State Failure, Power Expansion, and Balance of Power in the Middle East: The Struggle Over Failed States

This book examines the strategies of regional powers in the Middle East regarding their response to cases of state failure in the region, thus connecting the theoretical concepts of statehood, state failure, and revisionist and pro-status quo interventionist behavior. Through a detailed comparative analysis of five case studies of failed states occurring in the region during 1960–2010s –Yemen (1962–1970), Lebanon (1975–1989), Iraq (2003–2020), Yemen (2004–2020), and Syria (2011–2020) – the author employs the conceptual theory of balance of power to analyze the behavior of six regional powers in the Middle East: Egypt, Iran, Israel, Syria (pre-2011), Saudi Arabia, and Turkey toward each one of those cases. The book proposes that when states become failed states, regional powers with revisionist strategies expand into them, which in turn induce status quo regional powers to react by imposing balancing action, and that this power struggle turns failed states into battlegrounds for regional power (im)balances. This book offers empirical and theoretical insights into regional politics of the Middle East over the past six decades, contributes to international policy and security studies scholarship from a Middle East regional perspective, and draws attention to the importance of analyzing the destabilizing and historical consequences of state failures for contemporary contexts.