Inter-Arab Alliances: Regime Security and Jordanian Foreign Policy

Notes

Notes Chapter 1. Regime Security, Alliances, and Inter-Arab Politics 1. Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat’s peace overtures to Israel were followed by his trip to Jerusalem in 1977, the Camp David Accords in 1978, and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty in 1979. The Iraqi-Kuwaiti crisis involved the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the outbreak of war between Iraq and a U.S.-led coalition in 1991. In both cases, bilateral war or peace initiatives led to major regional crises and radical realignments among Arab states. 2. For a discussion of alliance theory and the Gulf War realignment, see Garnham, “Explaining Middle Eastern Alignments During the Gulf War,” 63–83. On the Gulf crisis and war, see Ryan and Downie, “From Crisis to War,” 491–510. For reactions and analysis from Arab scholars and policymakers, see the collection of essays in Markaz Dirasat alWahda al-'Arabiyya, Azmat al-Khalij wa Tada'iyatiha 'ala al-Watan al-'Arabi (The Gulf Crisis and its Challenges to the Arab Nation). 3. King Hussein later asserted that sponsorship of terrorist activity had been carried out without his knowledge. The Prime Minister (and former director of the Jordanian intelligence and security forces), Ahmad 'Ubaydat, denied any such policy directed toward Syria, but was nonetheless sacked by the king. 'Ubaydat’s replacement, Prime Minister Zayd al-Rifa'i, and Syrian Ba'th party officials interviewed were still agitated by the episode more than a decade later, and raised the accusations once again. Interviews in Amman and Damascus, February to April 1993. 4. Snyder, “Alliances, Balance, and Stability,” 123. 5. Liska, Nations in Alliance. 6. Snyder, “Alliances, Balance, and Stability,” 123 and Snyder, “Alliance Theory: A Neorealist First Cut,” 105. Snyder remains one of the most prolific scholars ever to write on alliances. See in particular his book Alliance Politics. 7. This definition follows closely Snyder’s distinction between alliance and alignment, in which “Alliances . . . are only the formal subset of a broader and more basic phenomenon , that of ‘alignment.’ Alignment amounts to a set of mutual expectations—between two or more states that they will have each other’s support in disputes or wars with particular other states . . . [T]heir political reality lies not in the formal contract, but in the expectations they support or create.” Snyder, “Alliance Theory,” 105. 8. Alliances as formal security pacts are more often between Middle East states and outside powers, rather than between Middle East states themselves. The Syrian alliance with the Soviet Union and the Israeli alliance with the United States are examples. Interregional alignments, on the other hand, tend to avoid formal military commitments. Jordan, for example, was widely regarded as an ally of Iraq during the 1990–1991 Gulf Crisis, yet, despite previous cooperation in security affairs, the Jordanian-Iraqi alignment included no formal commitments to the other’s defense. Individual Jordanian citizens volunteered to help defend Iraq, but the Jordanian armed forces did not come to Iraq’s aid—nor did the Iraqi government expect them to do so. 9. Kerr, The Arab Cold War; Maddy-Weitzmann, The Crystallization of the Arab State System; Porath, In Search of Arab Unity; Seale, The Struggle for Syria. 10. Taylor, The Arab Balance of Power. 11. Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics; Gause, “Balancing What? Threat Perception and Alliance Choice in the Gulf,” 273–305; Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres; Mufti, Sovereign Creations; and Sela, The Decline of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. There are also several excellent studies of specific bilateral relationships in inter-Arab politics. See in particular Gause, Saudi-Yemeni Relations and Kienle, Ba'th v Ba'th: The Conflict Between Syria and Iraq. 12. See the review of the alliance literature by Ward, Research Gaps in Alliance Dynamics. 13. One of the leading works in this genre is J. David Singer and Melvin Small, “Alliance Aggregation and the Onset of War.” 14. Liska, Nations in Alliance; one of the classics in this genre remains Waltz, Theory of International Politics. 15. For a penetrating critique of Western-centrism in both Neorealist and Complex Interdependence theories, see Escude, International Relations Theory: A Peripheral Perspective. 16. Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” 3–43. See also Walt, The Origins of Alliances. 17. Walt, The Origins of Alliances. 18. Waltz, Theory of International Politics. 19. Christensen and Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” 137–68. 20. Siverson and Starr, “Regime Change and the Restructuring of Alliances,” 145...