The Middle East and Europe Two Separate Regions

As (it is generally referred to) the cradle of civilization, the Middle East still occupies a special and key position to the understanding of global politics, and global politics have gained a new trend in terms of political-territorial units of organization. In other words, in a globalized world emerging as well as established forms of regional integration of states like the EU, the NAFTA, the MERCOSUR etc. play an important role in inter/trans-national politics. However, the Middle East, which is looking for peace and stability, has not been able to appear as a regional economic and political actor in the international fora. This paper is intended to analyze the reasons and other factors that keep the region from being an influential political actor in the world politics from a comparative standpoint, and tries to find the answer to the following question: “Could a regional integration model like in Europe be considered for the Middle East in order to bring about development and peace in the region that has long been fragmented and tormented by economic-political instability, conflicts and civil wars?”

efsps.eu

The European Union is actively involved in Middle Eastern politics, suffice it to look at its role within the Quartet, the EU3 vis-à-vis Iran, two ESDP missions in Palestine, one police mission in Iraq and a European military support to the southern Lebanon Unifil mission. This goes without considering humanitarian aid, cooperation and trade agreements. Only for humanitarian aid, in 2006 ECHO's humanitarian assistance to the Middle East represented 1/5 of the total EU world assistance, summing up to EUR 134 million. While in geo-strategic terms, Europe depends for 45% of its oil supplies from the Middle East, 40% of which from Opec countries. These brief remarks show the multilayered nature of European interest in the region. The European involvement and engagement in the region responds to different sets of criteria, from reputation to political and geo-economic interests. Focusing on this region, this analysis will examine how security concerns are framed by the EU. The foreign and security policy discourses will by extrapolated by looking at General Affairs Council Conclusions (Gaerc) and at the European Council Presidency Conclusions. While since 9/11 the tone of the discourse towards the challenges posed by this region has shifted, paying greater attention to proliferation and terrorism, pragmatically the Union has failed to devise coherent strategies in these policy areas, due to the difficulty of reaching a sufficient degree of understanding with member states over the long-term strategies to deploy in the area.

Rome, IAI, October 2018, 17 p. (IAI Papers ; 18|18), ISBN 978-88-9368-085-1, 2018

The Middle East faces a fragile and turbulent decade ahead. A forceful obstacle to sustainable peace and development in the region has been the heated rivalry unfolding between Iran and those countries opposed to it – led by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, and strongly supported by the US. The Donald Trump administration's aggressive stance on Iran is likely to fuel the regional tensions. European actors need to delicately navigate the region's geopolitical tensions and use the limited leverage they have to push against the current trend towards greater instability and perhaps a wider interregional and global conflict.

2004

Strategic Forum, 2008

The Europeans find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Sticking to the JCPOA against US wishes would create a number of additional problems, as they would come under intense pressure from Washington and its anti-Iran allies. The point about defending the JCPOA, however, is that doing so provides Europe with leverage over Iran. To squander the political capital Europe would reap by emerging as a strong defender of the nuclear deal by joining the anti-Iran coalition is a risky proposition. Instead, Europe should strive to carve out a middle course strategy whose aim would be the stabilization of regional flashpoints rather than a containment of Iran.

Rome, IAI, November 2020, 22 p. (IAI Papers ; 20|37), ISBN 978-88-9368-159-9, 2020

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is experiencing deep and profound challenges spanning the geopolitical and geoceonomic domains, as intra-state rivalry and competition mixes with mounting socioeconomic threats and fraying social contracts within multiple states in the region. Stepping back from the brink and developing new and inclusive frameworks for dialogue, de-escalation and confidence building in the region represents a generational challenge, requiring the active buy-in and support of regional actors themselves. The European Union has a vital interest in supporting such objectives, but needs to contend with limited capabilities, a retrenching United States and its lack of internal cohesion to have a positive impact. Against this backdrop, the EU should carefully priorities its engagements, working both internally and externally to improve its policies and leverage vis-à-vis three regional cleavages-the Arab-Israeli, the Saudi-Iranian, and the Arab-Turkish-and a number of associated "hot-spots" in an effort to mitigate the prevalence of zero-sum competition and contain the risk of new conflicts or crises, operationalising the EU's concept of "principled pragmatism" in the region.

2021

Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Preface and Acknowledgements As is the case with most books, this volume has a rather long history. I first started thinking about the importance of borders and core-periphery relations in Europe's interaction with the neighbouring states in the Middle East and North Africa in 2009-2010. Back then, two of my then-colleagues at St Antony's College at Oxford University, Dimitar Bechev and Kalypso Nicolaïdis, invited me to contribute to a volume on Mediterranean Frontiers they were editing. The result was a book chapter, 'Borderlands: The Middle East and North Africa as Europe's Southern Buffer Zone', in which I first proposed to study the ties that bind the European Union and its single member states to their so-called southern neighbours by considering the latter as Europe's southern borderlands. A research grant I subsequently obtained from the European Research Council (ERC) gave me the opportunity to do exactly that: to undertake an in-depth and systematic exploration of different aspects and dimensions of the relationship between Europe and the neighbouring states in the Middle East and North Africa from the perspective of expanding borders and orders within quasi-imperial relations. The research project, which ran from October 2011 to March 2017, involved a dozen research associates and research assistants, forged extremely fruitful collaborations with different communities of scholars, and produced various publications on very specific aspects of the relationship between Europe and the Mediterranean Middle East from a borderlands perspective. This book partly wraps up the overall results of the research project, but it also delves into aspects that the project left unexplored. It also reflects my everevolving thinking on the multifaceted relationship between Europe and the Mediterranean Middle East, which takes issue with the concepts of 'normative power Europe' and 'Fortress Europe' alike.

2007