The Arms Race in the Middle East Contemporary Security Dynamics

This edited volume discusses security policy and strategic policymaking in the Middle East region. Due to its unique geopolitical, geoeconomic and geostrategic features, the Middle East region has been confronted with challenging security issues. Combined with a lack of an efficient regional security regime this has led to the formation of a full-fledged arms race. This book draws together contributions from international experts to address the factors that have been contributing to the ongoing formation of an arms race in the Middle East as well as the impact of this phenomenon on the regional and global security environment. 

The book is organized in three sections. The first section outlines the contemporary dynamics of the arms race in the Middle East by focusing on its most recent dynamics and their implications for regional and international security. The second section conducts systematic analysis of case studies of country-specific drivers of the armsrace. The third and final section examines the role of external actors in the arms race, evaluating both the responses of regional actors to external interventions as well as the implications of the arms race for extra-regional countries.

Mohammad Eslami is a researcher at the Research Centre for Political Science (CICP) at the University of Minho in Portugal, where he investigates Iran’s Ballistic Missile and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle Programs. He is also a research fellow of the Arms Control Negotiation Academy led by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. His research interests primarily relate to international security, arms control, nuclear proliferation, and Middle East studies. He has published in International Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Spanish Journal of Political Science, Journal of Asian Security, and the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament and contributed to several edited volumes published by Springer and Palgrave Macmillan, among others.

Alena Vysotskaya Guedes Vieira is a Professor at the University of Minho, Portugal, and an Integrated Member of the Research Centre in Political Science (CICP). She holds a PhD in Political Sciencefrom the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, and was Visiting Research at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (Lisbon), and at the University of Leuven. She has published in the Journal of Common Market Studies, International Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Post-Soviet Affairs, and the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, among other journals, and received scholarships and research grants from the Chair Inbev-Baillet Latour, Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, Haniel-Stiftung, Compagnia di San Paulo, Riksbanken Jubileumsfond and Volkswagen-Stiftung foundations, as well as of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). She has also published several briefing papers and reports for EU institutions and other think-tanks.