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New Order in the Gulf
For over a decade now, thinking on regional relations in the Gulf has focused on the competition for regional hegemony between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Today, this perspective is outdated. The smaller Gulf Arab states, led by the United Arab Emirates, are calling for their own goals and interests to be considered and a new regional order has emerged. This book asesses the UAE's increasing power and the future challenges to security it poses. It is a contemporary history and analysis of the changing role of the UAE. Dina Esfandiary argues that the UAE has become more assertive in the pursuit of its own interests in the region and beyond - even when this puts it at odds with its regional allies....
Triple-Axis
The most significant challenge to the post-Cold War international order is the growing power of ambitious states opposed to the West. Iran, Russia and China each view the global structure through the prism of historical experience. Rejecting the universality of Western liberal values, these states and their governments each consider the relative decline of Western economic hegemony as an opportunity. Yet cooperation between them remains fragmentary. The end of Western sanctions and the Iranian nuclear deal; the Syrian conflict; new institutions in Central and East Asia: in all these areas and beyond, the potential for unity or divergence is striking. In this new and comprehensive study, Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary address the substance of this `triple axis' in the realms of energy, trade, and military security. In particular they scrutinise Iran-Russia and the often overlooked field of Iran-China relations. Their argument - that interactions between the three will shape the world stage for decades to come - will be of interest to anyone looking to understand the contemporary international security puzzle.
Living on the Edge
In this book, the authors explore the controversial Iranian nuclear programme through the conceptual lens of nuclear hedging. In 2002, revelations regarding undeclared nuclear facilities thrust Iran’s nuclear activities under the spotlight and prompted concerns that Tehran was pursuing nuclear weapons. Iran has always denied nuclear weapons aspirations, yet it cannot be disputed that the Islamic Republic has gone well beyond what is required for a civil nuclear programme based on energy production and scientific research. What, then, is the nature and significance of Iran's nuclear behaviour? Does it form part of a coherent strategy? What can Iran's actions in the nuclear field tell us about Tehran's intentions? And what does the Iranian case teach us about proliferation behaviour more generally? This book addresses these questions by exploring the nature of nuclear hedging and how this approach might be identified, before applying this logic to the Iranian case. It provides fresh insights into the inherently opaque area of nuclear proliferation and a more nuanced interpretation of the Iranian nuclear challenge.
Hybrid Actors
Influential armed groups continue to confound policymakers, diplomats, and analysts decades after their transformational arrival on the scene in the Middle East and North Africa. The most effective of these militias can most usefully be understood as hybrid actors, which simultaneously work through, with, and against the state. This joint report from The Century Foundation identifies the factors that make some hybrid actors persistent and successful, as measured by longevity, influence, and ability to project power militarily as well as politically. It finds that three factors correlate most closely with impact: constituent loyalty, resilient state relationships, and coherent ideology. The authors of this report examined cases in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, drawing on years of fieldwork, to distinguish hybrid actors, classic nonstate proxies, and aspirants to statehood--all of which merit different analytical and policy treatment. The report demonstrates the ways that groups can shift along a spectrum as they adapt to changing conditions.
An EU Strategy for Relations with Iran After the Nuclear Deal
This report outlines the potential for a more structured and strategic relationship between the European Union and the Islamic Republic of Iran following the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). To both address areas of disagreement and complaints, as well as pursue common interests and matters of mutual benefit, the EU needs to put in place an institutional framework that can withstand the various setbacks that have, to date, derailed all previous efforts of political dialogue. There are a number of areas where both actors can benefit from cooperation; trade, environmental and sustainability issues, education, and combatting drug trade. Even when pursuing more contentious issues such as human rights, having a strategic and fully-fledged multilevel relationship will be helpful. There are also a number of political crisis in the region (ISIS, migration) where reaching a solution without Iranian involvement will either be unnecessarily costly or near impossible.
Assessing the European Union's Sanctions Policy
The European Union (EU) has recently increased its use of sanctions. They are often used as a tool to coerce states into changing problematic behaviour, but the EU does not always aim to change behaviour or induce a cost -- at times the purpose is broader, for example, to signal that something is being done to address a grave violation. This paper examines the effectiveness of EU sanctions as a policy tool. It examines the coercive measures in place against Iran in particular, and addresses ways in which sanctions can be used to curb the Iranian nuclear programme.
Syria's Proliferation Challenge and the European Union's Response
Syria's desire to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is shaped by the perceived imbalance of power with Israel but also by a volatile regional environment. As a result, Syria has overcome resource scarcity and other structural constraints to build a significant chemical weapons arsenal, develop missile capabilities and, to the surprise of many, build a nuclear reactor. The European Union (EU) has attempted to offer economic and political incentives to encourage a gradual Syrian shift away from WMD as part of a greater effort to moderate Syria. However, Syrian strategic thinking, concerned with the regional balance of power and confrontation with the United States and Israel, appears to have largely ignored the EU.
The Wrecking of the Liberal World Order
The ‘Liberal World Order’ (LWO) is today in crisis. But what explains this crisis? Whereas its critics see it as the unmasking of Western hypocrisy, its longstanding proponents argue it is under threat by competing illiberal projects. This book takes a different stance: neither internal hypocrisy, nor external attacks explain the decline of the LWO – a deviation from its original lane does. Emerged as a project aiming to harmonize state sovereignty and the market, through the promotion of liberal democracy domestically, and free trade and economic cooperation internationally, the LWO was hijacked in the 1980s: market forces overshadowed democratic forces, thus disfiguring the LWO into a Neoliberal Global Order. The book advocates for a revival of its original intellectual premises, that in the aftermath of World War II marked the zenith of political modernity.
