6. The Progress and Prospects for Regionalism in the Middle East

Louise Fawcett, St Catherine’s College, Oxford

The Middle East provides an interesting example of both the opportunities and challenges that developing countries face in their interaction with the international environment. Cooperation at the regional level has encompassed both a broader pan-Arab, as well as a set of narrower sub-regional agendas, and incorporated a wide range of issue areas from resource management and environmental concerns to political and economic integration. Yet in terms of providing regional cohesion and hence any collective response to the challenges of globalization, the Middle East, like so much of the developing world has proved weak. Why this might be so, and which strategies might be deployed to strengthen regionalism from both within and without the region, are questions considered in this paper.

The consolidation of the Middle Eastern states system against the backdrop of the Cold War and the Arab-Israel conflict, made region building difficult if not impossible. Yet, among the Arab states at least, many of the required ingredients for successful regionalism did exist in terms of shared history, language, culture. Cutting across these impulses were the assertions of sovereignty, state-based nationalism, local rivalry and the effects of superpower influence, common to many regions of the developing world, all of which served to curb the instinct of cooperation. Regionalism, whether externally driven or inspired (as in the Baghdad Pact or various attempts to ape the European Community’s goal of a common market), or internally driven (as in the Arab League and later the United Arab Republic) was either short-lived, or unsuccessful in moving beyond a limited agenda. Notwithstanding the achievements of the Arab members of OPEC in raising oil prices and thus briefly denting both the confidence and capacity of the world’s major industrialised powers and supporting institutions, regional efforts in the Middle East have played only a minor role in either advancing collective interests on the world stage or promoting regional stability. If Middle Eastern states enjoy power on the international stage, it is not because of their institutions, but almost despite them. It is their rich resource base and strategic location which have made them the object of desire and competition among external powers.

Yet this need not be so. The Middle East has a rich history of interdependence, providing a lasting foundation for future cooperation. Even during the Cold War, a common sense of identity and purpose united the newly independent states: against the former colonial powers, against the superpowers, and against Israel. True, the Arab League only weakly reflected these impulses, but Islam and a diluted Arab nationalism lent additional coherence. Of course both these forces can and have been hijacked by different states with pretensions to regional, or even spiritual hegemony, but both offer the region a rich potential for cooperative ventures in a more benign post-Cold War international environment. Thus rather than focussing on the notable failures of cooperation (of which the UAR (United Arab Republic) and later the ACC (Arab Cooperation Council) are two examples), one should reflect on its potential and the modest successes recorded so far.

The struggle for survival among small, weak states that generated the UAE (United Arab Emirates), and the security imperatives that gave birth to the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) produced two durable groupings that have both held their own in a turbulent regional environment. The Arab Mahgreb Union has achieved an African, Mediterranean as well as Middle Eastern profile, despite the obvious limitations of some of its more truculent members. Responding to the forces of globalization, the Arab League established in 1997 a Free Trade Area (AFTA), which has been implemented by some 14 of its 22 members to date, although it would be wrong to underestimate the obstacles in the path of such a venture (not least the limited levels of inter-regional trade, a common obstacle to regionalism in other parts of the developing world). Significantly, the signature of various Arab-Israel peace accords have served to promote various new forums of regional cooperation, though hitherto of functional rather than institutional form. Peripheral states like Iran and Turkey, engage in cooperation with Arab partners, but also those of the former Soviet republics to their north and east and, in the case of Turkey with Europe also, if not with the status of EU member to which the Turks have long aspired. In a region where the politics of inclusion are replacing the politics of exclusion -Arabs are cooperating with non-Arabs in ways that events of the twentieth century made impossible- cooperation is more readily achievable. And the range of issue areas has greatly expanded: from more traditional military and security issues to common concerns over resources, the environment and population growth.

The present state of most Middle Eastern regimes is not conducive to deep cooperation. As in many parts of the developing world, the slow progress of economic and political liberalization, and the persistence of authoritarianism, evidently offer poor prospects for regionalism. And in the Middle East, regional rivalries (and superpower intervention) persist as the post-Gulf War environment continues to demonstrate, deflecting attention, energy and resources away from the key tasks of economic, social and political development. Yet these tasks urgently need to be addressed, and the lesson from other areas is that where viable regional structures are in place, domestic reform may be more readily achievable. So while regionalism feeds on democratization and liberalization, it can also act as their promoter. Both the regional and international community have a serious responsibility in this regard.

It would be naive to idealize about regionalism’s prospects in the Middle East from the vantage point of the year 2000. The experiences of the European Union, NAFTA (and to some extent groupings like Mercosur and ASEAN also) demonstrate however the advantages of successful and sustained regional efforts. The demands of the global economy and the need for the region (not just individual states within it) to interact with international institutions, norms and practices make regional cooperation a growing necessity. Regional groupings can modify multilateral agendas and affect the rules of the game; they can also assert regional identity and purpose at the cultural and social as well as the economic and political level. Regionalism is thus a double edged sword, competing with or complementing globalization. It is a tool which most developing countries have hitherto little exploited to enhance their bargaining position, beyond the ‘bloc’ stances taken by the South, with some success, during the Cold War years. The Middle East as a region has a far greater potential for sustained cooperation than many contemporary commentators allow, but its responses to the challenges of the post-Cold War period have hitherto been patchy, hesitant and ultimately disappointing.

(Related work by the author can be requested from louise.fawcett@socstud.ox.ac.uk)