Beyond Regionalism? Regional Cooperation, Regionalism and Regionalization in the Middle East.
Russell, James A.
Beyond Regionalism? Regional Cooperation, Regionalism and
Regionalization in the Middle East, Cilia Harders and Matteo Legrenzi,
eds. Ashgate, 2008. 222 pages. $99.95.
It is popular in international-relations circles to assert that the
9/11 attacks represented a watershed event in global affairs and that
the international system somehow changed fundamentally in their
aftermath. While this assertion makes for a nice sound bite and has been
used as the basis for some interesting entertainment by television
commentators masquerading as serious students of international affairs,
one is left with nagging doubts about the veracity of the assertion.
This is particularly true in the Middle East. How exactly has the region
been transformed by al-Qaeda's murderously spectacular assault on
the "far enemy" at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and
the follow-up attacks around the world? While the attacks certainly
increased the world's awareness of the region's decades-old
battles between the regional regimes and militant Islamists, it's
not clear that the attacks had any measurable impact within the region
except perhaps to further cement the regimes' resolve (and those of
the outside powers) to throw a few more Islamists into their already
crowded jails.
Cilia Harders and Matteo Legrenzi take the opposite view in their
edited volume Beyond Regionalism? The authors assert that the region
today is "confronted with a contradictory package of military
intervention within the framework of the 'war on terror,'
forced democratization, new types of security cooperation, and at least
rhetorically strengthened Arab-European relations" (p. 3). These
factors, according to the authors, have dramatically affected the
dynamics of regional cooperation across the economic and political
domains.
The ambitious and eclectic set of essays in the volume apply a
variety of international-relations theories to address the phenomenon of
pan-Arabism or Islamism and a number of detailed case studies to examine
such regional organizations as the League of Arab States, the Arab
Maghreb Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Organization of
the Islamic Conference and the Greater Arab Free Trade Area. What do the
authors mean by the term "regionalism"? In his excellent
survey of the literature (pp. 13-32), Fred Lawson draws upon a
formulation in which "regionalism refers to the general phenomenon
as well as the ideology of regionalism, that is, the urge for regional
order, either in a particular geographical area or as a type of world
order. There may be many regionalisms" (p. 16).
The editors correctly note that scholars reflexively and mistakenly
dismiss the region's attempts to build effective regionwide
institutions. The essays in this volume shed much interesting
theoretical and empirical light on this heretofore largely ignored
phenomenon. As is made clear in the volume's impressive series of
essays, the region's variegated approaches to regionalization have
yielded interesting theoretical and policy-relevant results for scholars
studying global economic and political integration. One of the
volume's particularly interesting essays is by Simone Ruiz and
Valentin Zahrnt: "Regional Ambitions, Institutions, Social
Capital--Regional Cooperation and External Actors" (pp. 51-67).
This essay builds a model of regional integration and regionalization
that draws upon constructivist and rationalist approaches to
international relations. Their model suggests that the prospects for
further regional cooperation in the Mediterranean area are likely to
gather momentum in the coming years. Another strong chapter, "Did
the GCC Make a Difference? Institutional Realities and (Un)Intended
Consequence" (pp. 104-124), is Matteo Legrenzi's analysis of
the Gulf Cooperation Council, a subregional organization created in 1981
during the Iran-Iraq War to coordinate the reactions of the Gulf States
to the crisis. Legrenzi argues that, while the GCC never materialized
into the instrument of collective security that many had hoped for, the
organization has helped build a distinctive subregional identity that
has transformed regional politics. Legrenzi builds a meticulous case
chronicling the GCC's slow but steady maturation into a viable
instrument of regional economic and political integration. While not
proceeding at breakneck speed, plans for an integrated market and common
currency eventually will be realized.
This reviewer found Monica Gariup's argument framing the
concept of regionalization in the context of neorealist international
theory to be particularly relevant to the regional environment. Gariup
argues that the GCC actions have been dominated by "the systemic
logic of the balance of power." She concludes that the GCC is
"thus a mere exercise in institutionalized cooperation rather than
an incipit of a veritable regional security" (p. 82). The continual
presence of external hegemons, argues Gariup, is a systemic factor
limiting the development of mature regional-security institutions that
can be viewed by states as viable instruments of regional security and
stability.
As revealed by the volume's authors, the field of
regionalization in the Middle East is indeed a rich and largely unmined
trove for analysis and study by scholars of international relations. It
is less clear, however, that any of the trends for or against
regionalization either were strengthened or weakened in the aftermath of
the 9/11 attacks. One vehicle that could perhaps have addressed this
issue in the volume might have been the region's sudden and renewed
interest in nuclear power and, in the Gulf at least, the use of the GCC
as a political instrument to convey that interest to the global
community. This quibble aside, the volume offers a series of rich
theoretical and empirical studies on the largely ignored field of
regionalization in the Middle East and deserves space on the bookshelves
of all serious regional scholars.
James A. Russell, professor, Naval Postgraduate School
