Shortly before the Middle East peace talks began in November 1991, the United States Institute of Peace conducted a four-day simulation of what was about to unfold in the diplomatic dialogue between two enemy countries, Israel and Syria, whose representatives had never before sat together. This volume presents a description of that exercise and its implications for peacemaking and conflict resolution in the Middle East, a discussion of simulations and their utility for diplomats and for the field of conflict resolution, and a discussion among the participants of prospects for the overall Middle East peace negotiations.
This book explores efforts being made to create Russian-American cooperation in managing recurrent conflict in the Middle East. Theoretical, historical, and policy sections provide the framework for chapters that represent the most current, multinational thinking on issues of war prevention, crisis avoidance, and conflict resolution. The contributo
fills a gap in the market on conflict resolution in the Arab world examines conflict management in the Arab world through comparative case study analysis will be of much interest to students of conflict resolution, Middle Eastern politics, peace and conflict studies, security studies and IR
A study that contributes to the debate on whether defense spending encourages or hinders economic growth. It assesses the effect of politics on economic growth in developing societies, with a focus on the Middle East. It urges Third World leaders to improve levels of freedom, democracy, and openness of their political systems.
How do aspiring and established rising global powers respond to conflict? Using China, the book studies its response to wars and rivalries in the Middle East from the Cold War to the present. Since the People’s Republic was established in 1949, China has long been involved in the Middle East and its conflicts, from exploiting or avoiding them to their management, containment or resolution. Using a conflict and peace studies angle, Burton adopts a broad perspective on Chinese engagement by looking at its involvement in the region’s conflicts including Israel/Palestine, Iraq before and after 2003, Sudan and the Darfur crisis, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Gulf crisis and the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The book reveals how a rising global and non-Western power handles the challenges associated with both violent and nonviolent conflict and the differences between limiting and reducing violence alongside other ways to eliminate the causes of conflict and grievance. Contributing to the wider discipline of International Relations and peace and conflict studies, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, Chinese foreign policy and the politics and international relations of the Middle East.
The Middle East is a region of international concern and political unrest. This book forms a complete reference to both the hydrological as well as the social, economic, political and legal issues in the region and shows how water shortages threaten the renewal of military conflicts and disruption in the area. With resources over-extended due to natural and human causes, the book analyses the river basins of the Euphrates, Tigris, Nile and Jordan and provides detailed study of the hydrology, hydrography and geography of these river basins; it also analyses the needs of the economies and societies of the countries bordering these basins. Conclusions on likely areas of conflict are set within the legal framework of the Helsinki and International Law Commission Rules.
Water scarcity and the use of international river system resources can not only cause international conflict but can also bring about peace and co-operation. This book looks at the current stresses and likely future scenarios.
The historical and cultural richness of the Middle Eastern societies and the role of the state in the countries of the region provide a unique basis to understand the variety of means to address violent conflicts in different societies with a common basis. Against this backdrop, the leading question addressed in the contributions to this book concerns what is the best-suited response to violent conflicts? The question implies that there exist alternative ways of dealing with violent conflicts. And posing this question, there follow immediately other questions: best in terms of what and best for whom: the offender, the victim, the public or all of them? The responses are related to basic concepts of punishment, retaliation and mediation that have evidently been developed everywhere although content and meaning differ. Within this context, the book provides an overview on structural factors, settings and the phenomenology of violent conflicts in fourteen countries of the Middle East and an insight into the variety of types of traditional and modern conflict resolution applied largely in parallel in the region from different perspectives of social, legal and political sciences.
This third edition of Conflicts in the Middle East since 1945 analyzes the nature of conflict in the Middle East, with its racial, ethnic, political, cultural, religious and economic factors. Throughout the book Peter Hinchcliffe and Beverley Milton-Edwards put the main conflicts into their wider context, with thematic debates on issues such as the emergence of radical Islam, the resolution of conflicts, diplomacy and peace-making, and the role of the superpowers. The book is brought fully up to date with events in the Middle East, covering, for instance, developments in Iraq in 2006 where a democratically elected government is in place but the insurgency show no sign of coming under control. The analysis of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is also brought up to the present day, to include the election of the Hamas government and the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hizballah. Including a newly updated bibliography and maps of the area, this is the perfect introduction for all students wishing to understand the complex situation in the Middle East, in its historical context.
Most regions of the world are plagued by conflicts that are made insoluble by a confluence of complex threads from history, geography, politics, and culture. These "frozen conflicts" defy conflict management interventions by both internal and external agents and institutions. Worse, they constantly threaten to extend beyond their local geographies, as in the terrorist bombings in Boston by ethnic Chechens, or to escalate from skirmishes to full-scale war, as in Nagorno-Karabakh. Consequently, such conflicts cry out for alternative approaches to the classic, state-focused, and sovereignty-based conflict management models that are practiced in traditional diplomacy—which most often produce rather short-term, ad hoc, fragmented interventions and outcomes. Drawing upon the cases of the South Caucasus, the Western Balkans, Central America, South East Asia, and Northern Ireland, Networked Regionalism as Conflict Management offers a theoretical and practical solution to this impasse by arguing for regional collective interventions that involve a long-term reengineering of existing conflict management infrastructure on the ground. Such approaches have been attracting the attention of scholars and practitioners alike yet, thus far, these concepts have rarely involved more than simple prescriptions for regional cooperation between grassroots actors and traditional diplomacy. Specifically, says Anna Ohanyan, only the cultivation and establishment of regional peace systems can provide an effective path toward conflict management in these standoffs in such intractably divided regions.
