Since the end of the Second World War political processes in the Middle East – and military processes ensued by them as well – have been given a significant boost that led to the creation of a very complicated array of problem that has not been solved up until now. In this paper I will try to summarize the political and security issues that have been going on in the Middle East ever since the establishment of the State of Israel in order to understand and to provide a clear conclusion about what was the impact of the creation of namely this Jewish state on the regional stability and security of the Middle East. To this end, my thesis statement is this: the nascence and existence of the state of Israel has not only become a threat to peace, security and stability in the Middle East but is, in fact, the only destabilizing factor in the region of such scope and potential. If it were not for Israel, much of the polarization, tensions and stand-offs in the Middle East would just not exist. That is why my conclusion will consist in the idea that the very existence of Israel is the problem per se – the problem that needs to be solved for the reason to become stable again.
As per the structure of my paper, I will primarily dwell briefly upon the two approaches that exist when it comes to construing the roe of Israel’s existence in the regional security. After that I will choose to adhere to one of these approaches, laying it down to the concept of political realism – in my opinion, this is namely the concept that perfectly explains the processes that go on in the region. After I provide some theoretical basis I will switch to illustrating theory with specific examples. Therefore, I will dwell upon the militarization of the region, the nuclear factor and ideological polarization in the region. I will then connect all of this to the instability in the region. Finally, the bibliography will follow, detailing which sources I used to conduct my little research.
The first one says that the geopolitical situation in the Middle East can easily be solved by the creation of the two independent states – Israel and Palestine. According to protagonists of this approach each nation deserves having its own state. Palestine’s right stems from its centuries-long existence in the place where the State of Israel now exists. But Israel’s right to have its own state is based on much more dubious things – the declaration of Balfour (which is in essence a private letter) and the baseless decision adopted by the United Nations. While negotiations to create the two states in the Middle East – the Jewish and the Arab one – have been explicitly failing, starting with the Baker’s plan in late 80s – 90s hopes that there is a possibility to come to a common bottom line and to provide therefore stability in the region are very uncertain, to say the list. The parties cannot even come to a decision about the percentage of land that has to be controlled by every newly established state – reshaped Israel and nascent Palestine. The matter needs to be decided by dismantling the previous mistakes (which the reckless establishment of the State of Israel was) and not by multiplying them creating the two states.
The second approach consists in the either/either principle – it is the matter of existence of Israel that is the only possible solution of the instability Israel was established in the Middle east as a country without it having been discussed with those states from whom territories were taken away for Israel to have some. Naturally, that gave birth to blood feud between the Arabs that felt – and rightly so – humiliated and deprived of their motherland and the Jews who came to the land they had not cherished. This feud is impossible to settle since the current stalemate exists already for seven decades.
The above approaches can be well embedded into the two scientific schools’ approaches in the international relations – idealism and political realism. The former relies on institution of mediation and believes that everything can be achieved by negotiations and talks and that international community is wise enough to commonly come to compromises. The political realism sees this situation very differently and I will dwell upon that in much more detailed manner since that is the method I have chosen.
Political realism is a scientific school in politics and a paradigm in political science that was founded by Hans Morgenthau. This paradigm is based on the ideas that go back to the times of Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes.
The realists view on the international relations is quite pessimistic. In circumstances when states are the main actors of international relations, their primary concern is, before everything else, is self-preservation. The reason for this is the belief states have that there are no effective measures of international police and permanent moderation which. Therefore, the most rational choice for the states is to maximize as much as possible their might and potential, primarily the military ones, which would be indispensable for keeping independence and integrity. Since nationalism is the governing sentiment in the international relations and the states are egoistic, that is why there is no space for altruism in their mutual relations, or even simply trust. In the understanding of followers of political realism international law and international bodies (which are in their essence the element and the product of political idealism) cannot exert effective influence on the behavior of states, especially mighty ones.
Followers of political realism state the stance of international relations is anarchy since there is on hierarchy among the states each one of which is guided by his own interest in the ways unpredictable for others. Conflicts therefore are a very natural thing for political realism since they emerge at every point of collision of interest of several states, of which there are host.
The principal means of ensuring interest of a state (among which security has the paramount importance is use and threat of force (Political Realism in International Relations, 2013).
If we try to embed the situation with the Middle East into the concept of political realism we will see that the Arab states have every reason to take action with a view to their self-preservation. Since this is the cornerstone of international politics – self-preservation – the establishment of Israel in the midst of the Arab world which took away territories (including Holy ones as well, by the way) was an immense threat to stability in the region due to a number of reasons. First, Israel was established against the Arab states’ will and without any consultations with them which already instilled the defensive mood in the regional states – their integrity has very easily been violated by external forces! Second, the West extensively supported the creation of Israel after just as well extensively lobbying its creation. The fact that Israel had very influential and powerful patrons made the Arab states even more decisive in their self-defense details of which I am about to provide. Finally, thirdly, the Arab population in the newly emerged Jewish state was oppressed, persecuted and subjected to discrimination. This was the direct abuse that became the trigger for the responsive action on the part of the Arab states.
The response had several manifestations. First of all, this was radical militarization of the region. Even as of now, the region is highly militarized. I believe, this is due to the coincidence of several factors – of the need to defend and of the financial possibility to do so (due to the il revenues in the Gulf monarchies). Anyway, according to the Global Militarization Index 2015 such countries as Jordan, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran and others have drastically increased their military capacities (Greber and Mutschler, 2015). And according to the information provided by the SIPRI in 2016 Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Iraq have been the largest arms importers in the period from 2011 to 2015 (International Arms Transfers, 2016).
A very specific aspect of militarization in the Middle East is the issue of nuclear arms. The feud that has been existing in the region for seven decades now has led to the situation in which the region stability is undermined by the three nuclear programs in a row – the Israeli, the Saudi and the Iranian one. All of these states do not explicitly recognize their possession of the nuclear arms but each one of them has a very high probability of having at least what can be called the advanced elaborations. Israel may have got them from his Western partners or from intelligence work, Saudi Arabia provides implicit financial support to the Pakistani nuclear program in order to be able to get the nuclear when the need be, and Iran has been elaborating its own nuclear program on its own for decades now which became the object of the protracted international negotiations. Back from the times Hiroshima and Nagasaki, times of the Cold War, of the Caribbean crisis, of the arms race and of the missile programs competitions we know how much instability all of that brings into the status quo among the certain array of states. In case of the Middle East militarization – both nuclear and conventional - quite in line with the postulates of political realism, takes place due to the growing threats emanating from Israel and threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of regional states, and thus leads to even more instability, since the higher militarization, the higher the risk of warfare is.
Another clue of instability ensued by the creation of Israel must be the way how militarism spilled over into the political sphere. Many of the organizations that represent Palestinians – like Hamas – are considered as terroristic in many states because methods they use in their fight for restoring the just stance of things are not always peaceful. The reason they are not is namely the instability of the region in which nobody can be too cautious. The further the instability grow, the harsher the politics grows, all the way to terroristic politics.
The military and political instability is further enhanced by the grassroots feud. Arabs and Jews seem to be naturally rivaling and to naturally ne revolted by each other. This has been reflected in something we know under the term of Intifada, when brutal actions initiated namely by the grassroots of the Arab nation are justified by the sacred war against the occupants.
The recurrent failures to solve the issue internationally prove another postulate of the concept of political realism which consists in the notion that international law and institutions cannot help resolve or settle any issues when it comes to personal interests of states. In this sense, once again, the best solution therefore would be the elimination of the reason why the problem had originally popped up.
All of the above having been said I conclude that the creation of the State of Israel contributed to the instability of the Middle East immensely. Being always divided between colonial empires and being mostly ruled by the authoritarian or monarchy regimes which are more inclined to hostilities, in the aftermath, the Middle East got yet more militarized and, therefore, unstable. That is why all the modern problems touching upon the security in the Middle East are in a way connected with the Arab-Israeli stand-off.
Works Cited
Grebe, Jan and Max M. Mutschler. Global Militarization Index 2015. BICC. 2015. PDF.
“International Arms Transfers.” SIPRI. 2016. Web. 11 My 2016.
“Political Realism in International Relations.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2013. Web. 11 May 2016.
Cordesman, Anothy H. “Risk and Instabilities in the Middle East and North Africa in 2016.” Center for Strategic and International Studies. 2014. PDF.
