Conflict and War in the Middle East

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Introduction: Middle Eastern Wars from the World Historical and International Systemic Perspectives

   1. Introduction: Middle Eastern Wars from the World Historical and International Systemic Perspectives

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 1-18

3. The International System as a Configuration of Regional Subsystems: The Case of the Middle East

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. The Science of International Relations: Between Globalism and Regionalism

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 22-42

   3. The Middle East: Its Location and Delimitation

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 43-60

4. From Arab Renaissance (Nahda) to the Six Day War of 1967: The New Historical Epoch after June 1967

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 61-61

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   2. The Six Day War of 1967: The Background and Multifaceted Character of an Escalated Regional Conflict

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 65-79

   3. The Regional and International Repercussions of the Six Day War: The End of Nasserism and the Beginning of a New Historical Epoch

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 80-104

5. The 1973 October War: The Regional Dynamic of the Middle East Conflict and the Superpowers. Arms, Oil and Shifts in Regional and International Alliances

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 105-105

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   2. The Yom Kippur, Ramadan or October War? Historical Continuity from the Six Day War to the Nineteen Day War

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 109-118

   3. The Superpowers and the October War

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 119-132

   4. October 1973: The War with Arms and the War with Oil: Petro-dollar Power and the 1973–77 Saudi-Egyptian Axis; its Revival during the Iran-Iraq War and its Aftermath

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 133-144

6. The Gulf War, its Linkages and Background: Regional Dynamic and the Fragmentation of the Middle East in the Post-Cold War Era

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 145-145

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   2. The Middle East between the 1973 October War and the 1990–91 Gulf War: An Epidemically Militarised Region of Conflict?

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 148-164

   3. From the Iraq-Kuwait Conflict to the Gulf War

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 165-175

   4. The Historical Context of Conflict and War in the Middle East in the Light of the Gulf War

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 176-186

7. New Security and Reordering the Middle East at the Turn of the Century: The New Challenges

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 187-187

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   2. The Arab State System in the Aftermath of Middle Eastern Wars and the Vision of ‘The New Middle East’

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 194-213

   3. Middle Eastern Security in the Post-Cold War Era: From Interstate War to the Challenge of Islamic Fundamentalism

      • Bassam Tibi

      Pages 214-233

8. Back Matter

   Pages 234-318

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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. The Gulf War of 1991, however, challenges this view of the Middle East as an extension of the global conflict. The failure of the accord of both superpowers to avoid war even once regional superpower competition in the Middle East had ceased must give rise to the question: Do regional conflicts have their own dynamic? Working from this assumption, the book examines local-regional constraints of Middle East conflict and how, through escalation and the involvement of extra-regional powers, such conflicts acquire an international dimension. The theory of a regional subsystem is employed as a framework for conceptualising this interplay between regional and international factors in Tibi's examination of the Middle East wars in the period 1967-91. Tibi also provides an outlook into the future of conflict in the Middle East in the aftermath of the most recent Gulf War.

• bibliography
• Iraq
• Middle East
• Superpower

• University of Göttingen, Germany

  Bassam Tibi

• Harvard University, USA

  Bassam Tibi

BASSAM TIBI is Professor of International Relations at the University of Gottingen and, since 1988, a Research Associate at Harvard University. He has also taught at Frankfurt and Heidelberg, and held visiting professorships in the Middle East and Africa including Université de Cameroun and University of Khartoum. He is the author of Crisis of Modern Islam, Arab Nationalism: A Critical Enquiry and Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change. He has written six monographs in German and co-authored books in English, German and Arabic including Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives and The Study of the Middle East: International Perspectives. He is a member of the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-author of the second volume of this international project.

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