Abstract
Regions are increasingly becoming more consequential to global politics:
Many of the most important economic, military, and diplomatic interactions take place at [the regional] level for the simple reason that proximity matters. Many countries that count for little at the global level … have a much greater impact on their neighbors. At the same time, they are affected significantly by those same neighbors (Haas 2017, p. 151).
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Notes
- 1.
The prediction that absent the realities of the fast receding into the haze of history Cold War, “international relations will take on a more regionalized character” (Buzan et al. 1998, p. 9) is thus being confirmed. Global politics are currently also witnessing a new wave of regional organizations and initiatives (Kahler 2016).
- 2.
An extended and excellent analysis of how regional orders might fit into a more coherent whole in a manner possibly envisaged by Henry Kissinger can be found in Haas (2017, pp. 257–286). For a thoughtful exposition of the more recent developments in the international system see especially Litsas (2015).
- 3.
- 4.
Davison also argues that “Near East, Middle East, Far East were all projections of European—particularly British—thinking” (Davison 1960).
- 5.
Barry Buzan and Ole Waever are absolutely correct in stressing that “since regions matter more in the current era, the costs of underrating them would be even higher” (Buzan and Waever 2003, p. 41).
- 6.
It has even been argued that “as with nations, so regions can be seen as imagined communities which rest on mental maps whose lines highlight some features whilst ignoring others” (Fawcett 1995, p. 41).
- 7.
The author has had the opportunity to meet in the past in Athens with leading Croatian decision-makers and diplomats who rejected out of hand that theirs was a country that was part of the region of the Balkans, even when referred to more attractively as South Eastern Europe.
- 8.
For a significant attempt to describe, define and analyze regions based on RSC considerations, see Lake and Morgan (1997a).
- 9.
The Mediterranean is actually 30 times smaller than the Indian Ocean (Crowley 2015, p. 51).
- 10.
For the importance of the Mediterranean in the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age in connection to trade routes that likely played a role in the formation of identities and political rivalries, see Burns (2012, pp. 86–87).
- 11.
It would be a mistake, however, to argue that Braudel entirely denies human agency: “It is worth repeating that history is not made by geographical features, but by the men who control or discover them” (Braudel 2002, p. 193). In effect, the third volume of his magnum opus is devoted to the agency of humans.
- 12.
However, Nicholas Purcell subsequently admitted the somewhat “loose” nature of this definition (Purcell 2003, p. 10).
- 13.
On this point, see also Shavit (1988, p. 105).
- 14.
This lecture is exhaustively and expertly analyzed and put in proper context in Foxlee (2010). However, he translates a key sentence as “it cannot be a question of a sort of nationalism of the sun” (Foxlee 2010, p. 39). The French text reads “il ne peut s’agir d’une sorte de nationalisme du soleil” (Ibid., n. 19). I opted to keep in the text the sentence’s more established and readily available translation.
- 15.
The popularity of this approach in Israel probably reached its highest point by the mid-1990s (Nocke 2009, p. 27).
- 16.
On this point, see also Ashour (2014).
- 17.
See, for example, Lesser (2000).
- 18.
Barcelona declaration, adopted at the Euro-Mediterranean Conference 27-28/11/95. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/research/iscp/pdf/policy/barcelona_declaration.pdf
- 19.
The 43 member states of the UfM are: Albania, Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Mauritania, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, the Netherlands, the Palestinian Authority, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Syria, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
- 20.
Braudel eventually qualified somewhat his original position: “In 1949 I said that I could not detect any visible decline before 1620. Today I would guarantee of certainty, that 1650 is a likelier date …. To my mind, if one were to reconstruct the new panorama of the Mediterranean after the great divide marking the end of its prosperous youth, one would have to choose a date as late as 1650 or even 1680” (Braudel 2000c, p. 333). See also Braudel (2000b, pp. 417–418).
- 21.
This processes are the focus of the author’s current research project.
- 22.
- 23.
For an example of the impressive Noble Dina 2015 naval exercise conducted jointly by Greece, Israel and the U.S., see Samaan (2016, p. 1).
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Tziampiris, A. (2019). The New Eastern Mediterranean as a Regional Subsystem. In: Litsas, S.N., Tziampiris, A. (eds) The New Eastern Mediterranean. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90758-1_1
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