Oil,the Suez canal,and sterling reserves: economic factors determining British decisionmaking during the 1967 Arab–Israeli crisis

This article assesses the importance of economic factors for the development of British Middle Eastern policy during the 1967 Arab-Israeli crisis, based on newly declassified government documents. Policy shifted from threatening unilateral action against Nasser to multilateralism and neutraliry shortly before the June war. Economic considerations will be put in the context of anti-interventionist voices in the cabinet, in the defence establishment and within US policy. The article concludes that important reasons for the shift were economic, namely threats of an oil embargo, reserve withdrawals, and Suez Canal closure at a time of fiscal difficulties in Britain. In addition, an ideological shift in cabinet from ‘imperial hangover’ to anti-interventionism underlay the policy change.     

Oil, the Suez canal, and sterling reserves: economic factors determining British decisionmaking during the 1967 Arab-Israeli crisis

This article assesses the importance of economic factors for the development of British Middle Eastern policy during the 1967 Arab-Israeli crisis, based on newly declassified government documents. Policy shifted from threatening unilateral action against Nasser to multilateralism and neutraliry shortly before the June war. Economic considerations will be put in the context of anti-interventionist voices in the cabinet, in the defence establishment and within US policy. The article concludes that important reasons for the shift were economic, namely threats of an oil embargo, reserve withdrawals, and Suez Canal closure at a time of fiscal difficulties in Britain. In addition, an ideological shift in cabinet from 'imperial hangover' to anti-interventionism underlay the policy change.     

American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a part of the regional puzzle, the author contends, but not the key to the regional puzzle in the Middle East. He further cautions that U.S. interests in the Middle East will not be well served by a U.S. President who is essentially the President of the Arab-Israeli conflict.     

Britain, France, and America's Year of Europe, 1973

Britain's entry into the European Community in 1973 coincided with an American initiative aimed at redefining relations between the United States and Western Europe. This confronted British diplomats with a serious dilemma. They wished to maintain close collaboration with Washington and, for the sake of European unity, to expand on their recently achieved reconciliation with France, a country whose Gaullist elite rejected any further institutionalization of transatlantic relations. French reluctance to engage in a constructive dialogue with the Americans resulted in a fractious debate over the drafting of two seemingly innocuous declarations, and this was exacerbated by the mixed response of the Europeans to the outbreak of the fourth Arab-Israeli war and the ensuing energy crisis. Finally, at the Washington energy conference of February 1974, the British chose to work with the Americans, rather than the French, in seeking to mitigate the economic impact of OPEC's oil policies.     

An Autocracy at War: Explaining Egypt's Military Effectiveness, 1967 and 1973

In the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt shocked the world with its atrocious performance in battle, only to stun the world again with its remarkable military turnaround in the October 1973 war. Existing studies, which emphasize culture, social structure, and regime type, have a difficult time explaining why this single autocratic state, in such a short period of time, exhibited such extremes in its military competence. None can explain both why Egypt performed so poorly in 1967 and improved so significantly in 1973. Other explanations such as military strategy and learning explain the puzzle in part, but they alone cannot account for the outcome. This article presents a theory that accounts for the divergence in effectiveness, focusing on underlying differences in the fabric of the autocratic regime. It argues that changes in the balance of civil-military power in the state—born from more fundamental differences in domestic politics in the autocracy—shaped three areas of military activity critical to military effectiveness: strategic assessment, command, and control, and leadership. In developing this argument, the article both contributes to growing scholarship on the sources of states' military effectiveness and explains why Egypt's performance varied so significantly in these historically consequential wars.     

Resolving Conflict Across Languages

English is increasingly used as an indispensable interlanguage, the commonthird language of non-native speakers, in international negotiations.In technical or commercial talks, where interlocutors share a stock ofexpert knowledge, semantic problems are relatively easily overcome. Inemotive and complex negotiations to resolve protracted international conflict,however, intriguing problems of interpretation arise. Though interlocutorsspeak in English, they are unlikely to think or work in English.Back home the political debate is conducted in the mother tongue. Thus thesemantic fields, the full range of meanings and connotations, of keyabstract concepts at the heart of the negotiation may not be conveyed intranslation. The ill-fated Syrian-Israeli peace talks are drawn upon to exemplifythe argument.     

Religious Intelligence

Sacred rituals and symbols can act as force multipliers that motivate and constrain the effectiveness of actors. Religious intelligence involves an assessment of how these rituals and symbols affect combat operations. The fourfold challenge faced by the religious intelligence analysts is to ascertain how prominent a role religion will play in a given conflict, what the relevant sacred phenomena are, how salient they are for the specific religious communities present, and how they will affect a given conflict. The case studies that form the core of this article highlight three issue areas open to religious intelligence collection and analysis, and exhibit variation in the ability of intelligence analysts to correctly assess those religious factors. Egyptian and Israeli decision making prior to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War illustrates how information about sacred time can influence war initiation. The diverging outcomes of two counterinsurgency operations at the same sacred site, “Operation Blue Star” (1984) and “Operation Black Thunder” (1988), demonstrate the utility of intelligence about the parameters of sacred space. A final case study explores the U.S. failure to grasp the importance of religious authority in the Iranian Revolution. I conclude by considering the actors best suited for gathering and processing religious intelligence. Religious intelligence requires interdisciplinary teams that combine expertise in religion, area studies, and military operations.     

Bibliographic service

Through a series of open-question interviews carried out with those responsible for the UfM file between late 2008 and early 2009, some undeniable and unanimously accepted merits were voiced. However, views from the southern shores of the Mediterranean appear to be multifaceted and not uniform with only one dominant common trait echoing in all interviews and shaping negative perceptions, namely, the weight the Arab-Israeli conflict exerts in hampering the initiative. While a Union of projects could address the architectural deficit that has prevented the Mediterranean from becoming a coherently functional economic space, high politics emerge, yet again, as an inescapable reality that demands prioritisation.     

The Challenge of Talking about Terrorism: The EU and the Arab Debate on the Causes of Islamist Terrorism 1

The Arab “hegemonic debate” on the causes of Islamist terrorism nurtures (pan-) Arab, anti-Western sentiments and delegitimizes criticism of the political status quo. The European Union's emphasis on multilateral means of conflict resolution and trade promotion leads to official pronouncements that barely address the Arab world's domestic problems, instead referring to international tensions such as the Arab-Israeli conflict as a particular cause of Islamist terrorism and the need for cooperation with Arab governments. By failing to challenge the official narratives of authoritarian Arab regimes the EU obstructs interests in the democratization of the region and the delegitimization of Islamist violence.     

Middleman in the Middle East: America's Flawed Approach to the ‘Peace Process’

President Bush professes optimism that an Arab-Israeli peace accord can be reached before he leaves office. Hamas, which presumably senses his urgency, has recently proposed a temporary truce with Israel in Gaza, with an option to extend it to the West Bank. This initiative is eerily reminiscent of Soviet behavior during the Cold War. Hamas essentially advocates a short-term period of peaceful coexistence to bide time while it strengthens its forces and lulls Israel into a false sense of security. If the United States accedes to this proposal or pressures Israel to do so, it will demonstrate once again the Cold War-style attitudes and perceptions that still characterize its approach to the “peace process.”     

从中东动荡看美地区战略及新举措

最近中东地区政局激烈动荡,地区广大民众反美情绪高涨,充分暴露了美国中东战略的失误,主要表现在五个方面,其中美国的恣意横行成为引发地区动荡的一个重要诱因;巴以争端依旧,令阿拉伯人忧心忡忡。为了稳住中东,继续执掌该地区事务,奥巴马政府开始着手调整其中东政策,主要采取了五项措施,其中尤其值得一提的是,美国欲将埃及打造成＂民主过渡＂的样板,以促使其他国家仿效。     

The US View of the Transforming Strategic Context in the MENA

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently reiterated US support for the expansion of the Abraham Accords and called for renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. As highlighted by this volume’s authors, the Accords are the most significant regional peacemaking achievement in decades, having already reduced Arab-Israeli tensions—particularly at the government level—and provided opportunities for Arab states to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians. The changing regional security architecture can only be welcomed by the United States. Yet, due to political authoritarianism in the region, the Accords may fall short of their potential if the economic gains fail to reach marginalized populations. This essay contends that trade relations that support job creation and access to water and energy may increase public support. Just as a return to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is important, political reform in the Arab countries is needed to make the Accords successful by bringing more economic benefits to the Arab streets and ensuring that there will not be a “Cold Peace.”     

After Oslo,a paradigm shift? Redefining ‘peoples’, sovereignty and justice in Israel-Palestine

Since the Oslo Accords, conflict resolution regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict has been guided by two conjoined premises regarding (1) the identity and rights of the two ‘peoples’ involved, and (2) Israel’s sovereignty, or lack of it, in portions of Mandate Palestine. Although seemingly incontestable, in tandem these premises have paradoxically proved ruinous to the welfare of civilians under occupation by fostering notions that peace can be achieved through geographic partition to serve rival ethno-national projects for self-determination. Proposed here is that this approach is fundamentally flawed in accepting as legitimate the Jewish-settler ideology that ethnically dismembered the ‘Palestinian people’, as well as a form of Palestinian-Arab ethno-nationalism that has also become anachronistic in light of contemporary law and norms. Drawing on comparative politics regarding the construction of ‘peoples’ and constructivist international relations theory regarding sovereignty, this article proposes that these premises must therefore be reassessed and principles of collective rights be reinterpreted to suit the current condition of advanced settler colonialism in Mandate Palestine, which compels full political unification.     

Carl Schmitt's Five Arguments against the Idea of Just War

Carl Schmitt famously alleged that a commitment to just war fosters the criminalisation and demonisation of the enemy. The aim of this paper is to trace, analyse and evaluate five arguments that can be found in Schmitt's opus elucidating and supporting the above claims. The paper suggests that even though Schmitt's critique of just war is typically extreme, it can nevertheless enrich the current debate on just war in so far as it challenges the common claim that the just war tradition occupies the middle ground between bellicism (that always justifies war) and pacifism (that never justifies war). Arguing against this widely held view, Schmitt claims that in the 20th century a belief in just war, far from representing a moderate position between extremes, is instead at the fore of an ideology that aims at dehumanising anyone who does not share its core values.     

The Sturdy Child vs. the Sword of Damocles: Nuclear Weapons and the Expected Cost of War

Abstract

Is the world better off with nuclear weapons or without? Nuclear pessimists point to the potentially devastating costs of a nuclear war. Nuclear optimists argue that nuclear weapons reduce the likelihood of war and are thus beneficial. This debate is inconclusive in part because it misses an important conceptual point. We should care both about the cost of war and the likelihood of war, as they combine to form the expected cost of war, which is the product of the two. I discuss five implications of focusing on expected costs. Three support the pessimists: (1) nuclear weapons raise the upper limit on how destructive wars can be; (2) there may be a floor on how low the likelihood of war can go; and (3) risk aversion over damage will raise the expected cost of nuclear war. The remaining two support the optimists: (4) strategic models exhibit a declining expected cost of war; and (5) casualty data show that the expected cost of war is declining over its observed range in the past two hundred years.     

Threats at Home,Threats Abroad: Bargaining and War in the Shadow of Coups and Revolutions

I analyze a two-level game in which a leader bargains over the spoils of international bargaining with a domestic opposition that can threaten her with a coup or revolution. While fighting an international war shrinks the domestic pie, it also alters the distribution of domestic power. This has three main implications. First, if war will undermine the opposition, fighting may be so attractive that leaders demand more for peace than foreign states are willing to give, leading to war. Second, if war will bolster the opposition, leaders accept harsh terms to avoid fighting—strategic selection that has implications for the observed relationship between war and political survival. Finally, prospective shifts in the distribution of domestic power caused by war can reduce the effects of international asymmetric information, though the result may be to increase or decrease the chances of war.     

When Democracies Go to War: Public Debate and the French Decision on War in 1999 and 2003

On what grounds do democratic states wage war? Public opinion is often considered as being of crucial importance in the decision to go to war. This article analyses two debates over war in France. It finds that democracies debate war within a limited range of arguments from which classical reasons for war such as the geostrategic one are absent. However, within the limited range of arguments, public support for decisions to go to war seems to depend significantly on the convergence of all public opinion actors over the interpretation of the crisis situation. The high politics nature of crisis situations gives the political leadership strong leverage in the shaping of thick discourses. The control function of public opinion is then diminished and a de facto prerogative of the government established even though justifications remain restricted to a limited number of arguments. Thick discourses of justification seem to be framed predominantly by arguments of just war.     

Uncovering the Dangerous Alliances, 1495–1980

The empirical literature has found that interstate alliances are, with the exception of the nineteenth century after 1815, usually followed by war rather than by peace. This analysis tries to identify theoretically the characteristics of alliances that distinguish those that are followed by war from those that are followed by peace. It is argued that alliances that embody settlements of territorial disputes are most peaceful. Alliances consisting exclusively of major states or of states that have been successful in their last war are predicted to be war prone, while those that have the opposite characteristics are predicted to be followed by peace. An empirical analysis of the data shows that all of the above expectations are confirmed. The analysis concludes by using these characteristics to reexamine the classic Levy, 1981, study.     

Pioneers of peace research V: Anatol Rapoport: Apostle of collective rationality

Rapoport challenged the strategic theory of rationality in terms of individual interest, because this theory of rationality led to its own contradiction when confronted with game theory. In order to avoid the irrationality of self‐contradiction, Rapoport defined rationality in terms of social interest. On this basis, Rapoport challenged and criticized the rationality of the two superpowers, whose war machines were a threat to humanity. Rapoport saw war as an organized crime, rather than as a natural disaster or a disease or a political instrument. He proposed that peace researchers should try to show that these war machines were illegitimate, immoral, and irrational. If war were seen as an organized crime, this would facilitate dismantling the war machines. At the same time that he challenged and criticized the war machines of this world, Rapoport also challenged the value‐free notion of science, which enabled scientists to serve the war machines without making any value judgments about the ethics of their behavior. But scientists, like everyone else, should be held responsible for their behavior and its consequences. In order for science to be ethical, scientists should ally the truth with other basic values such as love, freedom, and equality. Far from being value‐free, a science without value would be a contradiction in terms. Peace research cannot be value‐free, but neither can military research.     

“Between Two and Four”: The French Initiative and the Multi-Power Diplomatic Initiatives to Resolve the Middle East Crisis

This analysis examines one of the unknown chapters in the diplomatic history of the Arab-Israeli conflict: the French initiative of 1969 calling for diplomatic co-operation amongst the four Great Powers—the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and France—to put an end to the conflict. The “Forum of Four” did not just attempt to mediate and achieve a compromise between Israel and the Arabs; it also presumed to define the general envelope for the agreement and dictate the path that the sides should follow toward a peace agreement. This analaysis examines the diplomatic positions of Israel, Egypt, and their superpower patrons—which conducted a “Forum of Two”—during the first months of the War of Attrition in 1969 and presents the details of the planned agreement worked out in the deliberations amongst the Powers, especially the United States and Soviet Union. It also surveys the reactions to them and the reasons why mediation failed.