Conflict and War in the Middle East : From Interstate War to New Security

Few studies of Middle East wars go beyond a narrative of events and most tend to impose on this subject the rigid scheme of superpower competition.

This book is relevant for the study of regional conflicts during and after the end of the Cold War. The focus of the major parts are inter-state wars in the period of 1967-1991. In the revised, updated and expanded new edition the author argues that the Gulf War would probably be the last inter-state war in the Middle East. The resort to the use of force would be mostly pursued by irregulars like Islamic fundamentalists (in Algeria, Egypt, the Occupied Territories) and ethnic nationalists (the Kurds). Thus the study of conflict in the Middle East would shift from the study of inter-state war to the study of the crisis of the nation-state incapable of dealing with the arising violence within its boundaries. The author argues that regional integration among the states and the industrial bolstering of the weak nominal nation-states in the Middle East would be the new needed pattern of security politics in the Middle East no longer restricted to dealing with military issues.