The Middle East: Seeking a New Security Architecture in a Changing World

Abstract

The article focuses on one of the global problems of international relations — creation of a regional security system in the Middle East. There is no multilateral process in the region aimed at the regional stability maintenance, as well as effective mechanisms for controlling conflict and crisis zones. The authors put forward the goal of identifying new trends and prospects for ensuring security in the region. They analyze the accumulated experience, in particular, such security initiatives as the Damascus Declaration, “Peninsula Shield”, “Interpol of the Gulf ”, “Arab NATO”. The weaknesses and strengths of these projects are noted, and significant processes and events in the implementation of these initiatives are highlighted. Particular emphasis is placed on the Gulf sub-region. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by necessity to examine and understand new processes and phenomena at the level of interstate interaction in the region and in the field of security as a whole. The provisions of the concept of regional security complexes by B. Buzan and O. Weaver turned out to be useful for the discourse on security threats and their dynamics in the region. They conclude that the establishment of an inclusive security system in the Middle East appears to be a long-term and multi-layered process. It is necessary to consider the declared problem in a wide context, affecting not only military security issues, but also political, social, economic stability, taking into account the totality of the national interests of all states of the region and the participation of extra-regional actors in this process as well.