto, November 1989.
Financial Times (London) 2 January 1991; Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Saudi Arabia 1 (1991) p. 11;
and EIU, Country Report: United Arab Emirates 1 (1991) p. 7.
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© 1993 Bahgat Korany, Paul Noble and Rex Brynen
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Noble, P., Brynen, R., Korany, B. (1993). Conclusion: The Changing Regional Security Environment. In: Korany, B., Noble, P., Brynen, R. (eds) The Many Faces of National Security in the Arab World. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22568-2_13
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