M.P. Amineh

The Greater Middle East in Global Politics: Social Science Perspectives on the Changing Geography of the World Politics

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments List of Contributors List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of the Greater Middle East Mehdi Parvizi Amineh PART ONE: FOREIGN INTERVENTION AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST 2. IR-Theory and Transformations in the Greater Middle East: The Role of the United States Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and Henk Houweling 3. Connecting Central Eurasia to the Middle East in American Foreign Policy Towards Afghanistan and Pakistan: 1979-Present Simon Bromley 4. US-Russian Strategic Relations and the Structuration of Central Asia Robert M. Cutler PART TWO: STATE, SOCIETY, AND ECONOMY IN THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST 5. The Iranian Revolution: The Multiple Contexts of the Iranian Revolution Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and S. N. Eisenstadt 6. The Iranian Foreign Policy since the Iranian Islamic Revolution: 1979-2006 Eva Patricia Rakel 7. The Middle Easts Democracy Deficit in Comparative Perspective Mehran Kamrava 8. The Challenges of Modernity: The Case of Political Islam Mehdi Parvizi Amineh 9. The Turkish Political Economy: Globalization and Regionalism Nilgun Onder 10. The Maghreb: Social, Political, and Economic Developments Louisa Dris-Ait-Hamadouche and Yahia Zoubir 11. From Soviet Republics to Independent Countries: Challenges of Transition in Central Asia Mirzohid Rahimov 12. Central Asia since the Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Economic Reforms and Their Impact on State-Society Relations Richard Pomfret 13. New Twists, More Intricate Configurations: The Changing Israel-Palestinian Regional Security Complex Fred Lawson PART THREE: THE POLITICS OF OIL AND MAJOR POWER RIVALRY IN THE POST-COLD WAR GREATER MIDDLE EAST 14. Global Energy Security and Its Geopolitical Impediments: The Case of the Caspian Region Mehdi Parvizi Amineh and Henk Houweling 15. China and the Greater Middle East: Globalization No Longer Equals Westernization Kurt W. Radtke 16. Indian Power Projection in the Greater Middle East: Tools and Objectives Prithvi Ram Mudiam 17. The Changing Face of the Russian Far East: Cooperation and Resource Competition Between Japan, Korea, and China in Northeast Asia Roger Kangas 18. India-Pakistan Engagement with the Greater Middle East: Implications and Options B.M. Jain 19. The EUs Policies of Security of Energy Supply Towards the Middle East and Caspian Region: Major Power Politics? Femke Hogeveen and Wilbur Perlot Bibliography Index

Global Energy Security and Its Geopolitical Impediments: The Case of the Caspian Region

This article discusses the global geopolitics of energy security in the post-Cold War environment. Energy companies headquartered in western countries have long history of accessing energy resources beyond borders through invasion of the host by their home state, followed by domination and the creation of property rights to explore and sell oil. Conquest and domination, respectively voluntary exchange are the survival strategies of human groups in the global system. The article differentiates between demand-induced scarcity, supply-induced scarcity, structural scarcity, and the creation and transfer of property rights. Together, the behaviors referred to by these concepts create a field of social forces that cross state borders and involve state and non-state actors. Monopolizing control over energy resources by the Anglo-Saxon maritime powers was one of the causes of both world wars. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has been creating a land-based extension of its post-World War II defense perimeter. It runs from Romania, via Central Eurasia, to Israel, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Overland transport increasingly connects economies and energy supplies on the Central European and Pacific sides of the Eurasian continent. The US, therefore, has decided to bring under its military umbrella the energy-carrying region between industrializing China and India, recovering Russia and unifying Europe. Chinas policy to secure its energy supply by direct contracting with the home state and legal owner of the stock, brings it into confrontation with the US. The latter consumes one-quarter of the energy assumed to be present in the Greater Middle East. In recent decades, the Chinese economy has been growing at a rate substantially above the worldwide growth rate, which implies that Chinas share in the world economy is increasing over time. Accordingly, China is becoming more dependent on imports, especially energy. The US domestic oil production peaked in 1970-71. Thus, the US has no spare capacity to provide its allies in Europe and East Asia in case of an interruption of supply. The conquest of Iraq by the US and its allies, and the transfer of the management of the oil sector from the state to a US tax-paying private company opens a new era of violent interstate competition for access to and control of fossil energy sources.

Secure Oil and Alternative Energy

While intensive cooperation between China and the EU in the fields of energy use, environmental protection and sustainability is highly needed the question remains unanswered how this cooperation could be organized. This volume puts the geopolitical implementation of China’s and the EU’s energy security into the context of geo-economic systems in a global scale, and the emergence of a geo-economic energy network spreading from China to Western Europe.

Introduction: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Study of the Greater Middle East

The Greater Middle East’s (GME’s) borders stretch from Morocco on the Atlantic coast via the seaboard countries of the Mediterranean to the periphery of the Caucasus Mountains and shores of the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Red Sea. From the mid-nineteenth century, politics and societies in the region under study were connected to actors from first-industrializing European countries through the expansion of the latter. Many Muslim countries of the GME have failed to successfully transform from an agricultural to an urban industrial economy and to overcome the structural heterogeneity that is the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. The Industrial revolution brought about a fundamental change of the global system, having also a tremendous effect on the state system. Until the mid-nineteenth century, today’s GME countries were part of the three great Islamic empires of Mughal-India (1526–1707), Safavid- Persia (1500–1722), and the Ottomans (1299–1922).Keywords: Greater Middle East (GME); imperialism; industrial economy; Industrial revolution; Ottomans; Persian Gulf

The Geopolitics of Power Projection in US Foreign Policy: From Colonization to Globalization

This Chapter studies continuity and innovation in the geopolitics of America in projecting power beyond legally recognized borders. Exporting cultural symbols expressing what America has on offer plays as crucial a role in the opening of societies beyond borders as commodity exports and the activities of the CIA and the US Air Force do. The historical part summarizes early experience and aims at uncovering continuity in the foreign policy of getting America offshore. The hypothesis is that the US objective of inserting power and influence in West and CEA is to deny to a single state, other than the US itself, or coalition of powers not including the US, the capability to set conditions for accessing the energy resources of West and CEA. Our argument is that such a dominating coalition of actors not including the US, would arise from the creation of overland energy and other transportation links among the industries of Western Europe, Russia, Turkey, Northeast Asia, and China, leading to economic unification of Eurasia. Economic unification by creating overland energy and transport links of much of Eurasia would deprive the US navy of its power to interdict supplies of oil and food to core industrial areas of Eurasia and Japan. The reassertion of Russian power in the Caucasus and Central Asia should therefore be prevented. The EU and Japan should be prevented from developing autonomous military power and be kept dependent on maritime transported energy and food supplies. China should not host pipelines connecting energy resources of West Asia and CEA with the industries of Japan and Korea, whose unification and economic and strategic merger with China should be prevented. Iraq, Iran, and the Saudi Kingdom should be reformed into powers friendly of the US. Energy unification by overland transport systems, leading to economic unification between industries of these entities, would give major powers of the Asian landmass the potential for setting conditions for the US state and non-state actors to access the resources on the largest of worlds islands. Such a power shift between the worlds continents would reduce the Western Hemisphere to a rather dependent offshore island between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Introduction: China's and the European Union's energy security challenges in the twenty-first century

This chapter analyzes the geopolitical and domestic aspects of energy security challenges for the EU and China and their impact on energy security policy strategies. The analysis of geopolitical aspects involves research into the effects of competition on access to oil and gas resources among the main global consumer countries and its implications for the security of energy supplies of the EU and China. The chapter also examines domestic challenges and includes analyses of domestic energy demand and supply, policies to increase energy efficiency and estimating the prospects for the exploitation of renewable energy resources. Keywords:China; cold war; energy security; European Union (EU); global energy

Geopolitical Economy of Energy and Environment

Geopolitical economy of Energy–China and the European Union offers to analyse the three interconnected issues, namely geopolitical economy of energy and environment with focus on China and the European Union.

Globalisation, States, and Regionalisation: Analysing post-Cold War Security in the Mediterranean Region

Is it possible to promote security in the Mediterranean through a process of increasing regional cooperation that builds upon the commonality in problems and opportunities more than on the mutual divides? In a comprehensive and enlightening analysis, Brauch (2001) has argued that this option is being considerably complicated by the coexistence of three kinds of thinking: pre-modern (the belated formation of nations in South-Eastern Europe along ethnic, religious or historic boundaries); modern (the forceful defence of national sovereignty against outside intrusion (e.g. criticism of human rights violations) in most Arab states, Israel and Turkey; and post-modern (concerning the emergence of transnational spaces beyond the control of the nation states, through globalisation processes). We consider this analysis as an extremely insightful diagnosis of the problematique of the Mediterranean. In this paper we wish to contribute to dealing with the task identified in Brauch’s conclusion: finding a pragmatic theoretical approach as a remedy to proceed beyond modern and pre-modern inspired fragmentation processes.

Energy and Environment in China and the European Union: Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue, to which eight scholars have contributed, is the result of the second phase of the joint research program between the Institute of West Asian & African Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Energy Program Asia of the International Institute for Asian Studies (20072017). We are pleased to be able to publish a selection of articles on the geopolitical economy of energy and environment in the Journal African and Asian Studies. As program director of the above mentioned joint research program, I am grateful to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Amsterdam, as well as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing, for providing us with the opportunity to publish the second part of the results of our joint research program (2013-2017). This special issue of African and Asian Studies covers three distinct but interconnected themes:

China’s Statist Energy Relations with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan

During the last decade, China’s diplomatic, economic, security and multilateral relations with Resource-Rich Countries ( RRC s) in general, and with Central Asia and the Caspian Region ( CACR ) in particular, created a regional web of complementarity connecting states and societies. This trend reflects a dimension of the “statist globalization” of the Chinese economy. Chinese National Oil Companies ( CNOC s) are powerful actors within this emerging network. This comes as no surprise, as China’s domestic power-wealth structure relies on uninterrupted foreign (energy) supplies. The main aim of this paper will be to present a geopolitical economic reflection on China’s post-Cold War energy relations with the RRC s of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. Our theoretical framework, which stems from critical geopolitics, tries to conceptualize the geopolitical economic policy tools used by China’s ruling class in RRC s in general and the two cases in particular.