Insecurity and State Formation in the Global Military Order:: The Middle Eastern Case

In: European journal of international relations, Band 2, Heft 3, S. 319-354

Abstract

This article argues that within the European state system, the struggle to control the institutions and instruments of organized violence produced an externally-oriented conception of security that rested upon the unconditional legitimacy of the state, a societal consensus over basic values and the near-elimination of violence from political life, which permitted a strong identification of the security of the state with the security of its citizens. The conditions for such identification do not hold in many parts of the world, and hence this conception cannot address either the threats to state structures or regimes that do not emerge from other states, or the threats that states and regimes can pose to their own citizens or societies. A more historically-sensitive three-dimensional matrix for studying security on regional/interstate, state/regime and societal/individual levels possesses greater explanatory power, while remaining true to the traditional concerns of security studies with the role and influence of institutions and instruments of organized violence. Such an approach, which is rooted in an account of the role of institutions of organized violence in state formation processes, is used to present a more nuanced account of the processes of `military development' in the modern Middle East.