Global and Regional Approaches to Arms Control in the Middle East

The end of the Cold War saw a return of the concept of arms control to the forefront of the academic and policy-oriented discourse on security. At the academic level, the end of the Cold War brought new conceptualizations of arms control. While the traditional neo-realist approach viewed arms control as an instrument for managing the balance of power between states and adjusting their military capabilities, the neo-liberal institutionalist approach conceptualized arms control as an instrument that could help to shape political perceptions of states, remove their security dilemma, and contribute to conflict prevention and possibly conflict resolution. At the policy-oriented level, the concept of arms control also gained considerable importance as an important mechanism for conflict resolution and security. In this context, Western powers have frequently advocated arms control as a conflict resolution strategy in conflict-ridden regions, such as the Middle East, South Asia and the Korean peninsula.

With the end of the Cold War, the question of arms control moved to the fore of Middle Eastern politics as an important element in the process of conflict resolution in the region. This upsurge of interest in arms control could be explained in the light of a number of global and regional developments. Perhaps the most important development was the end of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, it was common to dismiss proposals for arms control in the region.

Following the 9/11 attacks, a major change occurred in Western, particularly American security policies at the global and regional levels, including policy in the area of arms control. In the United States, the George W. Bush administration declared a war on terrorism that targeted both terrorist organizations and so-called ‘rogue states’. The administration argued that it could not afford to wait until such organizations or states acquired WMDs and used them first against US interests. Accordingly, the United States had to be prepared to strike first against aspiring possessors of WMD, especially rogue states seeking nuclear weapons. This brought the war on terrorism into a war of counter-proliferation in which the United States and a number of its European allies would target non-state terrorist organizations and rogue states suspected of developing WMDs (Record 2004).

Scholars of international politics have long recognized that human behaviour is largely shaped by how reality is perceived and evaluated, and that comprehending decision-makers’ cognition of reality is crucial for understanding their behaviour (Jervis 1976). In fact, the cognitive approach to international politics is based on these premises. The difference between various cognitive schools lies in their identification of the locus of the most crucial cognitive variables, such as perceptions, beliefs, images, and values. In the meantime, they all share the assumption that national leaders make decisions within the constraints of ‘bounded rationality’. These constraints are related to the external situation as well as the capacities of the decision-maker. In this respect, one can distinguish between (i) external boundaries, which include missing, erroneous, or unknowable information about external crises, and (ii) internal boundaries to rational decision-making, which are the result of policymakers’ limited information processing capacity when studying exceptionally complex issues. Instead of searching all information for the best outcome, policymakers usually select an alternative that is acceptable and compatible with their existing views.

The Arab world is at present undergoing one of its most profound political upheavals in decades. This is represented in the wave of the Arab Spring mass uprisings which has dominated the Arab world since 2011. The Arab Spring has sanctioned the beginning of a new chapter in Arab politics. It has broken the long-standing taboo that saw Arab leaders as immune from mass revolutions and viewed political change as a top-downwards process initiated by either military coups or foreign intervention. Indeed, the Arab Spring has signalled the first manifestation of mass popular demand for more democratic governance in the Arab world. In addition, it has already brought back participative politics to these countries. One of the main features of modern Arab politics was the death of participative politics, as the political process was monopolized by corrupt elites. After the democracy wave, the people became a central actor in the political process. Younger generations are now engaged in politics. Even Salafi fundamentalists and Sufi spiritualists, who used to stay aloof from politics, are now well-entrenched in the political process through their own political parties.

The global arms control approach in the Middle East has followed a pattern of continuity ever since the end of the Cold War. During the 1990s, the global arms control proposals in the Middle East were built on the assumption that an Israeli monopoly of nuclear weapons would serve Western interests in the region. These proposals, which were mainly initiated by Western powers, advocated the removal of chemical and biological weapons from all Middle Eastern countries, but restricted the removal of nuclear weapons to Arab countries and Iran. In the field of nuclear weapons, the Western proposals emphasized a CBMs approach rather than a comprehensive nuclear ban approach, equivalent to the maintaining of the nuclear status quo in the form of an Israeli nuclear hegemony in the region. This period was characterized by the existence of significant differences between the Arabs and Israel on issues relating to the very basic conceptual underpinnings of arms control. Indeed, the positions of both parties were almost zero-sum, which, in combination with the West’s double-standards approach, undermined the prospects for reaching a genuine arms control regime in the Middle East.