- 11 May 2016
MEI Prominent Speaker Series: The Regional Civil War in the Middle East
ABSTRACT :
We have been speaking of the Arab Spring and of the civil wars that have followed it in four countries as national phenomena, albeit interconnected. In this lecture, Professor Luciani argues that neither the Spring nor the currently increasing level of conflict can be understood unless we take fully into account its regional dimension. In the Middle East and North Africa domestic politics is also regional, and all regional politics is domestic. In this vision, the region is today prey to a civil war, which is actively fought in four countries (Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya) but is in fact regional, as all countries are directly or indirectly involved. This war sees four regional political forces pitted against each other: 1) Daesh 2) the monarchies 3) the Moslem Brotherhood 4) the Shi’a. A fifth force, the liberals, remains marginalised almost everywhere. Each of these forces is transnational and regional, although the strength of each is not uniform throughout the region. Peaceful coexistence of these forces in the context of the inherited regional state system is probably impossible. Alliances between any two of these forces are extremely problematic, and no one individually considered can achieve regional hegemony. This points to a future of extended conflict whose eventual outcome is impossible to predict at present.
About the Speakers
Giacomo Luciani leads the Master in International Energy at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po; and is adjunct professor of interdisciplinary studies at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. In 2010-13 he was Princeton Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
His work has focused on the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa. With Hazem Beblawi, he edited a book on “The Rentier State” (1987), which is frequently cited as one of the origins of the concept. In his subsequent work he has focused on the linkage between evolving sources of government revenue and democratization, on the emergence of a GCC bourgeoisie, and on the economic causes of the Arab Spring. He just recently finished editing a book on “Combining Economic and Political Development” which discusses which economic policies may support democratic transitions and address popular expectations.
