This anthology unites in one volume two studies of the Greater Middle East in global politics – each conceptual and empirical. First, it is a historical-comparative study of politics and societies in selected Greater Middle Eastern countries from Napoleon’s invasion of Ottoman Egypt in 1798 up until today. It addresses development and change in these societies as results of the complex interactions between external developments, the rise and expansion of European industrialized powers, and internal developments, the disintegration of Islamic Empires, their transformation into nation-states, and their efforts to industrialize and modernize. Second, it is an empirical case study of states and societies of the Greater Middle East in global politics, addressing themes such as nationalism, revolution, political Islam, democracy, globalization, regionalism, revolution, war, energy, and conflict and cooperation. The book is comprised of three parts and nineteen chapters. Contributors include: Mehdi Parvizi Amineh, Simon Bromley, Robert M. Cutler, Louisa Dris-Aït-Hamadouche, S.N. Eisenstadt, Femke Hoogeveen, Henk Houweling, B.M. Jain, Mehran Kamrava, Roger Kangas, Fred H. Lawson, Prithvi Ram Mudiam, Nilgun Onder, Wilbur Perlot, Richard Pomfret, Kurt W. Radtke, Mirzohid Rahimov, Eva Patricia Rakel, and Yahia H. Zoubir.

The Iranian Islamic revolution brought about a political system based on a combination of state institutions that derive their legitimacy from Islamic law and republican institutions legitimized by the people. As there are no legal political parties in the Islamic Republic of Iran, political factions represent the varying ideological and material interests of members of the political elite and their supporters. This book analyzes the rivalries between the political factions and their related state institutions and the impact of the dynamics of factionalism on domestic (economic and socio-cultural) and foreign policy formulation. It shows that tensions inherent to the structure of state institutions and factional rivalries slow down the process of democratization and economic reforms in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Africa is increasingly becoming an arena for geopolitical competition over its resources and, in the last two decades, has seen many emerging powers such as China, India, Russia, Japan and Brazil attempting to strengthen their ties with the continent. Turkey's involvement has been much less discussed, despite the fact that Turkey's strategic involvement with several sub-Saharan African states has been deepening since its active engagement in the Somali crisis of 2011. Federico Donelli brings to light the extent of Turkey's involvement in Africa and analyses the unique characteristics, benefits, challenges and limits of Turkish policy in the region. The book examines the Turkish diplomatic programme as well as its domestic reception, which includes humanitarian aid, religious links such as the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation), as well as private business links. Crucially, Donelli examines what makes Turkish involvement different from that of other international actors in the region – its historic ties with North Africa under the Ottoman Empire.

In this timely volume, M. Parvizi Amineh brings together a multitude of studies of modern Asian postcolonial states and societies. This part of the world has undergone major transitions over the past decade and is quickly becoming a major player in international policy and the global economy. Grounded in the most recent scholarship, State, Society and International Relations in Asia covers several large-scale global concerns, including nationalism, democratization, corruption, religious tension, globalization, and regionalization.

At the end of the Cold War, commentators were pondering how far Western ideas would spread; today, the debate seems to be how far Chinese ideas will reach. This volume examines Chinese international relations thought and practices, identifying the extent to which China's rise has provoked fresh geo-strategic and intellectual shifts within Asia.

America's longest wars have been 'small wars'. This book explains how power differences shape - but don't determine - international relationships.

Informed by international law, international relations and environment management scholarship, this interdisciplinary analysis of environmental regimes in Asian subregions proposes a new regime for the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau based on China’s cooperation with its south Asian neighbors.

Exploring the management of ‘truth’ in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, this book aims to investigate the ways in which the official ‘truth’ is constructed and institutionalised in the country. The Politics of Truth Management in Saudi Arabia argues that there are two interrelated notions which articulate the ways in which ‘truth’ is conceptualised in Islam. One, at macro level, constitutes the trans-historical foundational principles of the religion, a set of engrained beliefs, which establish the ‘finality’, and ‘oneness’ of Islam in relation to other competing narratives. The other, at a micro level, takes place internally to find ‘truth’ within the ‘truth’. Unlike Islamic truth at the macro level, which is entrenched, the Islamic truth at the micro level refers to the various attempts by different agencies to claim to have found the ‘truth’ within the ‘truth’. Wahhabism, which is the product of an eighteenth century revivalist movement, is portrayed as the most ‘authentic’ reading of Islam. It is seen as the raison d'être for the prevailing political mechanism in the country and is introduced as an example of truth management at the micro level. Arguing that truth is not born in a power vacuum and often its construction and institutionalisation signify domination in one way or another, this book will be of interest to students of Religion, Politics, and Saudi Politics more specifically.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A searing reassessment of U.S. military policy in the Middle East over the past four decades from retired army colonel and New York Times bestselling author Andrew J. Bacevich From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country’s most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise—now more than thirty years old and with no end in sight. During the 1980s, Bacevich argues, a great transition occurred. As the Cold War wound down, the United States initiated a new conflict—a War for the Greater Middle East—that continues to the present day. The long twilight struggle with the Soviet Union had involved only occasional and sporadic fighting. But as this new war unfolded, hostilities became persistent. From the Balkans and East Africa to the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, U.S. forces embarked upon a seemingly endless series of campaigns across the Islamic world. Few achieved anything remotely like conclusive success. Instead, actions undertaken with expectations of promoting peace and stability produced just the opposite. As a consequence, phrases like “permanent war” and “open-ended war” have become part of everyday discourse. Connecting the dots in a way no other historian has done before, Bacevich weaves a compelling narrative out of episodes as varied as the Beirut bombing of 1983, the Mogadishu firefight of 1993, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the rise of ISIS in the present decade. Understanding what America’s costly military exertions have wrought requires seeing these seemingly discrete events as parts of a single war. It also requires identifying the errors of judgment made by political leaders in both parties and by senior military officers who share responsibility for what has become a monumental march to folly. This Bacevich unflinchingly does. A twenty-year army veteran who served in Vietnam, Andrew J. Bacevich brings the full weight of his expertise to this vitally important subject. America’s War for the Greater Middle East is a bracing after-action report from the front lines of history. It will fundamentally change the way we view America’s engagement in the world’s most volatile region. Praise for America’s War for the Greater Middle East “Bacevich is thought-provoking, profane and fearless. . . . [His] call for Americans to rethink their nation’s militarized approach to the Middle East is incisive, urgent and essential.”—The New York Times Book Review “Bacevich’s magnum opus . . . a deft and rhythmic polemic aimed at America’s failures in the Middle East from the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency to the present.”—Robert D. Kaplan, The Wall Street Journal “A critical review of American policy and military involvement . . . Those familiar with Bacevich’s work will recognize the clarity of expression, the devastating directness and the coruscating wit that characterize the writing of one of the most articulate and incisive living critics of American foreign policy.”—The Washington Post “[A] monumental new work.”—The Huffington Post “An unparalleled historical tour de force certain to affect the formation of future U.S. foreign policy.”—Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)

This book examines what counts regarding the role and conceptualization of regions in world politics. It presents a fresh look at which narratives awake, persist, fall dormant or re-emerge amidst diverse interlocking processes of environmental, technological and global political changes. It puts forward a thorough and multidimensional conceptualization of regions as embedded in changing, overlapping environments, and requires more attention to regions’ shifting materiality, temporality and technological underpinnings. Combing the approaches, questions and analyses of Critical IR and Political Geography, it calls for a renewed emphasis on the puzzle of how the contextual environment of regions may become more (or less) multidimensional, or how some aspects of a region’s contextual environment may be mutually constitutive in non-intuitive ways. Ultimately, it sheds light on the politics of regions and the regional scale in international politics in order to overcome the often-underlying territorial fixity of territory and space within IR approaches. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of international relations, international political sociology, political geography, regionalism, geopolitics and area studies.