Abstract
Free of loaded value judgements, the word pairs East-West and Orient-Occident refer to the points of the compass where the sun rises and sets. In terms of cultural history, however, they express a centuries-old cultural tension between the Islamic Orient and the Christian Occident.1 The term ‘Middle East’, however, is a modern political term, the often very loose geographical definition of a region that — as a geopolitical entity — came into being in the course of recent history, and that is hence expandable and contractible. The terms ‘Middle East’ or ‘Near East’ used in European languages are only meaningful from the European perspective. If one is travelling from India or China to Cairo or Damascus, one is moving westwards, and yet one speaks incorrectly in geographical terms of a journey to the Middle East. This term came about in the narrow context of the imperial interests of European colonial powers. The present-day superpowers, the USA and to a certain extent the former Soviet Union, have adopted it, despite the fact that it is inappropriate to their geographical location. When, during the Iran Contra scandal of 1986–87, Reagan was occupied with arms deals with Iran and Israel from Washington, or even from his ranch in Santa Barbara in California on the West Coast, the vexatious region in question was certainly not in the ‘Middle’ East in relation to him. No more does Damascus lie in the ‘Middle East’ in relation to Moscow. Even in the language of international organisations, above all the United Nations (since spring 1948), this region is known as the ‘Middle East’, even after the dissolution of the European colonial empires.2
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Notes and References
See B. Tibi, ‘Orient und Okzident. Feindschaft oder interkulturelle Kommunikation?’, in Neue Politische Literatur, vol. 29 (1984), pp. 267–86.
L. Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Games, Princeton, NJ, 1984, p. 5.
See B. Tibi, Vom Gottesreich zum Nationalstaat: Islam und panarabischer Nationalismus, 2nd edn, Frankfurt am Main, 1991, esp. chapter 1i. English translation: Bassam Tibi, Arab Nationalism: A Critical Enquiry, 2nd edn., London, New York: Macmillan, 1990. On empires see the historical overview by Michael Doyle, Empires, Ithaca, 1986.
See Nohlen and Nuschler (eds), Handbuch der Dritten Welt, vol. 6: Nord-Afrika und Naher Osten, Hamburg, 1983.
Roderic H. Davison, ‘Where is the Middle East?’, in Richard Nolte (ed.), The Modern Middle East, New York, 1963, pp. 13–29, here p. 20.
On Mahan, see P. A. Crowl, ‘Mahan: The Naval Historian’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, Princeton, 1986, pp. 444–77.
See E.-S. Samland, Die regionale Konfiguration weltgesellschaftlicher Konfliktformationen–am Beispiel des arabisch-persischen Golfes, Frankfurt, Bern, 1985, pp. 165ff, esp. 176 (originally a dissertation, Göttingen 1982). See my review of this book in Middle East Journal, vol. 40, no. 3 (1986) pp. 506–7.
Jamil Matar and Ali Eddin Hillal, al-nizam al-iqlimi al-’arabi. Dirasah fi al’alagat al sisyasiyya al-’arabiyya (The Arab Regional System: An Examination of Inter-Arab Political Relations), 3rd extended edn, Beirut, 1983.
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, The New Arab Social Order: A Study of the Social Impact of Oil Wealth, Boulder, Col., 1982. Both Ibrahim and Hillal cooperated as authors in a research project of the al-Ahram Center in Cairo and UCLA, the results of which were published in M. H. Kerr and El-Sayed Yassin (eds), Rich and Poor States in the Middle East. Egypt and the New Arab Order, Boulder, Col., 1982. The Cairo political scientist Ali Hillal Dessouki publishes in Arabic under the name Ali Hillal.
Frederic Pearson, ‘Interaction in an International Political Subsystem: The Middle East 1963–64’, in Peace Research Society (InternationalPapers), vol. 15 (1970), pp. 73–99, here p. 78.
William R. Thompson, ‘Delineating Regional Subsystems: Visit Networks and the Middle Eastern Case’, in International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 13, (1981), pp. 213–5,
and A. Diskin and S. Mishal, ‘Spatial Models and Centrality of International Communities: Meetings between Arab Leaders 1966–1978’, in Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 25 (1981), pp. 655–76.
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Louis J. Cantori and Steven L. Spiegel, The International Politics of Regions: A Comparative Approach, Englewood’Cliffs, NJ, 1970, p. 8.
F. Ajami, ‘The End of Pan-Arabism’, in Foreign Affairs, vol. 57 (1978–9), pp. 355–73.
See also Carl Leiden, ‘Arab Nationalism Today’, in Middle East Review, vol. 11 (1978–9), pp. 45–51. See also the new chapter ‘Arab Nationalism Revisited’, in B. Tibi (note 5 above).
B. Tibi, ‘The Iranian Revolution and the Arabs: The Quest for Islamic Identity and the Search for an Islamic System of Government’, in Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 1 (1986), pp. 29–44.
See Charles Issawi, ‘The Bases of Arab Unity’, in Issawi (ed.), The Arab World’s Legacy, Princeton, NJ, 1981, and Elie Chalala, ‘Arab Nationalism: A Bibliographical Essay’, in T. E. Farah (ed.), Pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism Boulder, Col., 1987, pp. 18–56 and B. Tibi (note 5 above).
See B. Tibi, ‘Die Deutschen und die “Welt des Islams”’, in Deutschland: Portrait einer Nation, 10 vols., here vol. 10, Gütersloh, 1986, pp. 262–71, 2nd rev. edn., 1991.
Andrew Axline, ‘Underdevelopment, Dependence, and Integration: The Politics of Regionalism in the Third World’, in International Organization, vol. 31, no. 1 (1977), pp. 83–105.
H. Askari and John T. Cummings, ‘The Future of Economic Integration within the Arab World’, in International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 8 (1977), pp. 289–315, here pp. 3O8f.
Michael Brecher, ‘The Middle East Subordinate System and its Impact on Israel’s Foreign Policy’, in International Studies Quarterly, vol. 13 (1969), pp. 117–39, here p. 119.
B. Tibi, ‘Die Golf-Region im globalen Kräftefeld’, in Fred Scholz (ed.), Die Golf-Staaten, Braunschweig, 1985, pp. 17–35.
See also Liesl Graz, The Turbulent Gulf, London, 1990, in particular pp. 1–18.
Mohammed Abed Jabri, ‘The Evolution of the Maghrib Concept’, in Halim Barakat (ed.), Contemporary North Africa: Issues of Development and Integration, Washington, London, 1985, pp. 63–86.
See B. Tibi, ‘Die irakische Kuwait-Invasion und die Golf-Krise’, in Beiträge zur Konfliktforschung, vol. 20, no. 4 (1990), pp. 5–34.
John Waterbury, ‘The Middle East and the New World Economic Order’, in J. Waterbury, Ragaei el-Mallakh, The Middle East in the Coming Decade, New York, 1978, pp. 21ff, here pp. 27ff.
See Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, Princeton, NJ, 1976.
Yair Evron, The Middle East: Nations, Superpowers and Wars, New York, Washington, 1975, pp. 164f.
See Eberhard Kienle, Ba’th versus Ba’th: The Conflict Between Syria and Iraq 1968–1989, London, 1990.
See John Damis, Conflicts in Northwest Africa: The Sahara Dispute, Stanford, 1984. The recent reconciliation between Algeria and Morocco seems to have somewhat defused this conflict.
See Robert O. Freedman, Soviet Policy toward the Middle East since 1970, 2nd edn, New York, 1978.
Itamar Rabinovich, The War for Lebanon 1970–1985, Ithaca, 1985, on this pp. 121ff.
A. M. Farid (ed.), The Red Sea: Prospect for Stability, New York, 1984, and Roberto Aliboni, The Red Sea Region, Syracuse, New York, 1985.
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Tibi, B. (1998). The Middle East: Its Location and Delimitation. In: Conflict and War in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371576_3
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