International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

For a long time the scholarship on Middle Eastern foreign policies, like the study of many other Third World foreign policies, treated the region as a pawn in the larger game of the great powers’ international rivalry for global supremacy. During the Cold War this perspective saw Middle Eastern foreign policies in terms of East–West confrontation ( Korany and Dessouki 1991 ). Another prevalent approach early on was to regard Middle Eastern foreign policies as a replica of Western foreign policies. The assumption was that the dynamics and the process guiding the foreign policies were basically the same, with the major difference being that the Western nations had more resources and capabilities. Therefore, they conducted their foreign policies on a larger scale ( Korany and Dessouki 1991 ). This inauspicious start notwithstanding, gradually more sophisticated theories of Middle Eastern foreign policy emerged. In this section we will examine the applicability of the main theories of international relations (IR) to an understanding of Middle Eastern foreign policies. We will also expound on what the study of particular Middle Eastern foreign policies may reveal about the strengths and weaknesses of the IR theories and their utility in comprehending the foreign policies of the region. While there are a wide range of IR theories that may shed light on Middle Eastern states’ foreign policy ... log in or subscribe to read full text