Gold at the end of the rainbow? The BRI and the Middle East

In 2013 China embarked on a new path of engagement with its Asian neighbours, a process which just three years later resulted in Asia's most daring and ambitious macro‐economic undertaking – an ‘initiative’ now known as China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI has the potential to transform Asia's political economy and the level of political, institutional and financial support from Beijing is underlining the importance of this major initiative to the world's fast‐emerging largest economy. The success of the BRI will place China at the heart of the international system and help it build strong organic networks across Asia, and into Europe and East Africa. But it is in the outlying regions such as Central Asia and the Middle East that the BRI's metal will be tested, as indeed China's resilience as a major power. If China is able to overcome the geopolitical, cultural, institutional and socio‐economic barriers of these Asian regions then it will have made some headway towards creating Asia's first international community, arguably an ‘Asian international society’

2005: The Year of Crisis in Iran

2005 was always going to be a testing year for Iran and the region as a whole, but the extent of the upheaval only emerged as the year wore on. While most observers eagerly awaited Iran’s presidential poll of June 2005 for new policy directions from Tehran, by early 2005, other developments beyond Iran were already making their mark on Iran-GCC relations. Chief amongst these were Iraq’s first free elections of the year, which took place in January 2005. This, in effect, consolidated the political presence of Iraqi Shias and Kurds at the center of power in the country. But of further concern in Iran-GCC relations were also another row over the name of the waterway between them, concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, and fears of Iranian domination of post-Saddam Iraq

9/11 As a Cause of Paradigm Shift?

Paradigm shifts often occur in moments of trauma and profound dislocation. After a relatively long period of stability in the international system after 1945, the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has ushered in four dramatic powerful quakes in succession to destabilise the balance of power system which had been built around the superpower camps. These quakes have shaken the very foundations of the international systemic structures which had held the system steady for the previous 50 years. The end of the Cold War in 1989 was the first profound dislocation, bringing in its wake two further shocks: the end of bipolarity on the one hand, and; the rapid spread of the capitalist mode of production on the other. Globalization took off, spinning such theoretically diverse perspectives as Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ and the ‘clash of civilizations’, first noted by Bernard Lewis in 1990, but popularized by Samuel Huntington in his 1993 Foreign Affairs article. But the most profound, coming some time later, was by far the most traumatic and horrific. The 11th of September 2001 terrorist attacks on US targets on American soil were a resounding shock to an already uncertain international system. It was this event and its impact on the public psyche which may have finally caused a profound and real paradigm shift. That 9/11 did so in American thinking and foreign policy conduct, particularly in relation to the Middle East, is the subject of this paper. Looking back, it is clear that the trauma of 9/11 reinforced four existing trends in US policy circles in terms of their conceptualization and responses to the complex and dangerous world around them: • To ensure American supremacy and predominance in both economic and military and terms; • To adopt pre-emption as a central feature of US foreign policy; • To seek to defeat global terrorism and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which could also fall into the hands of terrorists; and, • To spread democracy to the ‘greater/broader’ Middle East as a political and security imperative of the United States. It is the latter objective that I have singled out as the main feature of the paradigm shift which has followed the uncertainties of the post-Cold War international system and the end of bipolarity. Democracy promotion has been a strong feature of American foreign policy since the beginnings of the twentieth century, but the form it is taking today and the manner in which it is being articulated and pursued speaks of something quite different. Democracy promotion has become the cornerstone of US’ new thinking on the ‘broader’ Middle East

Globalization and Geopolitics in the Middle East: Old Games, New Rules

The following text is taken from the publisher's website: "Examining globalization in the Middle East, this book provides a much needed assessment of the impact of globalization in the 'greater' Middle East, including North Africa, in the context of the powerful geopolitical forces at work in shaping the region today. Written by a well-known authority in this area, this book demonstrates that, unlike in other regions, such as East Asia, geopolitics has been a critical factor in driving globalization in the Middle East. The author argues that whereas elsewhere globalisation has opened up the economy, society, culture and attitudes to the environment; in the Middle East it has had the opposite effect, with poor state formation, little interregional trade, foreign and interregional investment, and reassertion of traditional identities. This book explores the impact of globalization on the polities, economies and social environment of the greater Middle East, in the context of the region’s position as the central site of global geopolitical competition at the start of the twenty-first century.