send mail to support@abhimanu.com mentioning your email id and mobileno registered with us! if details not recieved
Resend Opt after 60 Sec.
By Loging in you agree to Terms of Services and Privacy Policy
Please specify
Please verify your mobile number
Login not allowed, Please logout from existing browser
Please update your name
Subscribe to Notifications
Stay updated with the latest Current affairs and other important updates regarding video Lectures, Test Schedules, live sessions etc..
Your Free user account at abhipedia has been created.
Remember, success is a journey, not a destination. Stay motivated and keep moving forward!
Refer & Earn
Enquire Now
My Abhipedia Earning
Kindly Login to view your earning
Support
The geopolitical and the security environment in West Asia have undergone dramatic changes during recent years. Before the Arab uprisings, Afghanistan and Iraq were considered the centre of the crisis in West Asia; however the Arab movements led to the emergence of new focal points of crisis in various countries of the region, from Syria to Bahrain, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Great powers and regional actors not only have not been able to manage these crises but also have pursued a strategy with zero sum results. Therefore, the new developments have unprecedentedly increased tensions between regional powers.
Strategic surprises or unexpected events have taken place which had remarkable impact on the distribution of power at international or regional levels. For instance, the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11 can be seen as strategic surprises in the history which had impact on foreign policy of number of countries. During the last four years, numbers of strategic surprises have occurred in the West Asian region, including the Arab uprisings, the civil war in Syria, the rapid domination of ISIS over vast territories in Syria and Iraq and the Saudi Arabian invasion of Yemen. As this list indicates, recent years have witnessed many more strategic surprises than any time in the past and have changed the geopolitical situation of the region. Today, it is non-state actors who have become the main sources of strategic surprises in West Asia in the form of popular movements or terrorist groups. The change in the sources of strategic surprises has made crisis management much more difficult than the past and has an impact on other parts of the world. Another emerging development in the West Asia security environment is the rapid and frequent changes in the status quo of the actors which can be called a “changing status.”
In other words, the regional balance of power has become more unstable than earlier periods. The primacy of regional actors is rapidly becoming unstable and winners are becoming losers. With this in mind, regional actors, facing the increasing fluctuation of balance of power, will find their geopolitical positions unstable. Needless to say, preserving the geopolitical interests in the fluid balance of power is much more costly than in stable conditions.
1. Oil has been a major driving force behind foreign interests, regional and domestic balance of power, and territorial conflicts in the West Asia. As a result of the ‘9/11’ terrorist attacks debates on oil and the United States’ security agenda have significantly shifted. If on one side, those opposing US military interventionism have argued that the ‘war on terror’ provided one more convenient cover for a renewed ‘imperialist oil grab’ in this region; on the other, links between oil and terrorism pointed at problems of governance in oil-producing countries. As the ‘war on terror’ became justified as a ‘war of liberation’ against oil-funded dictators, the US portrayed its foreign policy as shifting from ensuring free access to oil for the world market, to ensuring that oil is delivering ‘freedom’ to local populations. Although engaging the crucial issue of oil governance, there is yet little evidence given the number of war victims and potential vested interests that a US policy shift from ‘free oil’ to ‘freedom oil’ is genuine and viable.
2. The Sunni-Shiite tension in the Middle East has been on the rise since the civil war in Iraq that followed the US-led invasion in 2003. Next were the clashes between Sunni and Shiite militias in Lebanon in 2008, while the Shiites in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia stepped up their campaign for more political and cultural rights in the two Sunni-ruled monarchies. To be sure, historical animosities do play a part, but contemporary sectarian tension in the Middle East is driven primarily by inequality. It typically thrives in environments where one religious group has – or is perceived to have – privileged access to government, wealth or place in a nation’s cultural life. The Shiites in Bahrain want equal access to senior government positions, while the Sunni minority in Iraq feels side-lined by the Shiite-dominated central government.
3. Growing level of sectarian tension is also closely linked to the regional cold war between the Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Shiite power Iran: to mobilize regional support, Riyadh presents itself as the protector of Sunni communities, while Tehran seeks allies among the Shiites in Lebanon in Iraq.
4. The wave of anti-government protests that began in 2011, known as the Arab Spring, only exacerbated these fault-lines. Not because the Arab Spring protests were religious in nature, but because they threatened to shatter the existing political orders in the Middle East. This alarms both Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Arabs living in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas find themselves between a hammer and the anvil.
All of them combinedly create a fertile ground for growth of various regional and global threats of terrorism as seen in the rise of ISIS and fall of human rights in this region.
By: Abhishek Sharma ProfileResourcesReport error
Access to prime resources