Persistent Permeability?

Regionalism, Localism, and Globalization in the Middle East

Bassel F. Salloukh, Rex Brynen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754636625
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351911986
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

With the collapse of the Middle East peace process, the 'war on terrorism' and US-led intervention in Iraq, the question of Middle East regionalism(s) has reached a new salience. Will such developments usher in a new wave of transnational politics, as events reverberate through a Middle East made even more permeable by new information technologies and transregional religious networks? Or will authoritarian states successfully insulate themselves from such effects? What impact will globalization have on local identities and local politics? To what extent might issues of regional permeability be mediated by class, gender, ethnicity, population migration, or other factors? The contributors to Persistent Permeability? address such questions from a variety of analytical perspectives. In doing so, they offer a valuable contribution, essential for all those interested in Middle East politics and international relations.

Chapter 1

Pondering Permeability: Some Introductory Explorations

Bassel F. Salloukh and Rex Brynen

For more than two decades, scholars of domestic and international politics have pondered the changing ‘permeability’ of Middle Eastern states to transnational political influences. Historically, several sets of factors—the legacies of the Ottoman Empire and European colonialism, patterns of state formation, the religio-cultural identity of Islam, and the ethno-linguistic connections among Arab states—all created a situation in the Middle East¹ whereby ideologies, events, and political movements reverberated across borders to an extent not seen in other parts of the developing world. Peculiar political economies—of petroleum, aid, and migrant labour—reinforced this. In the 1950s and 1960s, pan-Arabism shaped politics in much of the region. Since the 1970s, Islamist sentiment has been a powerful transnational political influence.

On the other hand, there has also been considerable consolidation of Middle Eastern states, through a varying combination of institution-building, authoritarian repression, and petroleum-fuelled neopatrimonialism. State-centric and local loyalties have become more powerful over time, partially insulating states and societies from the siren calls of regional politics.

Finally, new factors have increasingly complicated this picture. Civil society and popular calls for more representative politics have made themselves heard in many authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes. Economic crises and structural adjustment have rendered old economic bargains obsolete, and created pressures for economic and political reorientation. New information and communication technologies—the internet, and especially direct broadcast satellite television—have created new regional fora for relatively uncensored information, civil society networking, and coalition building. The pressures of globalization, here as elsewhere in the developing world, have become acute. And the region finds itself profoundly affected by complex conflicts with local, regional, and global dimensions: the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, the post-11 September 2001 so-called ‘war on terrorism,’ and the US-led military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Such questions of local and regional identity, regime and regional security dynamics, globalization, and the changing character of the regional system lie at the heart of this book. Despite differences in approach and subject matter, every chapter addresses an essential set of questions: how can we best understand the regional system? How have its dynamics altered? What are the (local, regional, global) forces for change?

Defining the Region

What is the Middle East? The first two chapters in this volume, by Paul Noble and Gregory Gause, together offer a theoretical dialogue on how best scholars might conceptualize the boundaries and properties of the regional system. In an earlier formulation, Noble charted a distinct course from contemporaries who were drawing attention to the existence of a ‘penetrated’ Middle Eastern ‘subordinate’ system with peculiar indigenous characteristics and a distinctive approach to international politics.² Instead, he opted for a narrower conceptualisation, and focused on the Arab state system per se. He argued that since its inception the Arab system has been characterised by a number of special features giving ‘rise to relations between Arab states which were qualitatively different from those in other regional systems.’³ Moreover, the presence of a high degree of cultural, linguistic, and religious homogeneity, and the intensity of the myriad material, societal, and political links among the member states engendered a situation where ‘the political systems of Arab states have been closely interconnected and permeable.’⁴

Gause’s chapter in this volume is a critical appreciation of Noble’s original framework. He raises problems with Noble’s definition of membership in the regional system, and offers his Middle East regional system as an alternative to Noble’s Arab state system to explain high levels of regional conflict. Gause’s causality is parsimonious. He explains regional conflict in terms of two independent variables, namely challenges to Westphalian sovereignty, and regional multipolarity. Moreover, Gause suggests that any attempt to understand systemic approaches to Middle East international politics must include an appreciation of two dynamics: the relationship between the regional system and the global system, and the impact of regional economic interdependence on regional political outcomes.

Noble’s contribution in this volume accepts many of the comments made in Gause’s chapter. He advances a multidimensional, multilevel systemic framework of analysis, one that includes the dominant major power system, the regional system, and sub-regional systems. He makes a strong case for the ability of system-level variables to explain both systemic outcomes as well as patterns of foreign policy choices at the unit level. However the latter entails the use of positional characteristics as intervening variables. The chapter best captures the extent to which the regional system has changed in the past decade. Unlike the earlier formulation in ‘The Arab System: Opportunities, Constraints, and Pressures,’ the significant regional system today is Middle Eastern, composed of Egypt, the Arab states of southwest Asia, plus Israel, Iran, and Turkey. This is not without cause, however. Both the range and scope of the involvement of these perimeter powers in the region has grown substantially since the late 1970s, in the process transforming its security dynamics. Nor is the Middle East system monolithic. Rather, it is composed of overlapping and interrelated sub-regional systems, such as the Arab-Israeli, the inter-Arab, and the Gulf sub-regional systems. Nevertheless, it is the region-wide interactions, rather than the sub-regional ones, that increasingly set the tone of regional security. The result is what Noble labels a ‘growing regionalization of interaction’ among the member states of the Middle East regional system, amounting to a ‘genuine region-wide security complex’ characterized by increasing military, politico-diplomatic, and transnational political linkages.

Think Locally, Act Globally? The Domestic Politics of Regional Foreign Policy

As is evident in the arguments of both Noble and Gause, there is and has long been a fundamental connection between domestic politics and regional foreign policies in the Middle East. The chapters by James Devine, Asya El-Meehy, and Bassel F. Salloukh cast more light on these connections.

James Devine, examining the ups and downs of Saudi-Iranian accommodation, highlights the complex array of domestic, regional, and global factors that shape relations between the two countries. His analysis points to the extent to which these various elements are both dynamic, in need of constant balancing, and how they sometimes result in major policy contradictions. In the end, he suggests, these contradictions (and indeed, Iranian foreign policy more generally) can best be understood from the perspective of domestic regime security.

Taking a very different case study and approach, El-Meehy’s findings, concerning the determinants of Iranian refugee policy, also speak to the domestic/regional connection. They are an example of the non-military and transnational ‘insecurity dilemmas’ facing many states in the Middle East.⁵ Explanations of Iranian asylum policy, El-Meehy’s study suggests, are only partly explained by reference to global refugee norms and regimes or regional security challenges. Certainly, she notes, there were elements of both security concern and domestic political and economic grievance associated with the influx of Afghan and Azeri refugees. However, the different treatment of these groups (and changes in Iranian refugee policy over time) are also strongly affected by changes in state capacities, the nature of those capacities, and the bureaucratic-institutional context within which they are exercised.

Salloukh reviews a range of theoretical approaches to state behaviour—idiosyncratic-perceptual, realist/neorealist, domestic politics, and constructivism—and finds them all lacking in some important respects. What Middle East international relations theorizing requires, he argues, is greater attention to regime autonomy, and the political, social, and institutional configurations of state-society relations. In cases (such as Syria) where effective state corporatism results in strong regime autonomy, foreign policy and alignment choices most closely adhere to realist predictions. By contrast, regimes with different internal configurations and lesser autonomy from societal interests (such as Jordan) find themselves more driven to use foreign policy for domestic political purposes, such as securing aid, legitimizing regimes, neutralizing opposition, or seeking external allies against domestic threats. In this latter case, regime security calculations play a cardinal role in foreign policy decision-making, a theme also explored by Rex Brynen in his chapter.

Permeability: Thinking about Regional Transnationalism

As El-Meehy notes, her focus on refugee flows addresses one aspect of the permeability of state borders in the region that has received relatively little attention. Much more attention has been devoted to political transnationalism, and the regional flow of ideas and political movements.

This permeability, best exemplified by the spill-over effects of transnational appeals (such as pan-Islamic and pan-Arab ideologies) across state borders, has been a persistent characteristic of the Arab state system since its inception in the early twentieth century.⁶ In this respect, the question of Palestine has been the Arabs’ uncontested transnational cause célèbre. It managed to unite Arab societies across geographical borders, but at the same time divided post-independence anciens regimes from their increasingly mobilized and politicized constituencies. The shift from civilian to military regimes in many Arab states was but one consequence of this permeability; another was the ‘Arab Cold War,’ a contest between purportedly secular-revolutionary and conservative regimes, anchored in domestic exigencies and the quest for regional hegemony, but camouflaged by ideology.⁷ This permeability dominated the Arab state system from the middle 1950s to 1967, an era which also witnessed ‘the climax of Arabism.’⁸ Its undisputed hero was Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser, who embodied the idea of a socialist (read social equality), secular, and neutralist Arab nationalism, and resistance to decades of colonial domination. The permeability of the Arab state system allowed Nasser to slip through politically-porous borders and manipulate the domestic politics of other Arab states to advance Cairo’s regional agenda. In this respect, as Albert Hourani has noted, ‘the main function of Arabism was as a weapon in conflicts between Arab states and a pretext for the interference of one state in the affairs of others.’⁹

The 1967 naksa (setback), the death of Nasser in September 1970, and Egypt’s decision to chart a unilateral course in its negotiations with Israel opened the way for the subregional fragmentation of the Arab state system and ‘the return of geography’ to Arab politics.¹⁰ This trend continued through the 1970s and 1980s, punctured by a number of intra-Arab disputes that hardened the logic of state, rather than pan-Arab, interests.¹¹ In tandem, the process of state formation led to greater consolidation of the territorial state, a deepening of the sense of national sovereignty, and a concomitant decline in regional transnational permeability.¹²

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 (and its system-wide reverberations) bore proof both of the ongoing permeability of the Arab state system, of the consolidation of this system and the concomitant ability of most regimes to dampen, contain, or control the domestic repercussions of transnationalism.¹³

Yet as Brynen argues in his chapter, the long-term decline of the permeability of Arab politics to transnational political influences has now halted. The question of Palestine remains the Arab cause par excellence, but is being currently used to highlight a set of domestic grievances shared across the Arab states, including those of the Gulf, hitherto considered immune from political pressures. These grievances are rooted in the political constraints imposed by authoritarian regimes, declining rentier revenues, and consequent demands for greater accountability and participation in public policy by a range of secular and religious groups. He suggests that new information and communication technologies have become central to the maintenance of regional permeability. Arabic satellite channels beamed the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the US war against Afghanistan, Usama bin Ladin’s declarations, the US invasion of Iraq, and Saddam’s speeches into every nook and cranny of the Arab world. These new vehicles of permeability have created added headaches for Arab regimes trying to manage a host of domestic and external challenges. Their response has often been in the form of foreign policy choices fine-tuned to shield them from their angry publics: hence the loud support voiced by Arab regimes for the Palestinians, and the announcement on 29 April 2003 that US military forces will be withdrawing from Saudi Arabia.¹⁴

Brynen also argues that the Arab state system is less permeable today than it was in the 1950s and 1960s, but remains more susceptible to transnational currents than other regional systems. We may also add that the fodder for this permeability is also changing. In addition to Palestine, Iraq has emerged as another rallying cry for angry Arab publics. The US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq reverberated throughout the Arab world, and is bound to fuel systemic permeability for some time to come. Moreover, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and the consequent reactions to the US war on terrorism, suggest that whereas in the 1950s and 1960s systemic permeability was predominantly channelled through secular Arab nationalism, today both the discourse and networks of permeability are mainly religious. This amounts to a duel threat to existing regimes. On the one hand, it forces them to clamp down against those constituencies, such as militant clerics and their supporters, who may have been tolerated or encouraged by regime policies, and were once deployed as part of its legitimation strategy. The Saudi clampdown against local terrorist groups, even in sensitive Mecca and Medina, the firing of seven hundred Imams from their Mosques, the banning of some one thousand five hundred others from delivering prayer sermons, and Crown Prince Abdullah’s 14 August 2003 declaration t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Pondering Permeability: Some Introductory Explorations
• 2 Theory and System in Understanding Middle East International Politics: Rereading Paul Noble’s ‘The Arab System: Pressures, Constraints, and Opportunities’
• 3 Systemic Factors Do Matter, But… Reflections on the Uses and Limitations of Systemic Analysis
• 4 Between Conflict and Cooperation: Accommodation in the Post-Cold War Middle East
• 5 Regime Autonomy and Regional Foreign Policy Choices in the Middle East: A Theoretical Exploration
• 6 Regional Dynamics of Refugee Flows: The Case of Iran
• 7 Permeability Revisited: Reflections on the Regional Repercussions of the al-Aqsa Intifada
• 8 Globalization of a Torn State: Turkey from the Middle East to European Integration
• 9 American Hegemony and the Changing Terrain of Middle East International Politics
• Index