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No monarchy fell to revolution in the Arab Spring. What accounts for this monarchical exceptionalism? Analysts have argued that royal autocracies are inherently more resilient than authoritarian republics due to their cultural foundations and institutional structure. By contrast, this paper leverages comparative analysis to offer a different explanation emphasizing deliberate regime strategies made in circumstances of geographic fortuity. The mobilization of cross-cutting coalitions, hydrocarbon wealth, and foreign patronage account for the resilience of monarchical dictatorships in the Middle East. Without these factors, kingships are just as vulnerable to overthrow as any other autocracy—something that history indicates, given the long list of deposed monarchies in the region over the past half-century.

يتركز موضوع هذا الكتاب على سياسة الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية تجاه العراق فحينما تولت إدارة بوش الحكم كانت لديها رغبة قوية في اتخاذ إجراء مختلف إزاء العراق وإن لم يتم الاتفاق على ماهية هذا الإجراء الجديد. ومنذ 11 سبتمبر / أيلول، أصبح من الواضح أن الرئيس الأمريكي قد قرر أن تصبح إطاحة صدام حسين الشغل الشاغل للسياسة الخارجية للإدارة. وليس السؤال الآن هو ما إذا كانت أمريكا ستقوم بمبادرة هامة في هذه المنطقة وإنما متى يمكن أن يحدث ذلك؟ وتدور الأسئلة التي سيتم تناولها بعمق داخل الإدارة حول نطاق التدخل العسكري الأمريكي ودور التحالفات الإقليمية (خاصة فيما يتعلق بدخول المنشآت والقواعد) ودور الدبلوماسية في تهيئة الأجواء ‎من خلال الأمم المتحدة وعلى المستوى الثنائي-ونظام الحكم الانتقالي الذي سيحظى بالتأييد خلفا لصدام حسين. كما ستتناول المحاضرة بشكل موسع نقاطا أخرى تتعلق بسياسة الولايات المتحدة تجاه المملكة العربية السعودية وإيران ما داما يرتبطان بالتغيرات السياسة المتبعة إزاء العراق.

Politics Symposium: The Arab Uprisings and International Relations Theory The pattern of alliances and alignments in the Middle East following the Arab uprisings challenges established theories of regional international relations (IR) in intriguing ways (Gause 2014; see also Lynch 2016; Ryan 2012; Salloukh 2013). Explaining these patterns, therefore, requires grappling with constructivist theories of identity, the drivers of regime insecurity, and the relative importance of state-to-state and transnational policies. \"UNDERBALANCING\" AND THE NEW MIDDLE EAST COLD WAR Iran is the undoubted winner in regional-power terms in the past decade of Middle Eastern upheaval. Today, Iran is the most influential player in Iraqi politics, having close relations with the Baghdad government, sponsoring if not controlling a number of Shi'i militias, maintaining a cooperative relationship with the Kurdish Regional Government, and indirectly fighting alongside the United States in the campaign against the Islamic State. Efforts by other regional powers to challenge Iranian gains have largely failed, whether Turkish and Saudi support for the Syrian opposition (although different elements of it), Saudi financing of the March 14 coalition in Lebanon and military aid to the Lebanese government (now cut off), or half-hearted Saudi efforts to challenge Iran's influence in Iraq. The Saudi-Emirati military campaign in Yemen against the Huthis succeeded in pushing them out of the southern part of the country but not (as of March 2017) out of San'a, the capital. Lower oil prices hurt Iran more than the Saudis because Tehran does not have the financial cushion that Riyadh built during...

While al-Qaeda is a product of specific circumstances in the Middle East, the bitter irony of its September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States is that American policy in the region before those attacks unwittingly contributed significantly to its birth and development and that American policy subsequent to the attacks created new opportunities for similar organizations to flourish, even as al-Qaeda itself lost ground to those organizations. Organizationally and ideologically, al-Qaeda was the product of the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the successful war against Iraq in 1990-91, the two most prominent success stories in the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States. This essay will treat Washington's unintentional participation in the development of al-Qaeda and the group's ideological development in an analytical narrative of the founding, growth, success and eventual decline of what for Americans is the prototypical terrorist organization of the 21st century.

Not many people have ever called the United States 'nimble' in dealing with change in the Middle East. During the Cold War, it was the locals who exploited both superpowers, playing them off against each other to advance their own interests, while Washington and Moscow stared each other down. The end of the Cold War freed America to act with fewer constraints in the region. Freedom from fear of the other superpower's reaction bred recklessness under Bush II, producing the catastrophe of the Iraq invasion, from which the United States is still recovering. But the end of the Cold War has meant something different during the Obama administration. The flexibility and nuance of its reactions to the Arab upheavals of 2011 reflect a focus on changes in the region itself rather than calculations in a game with the Soviets or leftover ideological commitments to American hegemony. As people-power with an Islamic face sweeps away regime after regime in the Middle East, and as the long-feared implications of nuclear proliferation pose direct, realtime challenges to U.S. interests and allies, traditional American policies relying on 'authoritarian stability' and Israeli military preponderance have come under serious strain. Fortunately, the current administration has demonstrated the savvy necessary to adapt to these transformations. However, Washington still faces challenges it may not know how to meet. Uncharacteristically for any great power operating in the Middle East, the United States seems to be performing considerably better than most of the regional powers, who have seemed particularly awkward in their responses to regime transformations and continuing turbulence. Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran are all viewing regional events through old prisms. Israel operates as if caught in a nineteenth-century time warp of romantic nationalism and the confrontation of Jews with the vicious forms of antiSemitism unleashed in a rapidly modernizing Europe. Key Zionist principles of Jewish self-reliance, national egoism and opportunistic expansionism that served the Jewish nationalist movement well in its heroic period are dangerously out of place in the rapidly changing Middle East. Yet these principles seem to hold Israeli political culture and the outlook of many Israeli leaders in an iron grip. Saudi Arabia sees the region through the bifocal lens of monarchical solidarity and an increasingly sectarian conflict with Iran for regional influence. Iran, which one might assume would be the regional power best suited to take advantage of revolutionary upheaval, has been flummoxed by the changes in the Arab world. Tehran has stuck by its blood-soaked Syrian ally and continues to roll back freedoms at home while resorting to increasingly tired anti-American and anti-Zionist tropes to rally support domestically and regionally. Only Turkey has nimbly adjusted to the Arab Spring, pivoting from a policy of 'zero problems with neighbors' that led it to good state-to-state relations with Asad, Qadhafi and Israel, to a stance in support of democratic change in the region. Having undergone its own democratic transition, however imperfect, Turkey is best-positioned of the regional powers to play a leading role in a more democratic Middle East. None of this is to say that balance-of-power politics or sectarianism is unimportant as the Arab Spring works itself out. Israeli power, Saudi money and Iranian ties with Shia groups will all influence events as they develop. But none of these states seem to grasp that a major shift is occurring in the region toward political systems where the consent of the governed is necessary for stable domestic politics and where public opinion plays a much greater role in the making of foreign policy. Adapted from the source document.

The issue of misperception is at the heart of one of the key debates in the international relations literature about revolution and its effects on the international system. Establishing that a misperception occurred, and then led to a certain foreign policy action, is almost inevitably subjective. But one potential plausibility probe is to look to the consistency of the policies of status-quo powers toward a revolutionary state as one indicator of the importance of misperception in their policies. If the status-quo leaders overestimate the threat of revolutionary ‘export’, it is logical to assume that the specific actions of the revolutionary state itself would not matter that much to them. They would be fixed in their perceptions of the hostility of the new revolutionary regime, no matter what it did. Their policies toward it would be consistent over time. If, however, the status-quo leaders’ policies toward the revolutionary state changed over time, in reaction to both the behavior of the revolutionary state and the reverberations of the revolution in their own societies, the argument that the threats from the revolutionary state toward the status-quo states were real would receive at least partial support. This article uses the reactions to the Iranian Revolution in Iraq and Saudi Arabia as a preliminary test.

Over the past five years, from volume 37, number 1 (February 2005) to volume 41, number 3 (August 2009), IJMES published thirty-seven articles that deal with politics in the contemporary Middle East, broadly understood. This is my count, of course, and others might add or drop some articles. I define contemporary as post World War II and have a relatively expansive definition of politics. My count does not include short features, only full articles.

A ruling elite that fears for its own domestic security could see a neighbor's meddling in its domestic politics as a weapon even more dangerous than that neighbor's conventional military power. Since 1980, there have been three major international wars in the area (Iran-Iraq, 1980-88; the Gulf War, 199091; and the Iraq War, 2003-present), with the possibility of others (a U.S. attack on Iran, regional military intervention in Iraq).