War and Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa

Оглавление

Ariel I. Ahram. War and Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa

CONTENTS

List of Tables

List of Illustrations

Guide

Pages

War and Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Which MENA?

Why MENA?

How to Read This Book

Notes

1Accounting for War in the Middle East and North Africa

First Cut: Frequency of War

Second Cut: Conflict Types

Third Cut: Conflict Magnitude

Conclusion

Notes

2The MENA Security Predicament

MENA’s Wars and Levels-of-Analysis Problems

Global/Strategic Level

Regional Level

State Level

A Historical Sociology of War and Conflict in MENA

Colonial Wars

Wars of States

“Forever Wars”

Conclusion: A View from Beirut

Notes

PART IICONFLICT TRAPS

Notes

3Oil as Conflict Trap

A Social History of MENA’s Oil Curse

Oil and International Wars

The Oil Price Cycle and MENA’s Regional Conflict

Oil and Internal Wars

Case Study: Oil and War in Libya

Conclusion

Notes

4Identity as Conflict Trap

Group Identities and States in the Middle East

Ethnic Groups and the Equilibrium of Cooperation

Assimilation Strategies

Consociational Strategies

Domination Strategies

Why Ethnic War?

Case Study: Making Ethnic War in Syria

Conclusion

Notes

5Geopolitics as Conflict Trap

Geopolitics as Practice and Discourse

The Geopolitics of Colonialism

Cold War Geopolitics and America’s Ascent

Case Study: Pax Americana, Counterterrorism, and the Greater West Asian Crisis

Conclusion

Notes

6Fragmentation, Integration, and War in the 2010s

Proxy Wars and the Politics of Distant Proximities

From Local Disputes to Civil War

Libya

Syria

Yemen

Networks Unwound

A Thirty Years’ War?

Notes

7Peace and Peacemaking

Defining Peace and Pursuing It

The Evolution of MENA’s Peace Infrastructure

Arab–Israeli Conflicts and the Question of Peace

The Future of Peace, 2011 and Beyond

Conclusion

Notes

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index. A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Z

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ARIEL I. AHRAM

Finally, I thank my family for their love and care. My mother, Judi, was a constant source of support. My wife, Marni, and daughters, Matilda and Leonie, all played a role they will never know. I hope, as always, that this book contributes to a good they can inherit.

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Chapter 6 offers an extended case study of the last decade of MENA history as a protracted and multi-level regional war. It shows how the civil wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, often treated as discrete conflicts, became interconnected as theaters in a larger regional and global contest. This contest involved the United States and Russia as the main extra-regional players, but most crucially Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, and others as regional actors asserting supremacy. Operating transnationally, the conflict traps escalate war to the point where initial objectives and interests no longer matter.

The seventh and final chapter of the book shifts the focus to peace and peacemaking. There have been innumerable diplomatic plans and efforts to end wars in MENA. Only a fraction have made much impact. Many of these initiatives came from extra-regional powers or their close regional allies. At the same time, “bottom-up” efforts to achieve local conciliation and peace also have a mixed record. This chapter evaluates how different approaches to conflict resolution and mitigation address the potential “traps” of oil, identity, and geopolitics. In many cases, “solving” one trap only exacerbates the problems of the other, creating a Gordian knot that cannot easily be untied. Nevertheless, attention to those places where peace has gained a footing is important for understanding how conflicts in MENA might end.

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