Suchergebnisse

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.

Arms transfers to the Middle East have been high on the international agenda since the Gulf war and the end of the Cold War. But the precise nature of recent developments, and the underlying motivations and forces that have produced the current pattern of weapons proliferation in the region, are poorly understood. A close examination of the data suggests that arms transfers to the Middle East have actually declined in the 1990s, following similar patterns manifest around the world. In addition, by shifting the focus away from arms transfers, toward overall changes in weapons arsenals and the relationship between weapons and armed forces, one can gain some insight into the underlying motives that drive regional arms acquisitions. These motives can be regional, systemic, or internal, and they interact in such a way as to enormously complicate the process of security building in the Middle East.

Focuses on Middle Eastern clients of both countries.