China and Middle East Conflicts: Responding to War and Rivalry from the Cold War to the Present by Guy Burton, and: China's Middle East Diplomacy: The Belt and Road Strategic Partnership by Mordechai Chaziza (review)

Scholars of the Middle East are moving quickly to chronicle and interpret China's rise in world affairs, particularly in light of the grand aspirations of the New Silk Road, officially known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As the so-called China Dream unfolds across Eurasia and Africa, area specialists are pondering the profound implications for transforming the Middle East as they know it, for enriching transregional exchanges and for scrambling power relations between continents and hemispheres.

The growing literature in this field has made many strides in a short period. In addition to highlighting the magnitude and ramifications of what is being called the New Silk Road, it has compiled a rich base of data and commentary on specific projects and countries. Many writers have traced the twists and turns of official relations, and some are investigating the conflicting social and popular responses across the region. At a broader level, there is more focused speculation about new possibilities for diplomatic and geopolitical maneuvering in a post-American world where China and other non-Western countries will exert greater influence.

The recent books of Guy Burton and Mordechai Chaziza exemplify these achievements—and their limits. Burton explores China's shifting attitudes over several decades toward conflicts involving Egypt, Algeria, the Palestinians, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf Wars, the Islamic State organization, and Sudan. He explicitly addresses China's influence on the systemic aspects of international politics, pointing to signs of change in norms and expectations about great power rivalries and spheres of influence. With clarity and balance, he weighs the multiple roles Beijing has played over time: disrupter, bystander, patron, mediator, and, most consistently, patient opportunist.

Chaziza lays out a series of country snapshots that recapitulates much of the reporting on China's bilateral relations in the Middle East. He tries to cover Turkey, Israel, Iran, and 11 Arab nations, one after another, in just over 230 pages. He expresses an open-minded curiosity about China's long-term impact on economic competition in the Middle East and beyond, suggesting that New Silk Road investments give Beijing's diplomacy an advantage that competitors are unlikely to match. Together, these volumes reflect the mixed efforts of Middle East specialists to integrate empirical and theoretical concerns while tackling rapidly changing relations between state and society as well as between regional and global actors.

Building upon the advances in this field, it might be helpful to consider some of the more challenging questions that researchers can address in the future, realizing that agendas will vary depending on scholarly tastes and political predispositions. The current conversations are highly skewed toward security studies and speculation about China's long-term intentions, both official and unspoken. The result is a stream of repetitive policy papers and opinion pieces from specialists in think tanks and consultancies, reflecting anxieties over the meltdown of American dominance and a looming cold war with China.

Unfortunately, the Great Game approach to Middle East studies neither enlists nor promotes the kind of interdisciplinary imagination that is inspiring scholarship across the social sciences, humanities, and life sciences. Ironically, many studies of Sino–Middle Eastern relations still stress the Middle East's presumed uniqueness and exceptionalism—even though all of the conventional geographic zones are enmeshed in global networks that struggle to meet common dangers none can manage alone.

China's ascendance casts the Middle East in a new light as part of a wider world that is changing in ways we barely understand and cannot control. Many writers grapple with this uncertainty by portraying China...