سلسله مراتب و بی‌ثباتی در نظم منطقه‌ای خاورمیانه

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی- پژوهشی مستقل

نویسنده

، استاد روابط بین‌الملل و رییس مرکز مطالعات بین‌المللی دانشگاه جرج تاون شعبه دوحه

چکیده

نظم سلسله مراتبی موجود در خاورمیانه بی‌ثبات و منبع ناامنی است. در شرایط فعلی منطقه‌ای، بی‌ثباتی ذاتی این نظم، نتیجه انباشت چهار مؤلفه است. نخست، زمینه جهانی، تحریک و یا تضعیف شدید ایالات متحده را به عنوان یک نیروی متعهد فعال در خاورمیانه به وجود آورد و فضای میان ستیزه گران محلی را برای هژمونی منطقه باز کرد. عامل دوم رقابت میان قدرت‌های منطقه نه تنها برای گسترش نفوذ منطقه‌ای بلکه قدرت و موقعیت آنها در نظم جهانی بزرگتر است. اسرائیل و عربستان به دنبال حفظ وضعیت فعلی جهانی هستند، در حالی که ترکیه و ایران خود را به عنوان قدرت ضد هژمونیک درک می‌کنند و به دنبال تضعیف نظم و سلسله مراتب جهانی غرب هستند. سوم، در حالی که برخی از قدرت‌های میدانی منطقه‌ای در انتخاب سیاست‌های خارجی (یعنی "قدرت" عملگرایانه) بیشتر عمل می‌کنند، بعضی از آنها بر اساس ایدئولوژی یا هویت (یعنی "قدرت‌های متضاد")، متحد می‌شوند، که باعث شکل گیری عمیق‌تر و طولانی‌ترتنش‌ها می‌شود. در نهایت، فروپاشی قدرت مرکزی در چندین کشور عربی پس از قیام‌های سال 2011 - در لیبی، سوریه، عراق، لبنان و یمن - فرصتی عالی برای قدرت‌های منطقه‌ای و حتی برخی از کشورهای منطقه ثانویه‌ای فراهم کرده است تا نفوذ خود را از طریق پروکسی‌های محلی و بازیگران غیر دولتی گسترش می‌دهند. ویژگی‌های ترکیبی نظم منطقه‌ای در خاورمیانه احتمالا موجب بی‌ثباتی و تنش در آینده می‌شوند.

کلیدواژه‌ها


عنوان مقاله [English]

Hierarchy and Instability in the Middle East Regional Order

نویسنده [English]

  • Mehran Kamrava
Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, Qatar
چکیده [English]

There is an emerging hierarchical order in the Middle East that is both unstable and is also a source of instability. In the current regional setting, the inherent instability of this order is the result of a confluence of four mutually reinforcing developments. First, the global context has entailed a steady departure, or weakening, of the United States as an active interested power in the Middle East, opening up space among local aspirants for regional hegemony. A second factor is the competition among regional powers not only for the expansion of regional influence but also their power and position in the larger global order. Israel and Saudi Arabia seek to maintain the global status quo, while Turkey and Iran perceive of themselves as counter-hegemonic powers and seek to undermine the Western-engineered global order and hierarchy. Third, while some regional middle powers are more pragmatic in their foreign policy choices (i.e. “pragmatic” middle powers), some form alliances on the bases of ideological or identity affinity (i.e. “allied” middle powers), further deepening and prolonging tensions. Fourth and finally, the collapse of central authority in several Arab states following the 2011 uprisings—in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen—has provided the perfect opportunity for the regional powers, and even some of the secondary regional states, to expand their influence through local proxies and non-state actors. The combined features of the regional order in the Middle East are likely to inhere instability and tensions for the foreseeable future.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

  • Middle East
  • US
  • Regional Studies
  • Persian Gulf
  • Stability
  • Regional Order
[1]. For an early study on the topic see, Sinan Ulgen, Nathan J. Brown, Marina Ottaway, and Paul Salem, “Emerging Order in the Middle East,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Outlook, (May 2012). See also, F. Gregory Gause III. “Systemic Approaches to Middle East International Relations,” International Studies Review, Vol. 1, Nol. 1, (Spring 1999), pp. 11-31.
[1].For a discussion of Qatari foreign policy hedging see, Mehran Kamrava, Qatar: Small State, Big Politics, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), pp. 72-88.
[1]. In different ways and with different objectives, China, and Russia are also pushing back, as are Iran and Turkey, against the political settlement of the Cold War and have emerged as revisionist states. Walter Russell Mead, “The Return of Geopolitics: The Revenge of the Revisionist Powers,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 3, (May/June 2014), p. 73.
[1]. Michael C. Hudson, “The United States in the Middle East,” in International Relations of the Middle East, 3rd ed. Louise Fawcett, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 323-327.
[1]. Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security and Foreign Policy, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009), p. 301.
[1]. Llewllyn Hughes and Austin Long, “Is There an Oil Weapon? Security Implication of Changes in the Structure of the International Oil Market,” International Security, Vol. 39, No. 3, (Winter 2014/15), p. 187.
[1]. Barack Obama, National Security Strategy, (Washington, DC: The White House, 2015), p. 9.
[1]. William Lafi Youmans, “An unwilling client: how Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt defied the Bush administration’s ‘freedom agenda,’” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 29, No. 4, (2016), p. 1209.
[1]. Jeremy Pressman, “Power without Influence: The Bush Administration’s Foreign Policy Failure in the Middle East,” International Security, Vol. 33, No. 4, (Spring 2009), pp. 149-150.
[1]. Fawaz Gerges, “The Obama approach to the Middle East: the end of America’s moment?” International Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 2, (2013), p. 301.
[1]. Ibid., pp. 302, 304, 308. “We have to choose,” Obama is reported to have said, “where we can make a real impact.” Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, (April 2016), p. 77.
[1]. Raymond Hinnebusch, “Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” in Foreign Policies of Middle East States, 2nd. ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014), p. 54.
[1]. Paul Salem, “The Middle East: Evolution of a Broken Regional Order,” Carnegie Papers, No. 9, (June 2008), pp. 17-18.
[1]. Raymond Hinnebusch, “The Middle Eastern Regional System,” in Foreign Policies of Middle East States, 2nd. ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014), p. 67.
[1]. Gerges, “The Obama approach to the Middle East,” p. 300.
[1]. Obama, National Security Strategy, p. 24.
[1]. Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” p. 82.
[1]. Mark Mazzetti, “Trump titles the political balance in South Asia,” The New York Times, (August 24, 2017), pp. 1, 4.
[1]. John Calabrese, “China and the Persian Gulf: Energy and Security,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 52, No. 3, (Summer 1998), p. 351.
[1]. Karim Mezran and Nunziante Mastrelia, “Looking for Oil: The New Chinese Activism in the Middle East,” Journal of Middle Eastern Geopolitics, Vol. 1, No. 2, (2005), pp. 76-77.
[1] Data collected from, Michal Meidan, Amrita San, and Robert Campbell, China: The ‘New Normal,’ (Oxford: The Oxford Energy Institute, 2015), https://www. oxfordenergy. org/ wpcms /wp-content/uploads/2015/02/China-the-new-normal.pdf. 
[1]. Lars Erslev Andersen and Yang Jiang, “Is China Challenging the US in the Persian Gulf?” Danish Institute for International Studies Report, No. 29, (2014), p. 27.
[1]. Data collected from, American Enterprise Institute. China Global Investment Tracker. http://www.aei.org/china-global-investment-tracker/.
[1]. Andersen and Jiang, “Is China Challenging the US in the Persian Gulf?” p. 28.
[1]. Ibid., p. 29.
[1]. Ibid., p. 6.
[1]. Yoram Evron, “China’s diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East: the quest for a greater-power rile in the region,” International Relations, Vol. 31, No. 2, (2017), p. 125.
[1]. European Commission, Directorate General for Trade, data collected through
[1].Thomas Demmelhuber and Christian Kaunert, “The EU and the Gulf monarchies: normative power Europe in search of a strategy for engagement,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 3, (2014), pp. 574, 586.
[1].Asef Siniver and Luis Cabrera, “‘Good Citizen Europe’ and the Middle East Peace Process,” International Studies Perspective, Vol. 16, (2015), p. 214.
[1]. James Sladden, Becca Wasser, Ben Connable and Sarah Grand-Clement, Russian Strategy in the Middle East, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2017), pp. 2-4, 10.
[1]. A.F.K. Organski, World Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1968), p. 364.
[1]. Robert O. Keohane, “Lilliputians’ Dilemma: Small States in International Politics,” International Organization, Vol. 23, No. 2, (Spring 1969), pp. 295-296. In my categorization here, I have merged secondary and middle powers together and use the designation interchangeably.
[1]. Keohane, “Lilliputians’ Dilemma,” p. 295.
[1]. Organski, World Politics, p. 367.
[1]. Hinnebusch, “The Middle Eastern Regional System,” p. 68.
[1]. Organski, World Politics, p. 367.
[1]. Mark L. Haas, “Ideological Polarity and Balancing in Great Power Politics,” Security Studies, Vol. 23, (2014), p. 715.
[1]. Ibid., p. 717.
[1]. Keohane, “Lilliputians’ Dilemma,” p. 300.
[1]. See, for example, F. Gregory Gause III, “Ideologies, alliances and underbalancing in the new Middle East Cold War,” in International Relations Theory in a Changing Middle East, POMEPS Studies 16, (September 17, 2015), p. 18; and, Curtis R. Ryan, “Regime security and shifting alliances in the Middle East,” in International Relations Theory in a Changing Middle East, POMEPS Studies 16, (September 17, 2015), pp. 42-46.
[1]. Mohsoin Khan and Richard LeBaron, “What Will the Gulf’s $12 Billion Buy in Egypt?” Atlantic Council, (July 2013), http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/what-will-the-gulfs-12-billion-buy-in-egypt.
[1]. Frederic Wehrey, “The Authoritarian Resurgence: Saudi Arabia’s Anxious Autocrats,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 25, No. 2, (April 2015), p. 72; Heba Saleh and Simon Kerr, “Saudi Arabia to Start Egyptian Oil Shipments,” Financial Times, (March 16, 2017), https://www.ft.com/content/9896514e-0a57-11e7-97d1-5e720a26771b.
[1]. Hinnebusch, “Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” p. 17.
[1]. John Irish and Andrea Shalal, “There’s an alliance growing between Saudi Arabia and Israel — and Iran should be worried,” Business Insider, (February 19, 2017), http://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-and-israel-anti-iran-alliance-2017-2.   
[1]. May Darwich, “The Ontological (In)security of Similarity: Wahhabism Versus Islamism in Saudi Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 12, (2016), p. 470.
[1]. Ibid., pp. 470-471, 483.
[1]. Ewan Stein, “Beyond ‘geosectarianism’: political systems and international relations in the Middle East,” in International Relations Theory in a Changing Middle East, POMEPS Studies 16, (September 17, 2015), pp. 68-70.
[1]. Ziya Öniş, “Turkey and the Arab Revolutions: Boundaries of Regional Power Influence in a Troubled Middle East,” Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 19, No. 2, (2014), p. 204.
[1]. Hinnebusch, “Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” p. 34.
[1]. Hinnebusch, “The Middle Eastern Regional System,” p. 51.
[1]. Mead, “The Return of Geopolitics,” p. 70.
[1]. Clive Jones, “The Foreign Policy of Israel,” in Foreign Policies of Middle East States, 2nd ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014), p. 293.
[1]. Itamar Rabinovich, “Israel and the Changing Middle East,” Brookings Middle East Memo, No. 34, (January 2015), p. 10.
[1]. Yaniv Voller, “From Periphery to the Moderates: Israeli Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 130, No. 3, (2015), pp. 508, 510.
[1]. Philipp O. Amour, “Israel, the Arab Spring, and the unfolding regional order in the Middle East: a strategic assessment,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3, (2017), p. 294-297.
[1]. Ibid., p. 299.
[1]. Rabinovich, “Israel and the Changing Middle East,” pp. 5-6
[1]. Ibid., p. 7.
[1]. Gareth Potter, “Israel’s Construction of Iran as an Existential Threat,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 47, No. 1, (Autumn 2015), pp. 43, 45.
[1]. F. Gregory Gause III, “The Foreign Policy of Saudi Arabia,” in Foreign Policies of Middle East States, 2nd ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014), p. 189.
[1]. Ibid., pp. 191-192.
[1]. Ibid., p. 185.
[1]. Joseph Kechichian, “Trends in Saudi National Security,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 53, No. 2, (Spring 1999), p. 232.
[1]. Mehran Kamrava, “The Arab Spring and the Saudi-Led Counterrevolution,” Orbis, Vol. 56, No. 1, (Winter 2012), pp. 96-104.
[1]. Darwich, “The Ontological (In)security of Similarity,” p. 477, 480.
[1]. Ibid., p. 477.
[1]. Ibid., p. 484.
[1]. Gerald Feierstein and Craig Greathead, “The Fight for Africa: The New Focus of the Saudi-Iranian Rivalry,” Middle East Institute Policy Focus, No. 2, (2017), p. 1. Saudi Arabia, for its part, support Nigeria’s Izala Society. pp. 6, 8.
[1]. Benedetta Berti, “Saudi Brinkmanship in Lebanon,” Sada, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, (March 24, 2016), http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/63111.
[1]. Philip Robins, “The Foreign Policy of Turkey,” in Foreign Policies of Middle East States, 2nd ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014), p. 328.
[1]. Bülent Aras, “Turkish Policy toward Central Asia,” SETA Policy Brief, No. 12, (April 2008), p. 3; Ahmet Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy: Transition and Challenges,” Turkish Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, (2010), p. 109.
[1]. Soli Özel and Behlul Özkan, “Illusion versus reality: Turkey’s approach to the Middle East and North Africa,” FRIDE Policy Brief, No. 200, (April 2005), p. 3.
[1]. Öniş, “Turkey and the Arab Revolutions,” p. 206.
[1]. Bilgin Ayata, “Turkish Foreign Policy in a Changing Arab World: Rise and Fall of a Regional Actor?” Journal of European Integration, Vol. 37, No. 1, (2015), p. 97; Steven A. Cook and Hussein Ibish, “Turkey and the GCC: Cooperation Amid Diverging Interests,” The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, Issue Paper, No. 1, (2017), p. 3.
[1]. Cook and Ibish, “Turkey and the GCC: Cooperation Amid Diverging Interests,” pp. 5, 8.
[1]. Turkey’s Syria policy has been based on a series of miscalculations, with Erdogan over-estimating his leverage over Assad, underestimating the resilience of the Assad regime, and assuming the international community would commit to Assad’s overthrow.  Öniş, “Turkey and the Arab Revolutions,” pp. 211, 214.
[1]. Öniş, “Turkey and the Arab Revolutions,” p. 206.
[1]. Aras, “Turkish Policy toward Central Asia,” p. 1.
[1]. Stephen F. Larrabee, “Turkey’s New Geopolitics,” Survival, Vol. 52, No. 2, (2010), p. 173.
[1]. Öniş, “Turkey and the Arab Revolutions,” p. 214.
[1]. Ahmet Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy: Transition and Challenges,” Turkish Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, (2010), p. 108.
[1]. Larrabee, “Turkey’s New Geopolitics,” p. 159.
[1]. Emel Parlar Dal successfully argues that despite increasing normative rhetoric in its foreign policy, Turkey does not in fact pursue a normative foreign policy, one in which there are normative goals or normative results or impacts. Emel Parlar Dal, “Assessing Turkey’s ‘Normative’ Power in the Middle East and North Africa Region: New Dynamics and their Limitations,” Turkish Studies, Vol. 14, No. 4, (2013), p. 709.
[1]. Larrabee, “Turkey’s New Geopolitics,” p. 158.
[1]. Sözen, “A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy,” p. 109.
[1]. Larrabee, “Turkey’s New Geopolitics,” p. 161.
[1]. Robins, “The Foreign Policy of Turkey,” p. 330.
[1]. Mesut Özcan, “Turkish Foreign Policy under the AK Party,” Insight Turkey, Vol. 19, No. 2, (Spring 2017), p. 9.
[1]. Özgür Pala and Bülent Aras, “Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in the Turkish and Qatari Foreign Policy in the Arab Spring,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, (2015), pp. 1-17.
[1]. Steven A. Cook and Hussein Ibish, “Turkey and the GCC: Cooperation Amid Diverging Interests,” The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, Issue Paper, No. 1, (2017), p. 1.
[1]. Soli Özel  and Behlul Özkan, “Illusion versus reality: Turkey’s approach to the Middle East and North Africa,” FRIDE Policy Brief, No. 200, (April 2005), p. 2.
[1]. Öniş, “Turkey and the Arab Revolutions,” pp. 210, 216.
[1]. Javad Zarif, “Iranian Foreign Minister: ‘Arab Affairs Are Iran’s Business,’” The Atlantic, (October 9, 2017), https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/iran-persian-gulf-jcpoa/542421/. Zarif maintained “Arab affairs are Iran’s business. And we are not shy in admitting that non-Arab affairs are their business. How can they not be?”
[1]. Mead, “The Return of Geopolitics,” p. 74.
[1]. Frederic Wehrey and Richard Sokolsky, Imagining a New Security Order in the Persian Gulf, (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015), p. 17.
[1]. Mehran Kamrava, “Iran-Qatar Relations,” Gawdat Bahgat, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, and Neil Quilliam, eds. Security and Bilateral Relations Between Iran and its Arab Neighbors, (New York: Macmillan, 2017), pp. 167-188.
[1]. Anoushiravan Ehteshami, “The Foreign Policy of Iran,” in Foreign Policies of Middle East States, 2nd ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014), p. 261.
[1]. For one such argument see, Walter Posch, “Ideology and Strategy in the Middle East: The Case of Iran,” Survival, Vol. 59, No. 5, (October-November 2017), pp. 69-98.
[1]. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 21-22.
[1]. Shahram Akbarzadeh, “Why does Iran need Hizbollah?” The Muslim World, Vol. 106, (January 2016), p. 127.
[1]. Ibid., p. 140.
[1]. Kayhan Barzegar and Masoud Rezaei, “Ayatollah Khamenei’s Strategic Thinking,” Discourse: An Iranian Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3, (Winter 2017), pp. 27-54.
[1]. Ibid., p. 47.
[1]. Kayhan Barzegar, “Iran’s Foreign Policy in Post-Invasion Iraq,” Middle East Policy, Vol. 15, No. 4, (Winter 2008), p. 53.
[1]. Ehteshami, “The Foreign Policy of Iran,” p. 264.
[1]. Gause, “Ideologies, alliances and underbalancing in the new Middle East Cold War,” pp. 16-17. According to Randall Schwelller, underbalancing occurs “where threatened countries have failed to recognize a clear and present danger or, more typically, have simply not reacted to it or, more typically still, have responded in paltry and imprudent ways.” Randall L. Schweller, “Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 2, (Fall 2004), p. 159.
[1]. Abdel Monem Said Aly, “Post-Revolution Egyptian Foreign Policy,” Middle East Brief, Brandies University Crown Center, No. 84, (November 2014), pp. 4-5.
[1]. Azzurra Meringolo, “From Morsi to Al-Sisi: Foreign Policy at the Service of Domestic Policy,” Insight Egypt, No. 8, (March 2015), p. 3.
[1]. Said Aly, “Post-Revolution Egyptian Foreign Policy,” p. 2.
[1]. Raymond Hinnebusch and Nael Shama, “The Foreign Policy of Egypt,” in Foreign Policies of Middle East States, 2nd ed. Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, eds. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014), p. 101.
[1]. Meringolo, “From Morsi to Al-Sisi,” p. 4.
[1]. Ibid., p. 12.
[1]. Said Aly, “Post-Revolution Egyptian Foreign Policy,” p. 4.
[1]. Fred H. Lawson, “Egypt versus Ethiopia: The Conflict over the Nile Metastasizes,” The International Spectator, (2017), DOI: 10.1080/03932729.2017.1333272, p. 8.
[1]. Mulberger, “Egypt’s Foreign and Security Policy in Post-R2P Libya,” p. 101.
[1]. Robert A. Mortimer, “Algerian foreign policy: from revolution to national interest,” The Journal of North African Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, (2015), p. 471.
[1]. Yahia H. Zoubir, “Algeria’s Role in the OAU/African Union: From National Liberation Promoter to the Leader in the Global War on Terrorism,” Mediterranean Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 1, (2015), p. 64.
[1]. Mortimer, “Algerian foreign policy,” p. 477.
[1]. Zoubir, “Algeria’s Role in the OAU/African Union,” p. 55.
[1]. Mortimer, “Algerian foreign policy,” p. 480.
[1]. Ulgen, Brown, Ottaway, and Salem, “Emerging Order in the Middle East,” p. 13.
[1]. Helle Malmvig, “Coming in from the Cold: How we may take sectarian identity politics seriously in the Middle East without playing to the tunes of regional power elites,” ,” in International Relations Theory in a Changing Middle East, POMEPS Studies 16, (September 17, 2015), p. 35.
[1].Bassel Salloukh, “Overlapping Contests and Middle East International Relations: The Return of the Weak Arab State,” PS, (July 2017), pp. 661.
[1]. Peter Salisbury, “Yemen and the Saudi-Iranian ‘Cold War,’” Chatham House Research Paper, (February 2015), p. 1. While the Houthis enjoy some degree of support from Iran, they are far from being controlled by Tehran.
[1].Benedetta Berti, “Saudi Brinkmanship in Lebanon,” Sada, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, (March 24, 2016), http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/63111.
[1]. Ulgen, Brown, Ottaway, and Salem, “Emerging Order in the Middle East,” p. 10.