Book Review — “The New Regional Order in the Middle East: Changes and Challenges”

• Arash M. Akbari is a research associate at the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA). Studying International Affairs MAIA Programme @JohnsHopkinsSAIS Europe. He writes mostly about Iran, Middle Eastern security affairs and diplomatic relations.

In the recent decades, due to the strategic geopolitical culture and external interventions, the region of the Middle East has experienced a shared sense of inequality, inconvenient state-citizen relationships, grievance, lack of social mobility, and a major distrust in their political order. Promotion of sectarianism, expansion of foreign military interventions, and revisionist strategic culture of some Middle Eastern states has ignited and subsequently fuelled proxy wars across the region. This book focuses on the balance of power in the region and illustrates how the current order has been evolving through the past century. Socio-economic challenges, GCC’s rentier states power dynamics, and the collision course between regional realignments and foreign interventions in states such as Syria, Yemen and Lebanon have facilitated the new order to be multipolar. In addition to the above, Iran’s nuclear programme, ballistic missiles and other defensive deterrent capabilities has also articulated the new order of the region to be complex and convoluted.

With respect to the above, this book suggests that the newly emerged order of the Middle East is a product of a collision between international neo-liberal order and the regional conservative defensive realist policies. delegitimization of international liberal institutions has challenged power politics in the region of the Middle East. Unreliability and invalidity of such institutions in conflict management and preserving peace and stability has divided states into two groups. First, states that are economically developed and willing to buy measures of protection from external power. Second, economically developing states that are ideologically and fundamentally against liberalism and are resisting against the forces of liberalism. Furthermore, the effects of globalization in the region of the Middle East and North Africa was not similar to the effects of globalization in developed countries. It has been argued that the notion of globalization has increased institutional discrimination against Middle Eastern regional states.

In chapter 1, the author discusses the socio-economic aspects of the region of the Middle East and analyses the effects of social identities, values, norms, roles and ‘state-citizen relationship’ on the construction of the newly emerged political order. Although the degree of change is different in a range of countries whether or not affected by the uprisings, nevertheless, these factors are still widely visible across the region. In light of the above, Bazoobandi also argues that these socio-economic factors igniting several uprisings and promoting reforms have also had environmental effects and challenges for the states in the region. Challenges in which are still threatening states in terms of access to water, food and energy provision. To conclude this chapter, Bazoobandi argues that these challenges have been acting as a derivative in the past decade for designing the new regional order. Environmental factors that subsequently affected economic and political dynamics.

In chapter 2 and 3 authors focused on the interstate relations between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states and their influence on regional politics. Playing a vital role with a dynamic potential, oil wealth management and its expenditure distribution has created challenges and initiated changes in the regional politics. To elaborate on that, authors give an example of how the oil price deficit in the past year has affected social contracts across the Middle East. The oil price volatilities have challenged state-citizen relations and encouraged critical debates between policy makers and the people over the retainment of “oil driven economic growth models” and their reflections on the regional social contract. Moving on from socio economic derivatives and the impact of oil wealth on social contracts, Chapter 3 argues that the regional security structure have also been evolved in the last decade. In the aftermath of the Qatar blockade, even GCC states felt the requirement for a regional security mechanism instead of external powers guarantying security and stability. Therefore, the regional security vehicle established a multipolar participant system to construct the security pillars of the region.

Chapter 4 articulates the implications of Iran’s nuclear programme on the balance of power in the region of the Middle East. Although an active military dimension was never reviled by Iranian authorities both during Shah’s regime and the Islamic Republic, but a threat of a nuclear armed Iran has always been a concern for regional states. Specifically states that have developed ideological and political tensions with Iran, such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Bahrain, and Turkey to some extent. Bazoobandi also argues that due to Iran’s experience of foreign invasion during Iran-Iraq war; sharing borders with nuclear Pakistan, volatile borders on the west and the imminent threat of Israel and the US in the region, have all illustrate the reason Iran might be seeking for an active military nuclear technology. To expand on that, the structure of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is being analysed by this book to show the impacts of such multilateral negotiations on the domestic, regional and system levels of politics.

In a conclusion, chapter 5 and 6 are designed to portray the impacts of external players on the regional politics of the Middle East. The rise of China and the Belt Road initiative has strengthened the structure of China’s presence in the region. Following by the main aspects of the initiative, China has also developed socio-economic relations with strategic states in which subsequently will empower China’s muscular presence in the Middle East. Infrastructural investments of China in Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are known to be the result of China’s rise of influence. In contrast to China’s economic dominant movements in the Middle East, the United States during four years of Trump’s administration has been active in retaining its military presence in the region. Particularly in the Persian Gulf, the US has maintained its military presence to deter imminent threats from Iran and its supported militias in Iraq. Lastly, this book suggests that these challenges to the balance of power and revisionist policies have all had their impact in changing regional politics and constructing a new regional order.