Routledge Handbook on Middle East Security provides the first comprehensive look at Middle East security issues that includes both traditional and emerging security threats. Taking a broad perspective on security, the volume offers both analysis grounded in the ‘hard’ military and state security discourse but also delves into the ‘soft’ aspects of security employing a human security perspective. As such the volume addresses imminent challenges to security, such as the ones relating directly to the war in Syria, but also the long-term challenges. The traditional security problems, which are deep-seated, are at risk of being exacerbated also by a lack of focus on emerging vulnerabilities in the region. While taking as a point of departure the prevalent security discourse, the volume also goes beyond the traditional focus on military or state security and consider non-traditional security challenges. This book provides a state-of-the-art review of research on the key challenges for security in the Middle East; it will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in Security Studies, International Relations, Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies.

This report identifies several important trends that are shaping regional security. It examines traditional security concerns, such as energy security and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as newer challenges posed by political reform, economic reform, civil-military relations, leadership change, and the information revolution. The report concludes by identifying the implications of these trends for U.S. foreign policy.

"Explores the current state of US security cooperation in the Middle East, considering why the military capabilities of US allies in the region are still lacking and suggesting avenues for effective change"--

Cybersecurity is a complex and contested issue in international politics. By focusing on the 'great powers'--the US, the EU, Russia and China--studies in the field often fail to capture the specific politics of cybersecurity in the Middle East, especially in Egypt and the GCC states. For these countries, cybersecurity policies and practices are entangled with those of long-standing allies in the US and Europe, and are built on reciprocal flows of data, capital, technology and expertise. At the same time, these states have authoritarian systems of governance more reminiscent of Russia or China, including approaches to digital technologies centred on sovereignty and surveillance. This book is a pioneering examination of the politics of cybersecurity in the Middle East. Drawing on new interviews and original fieldwork, James Shires shows how the label of cybersecurity is repurposed by states, companies and other organisations to encompass a variety of concepts, including state conflict, targeted spyware, domestic information controls, and foreign interference through leaks and disinformation. These shifting meanings shape key technological systems as well as the social relations underpinning digital development. But however the term is interpreted, it is clear that cybersecurity is an integral aspect of the region's contemporary politics.

Publisher Description

This volume draws together a number of research papers presented at a conference titled “Security, Insecurity and Prospects for Peace in the Middle East and North Africa”, organised by Nottingham Trent University’s Middle East and North Africa Research cluster in April 2016. The conference focused on questions pertinent to what may be termed the ‘post-Arab Spring’ era, in which the Middle East is experiencing unprecedented national and transnational challenges. Conflict, instability, radicalisation and the mass displacement of people have become increasingly salient features of the political and economic landscape of the region. The contributions here analyse a range of political, economic, security and socio-cultural issues that the authors argue lie at the heart of the instability that the region is currently experiencing. Re-thinking issues of security and insecurity in the Middle East not only allows us to explain what might have led to current instability, but also allows us to posit possible solutions to these security issues. In doing so, this book goes beyond the concepts of security and insecurity as a standard account of perpetrator versus victim, in a state-centric and violence-centric manner, to a broader and more complex understanding of the underlying processes informing security and insecurity in the region. The contributors include scholars from around the world working in a variety of different fields, including Middle Eastern studies, international relations and international political economy, providing an eclectic discussion of the state of the region.

Increasingly the Middle East and its growing population face a highly complex and fragile security system. The book analyzes these emerging security challenges in a comprehensive and systematic manner. It draws national and regional security issues into both the global security and human security perspectives.