How do aspiring and established rising global powers respond to conflict? Using China, the book studies its response to wars and rivalries in the Middle East from the Cold War to the present. Since the People’s Republic was established in 1949, China has long been involved in the Middle East and its conflicts, from exploiting or avoiding them to their management, containment or resolution. Using a conflict and peace studies angle, Burton adopts a broad perspective on Chinese engagement by looking at its involvement in the region’s conflicts including Israel/Palestine, Iraq before and after 2003, Sudan and the Darfur crisis, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Gulf crisis and the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The book reveals how a rising global and non-Western power handles the challenges associated with both violent and nonviolent conflict and the differences between limiting and reducing violence alongside other ways to eliminate the causes of conflict and grievance. Contributing to the wider discipline of International Relations and peace and conflict studies, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, Chinese foreign policy and the politics and international relations of the Middle East.

This study examines China’s interests in the Middle East and assesses China’s economic, political, and security activities there to determine whether China has a strategy toward the region and what such a strategy means for the United States. The study focuses on China’s relations with two of its key partners in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran.

This handbook brings together a mix of established and emerging international scholars to provide valuable analytical insights into how China's growing Middle East presence affects intra-regional development, trade, security, and diplomacy. As the largest extra-regional economic actor in the Middle East, China is the biggest source of foreign direct investment into the region and the largest trading partner for most Middle Eastern states. This portends a larger role in political and security affairs, as the value of Chinese assets combined with a growing expatriate population in the region demands a more proactive role in contributing to regional order. Exploring the effect of these developments, the expert contributors also consider the reverberations in great power politics, as the United States, Russia, India, Japan, and the European Union also have considerable interests in the region. The book is divided into four sections: - Historical and policy context - State and regional case studies - Trade and development - International relations, security, and diplomacy. This volume is an essential reference for scholars and policy-makers in the fields of international relations, political sociology, international political economy, and foreign policy analysis. Area studies specialists in Middle Eastern Studies, China Studies, and East Asian Studies will also find it an invaluable resource.

Conflict in the Middle East has the potential not only for destabilizing the region or upsetting the balance of power but also affecting global stability. For these reasons, the Middle East has been a center of world affairs. This volume provides an account of international relations in the contemporary Middle East.

What has been the role of rising powers in the Arab–Israeli conflict? What does this tell us about rising powers and conflict management as well as rising powers’ behavior in the world more generally? This book studies the way that five rising powers—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS countries—have approached the conflict since it first became internationalized in 1947. Conflict management consists of different methods, from peacekeeping to mediation and the use of economic incentives and sanctions and (non)enforcement of international legal decisions. What distinguishes them is whether they are active or passive: active measures seek to transform a conflict and resolve it; passive measures seek to ameliorate its worst effects, but do not change their underlying causes. Since 1947 rising powers’ active or passive use of these methods has coincided with their rise and fall and rise again in the international system. Those rises and falls are tied to global changes, including the Cold War, the emergence of the Third World, economic and ideological retrenchment of the 1980s and 1990s and the shift from unipolarity to multipolarity after 2000. In summary, rising powers’ management of the Arab–Israeli conflict has shifted from active to more passive methods since 1947. Their actions have occurred alongside two key changes within the conflict. One is the shift from a primarily state-based conflict between Israel and the Arabs to one that is more ethnic and territorial in scope, between Israel and the Palestinians. The other the emergence of the Oslo framework which has frozen power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians since 1993. By pursuing the Oslo process, rising powers have separated conflict management from developing ‘normal’ diplomatic and economic exchanges with Israel and the Palestinians. In adopting this more passive conflict management approach, rising powers are disregarding both emerging alternatives that may potentially transform the conflict’s dynamics (including involvement with civil society actors like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement) and undertaking more active efforts at conflict resolution—and presenting themselves as global powers.

The most significant challenge to the post-Cold War international order is the growing power of ambitious states opposed to the West. Iran, Russia and China each view the global structure through the prism of historical experience. Rejecting the universality of Western liberal values, these states and their governments each consider the relative decline of Western economic hegemony as an opportunity. Yet cooperation between them remains fragmentary. The end of Western sanctions and the Iranian nuclear deal; the Syrian conflict; new institutions in Central and East Asia: in all these areas and beyond, the potential for unity or divergence is striking. In this new and comprehensive study, Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary address the substance of this `triple axis' in the realms of energy, trade, and military security. In particular they scrutinise Iran-Russia and the often overlooked field of Iran-China relations. Their argument - that interactions between the three will shape the world stage for decades to come - will be of interest to anyone looking to understand the contemporary international security puzzle.

Shortly before the Middle East peace talks began in November 1991, the United States Institute of Peace conducted a four-day simulation of what was about to unfold in the diplomatic dialogue between two enemy countries, Israel and Syria, whose representatives had never before sat together. This volume presents a description of that exercise and its implications for peacemaking and conflict resolution in the Middle East, a discussion of simulations and their utility for diplomats and for the field of conflict resolution, and a discussion among the participants of prospects for the overall Middle East peace negotiations.

Complete set Since 1961 the Adelphi Papers have provided some of the most informed accounts of international and strategic relations. Produced by the world renowned International Institute of Strategic Studies, each paper provides a short account of a subject of topical interest by a leading military figure, policy maker or academic. The project reprints the first forty years of papers, arranged into thematic sets. The collection as a whole provides a rich and insightful account of international affairs during a period which spans the second half of the Cold War, the fall of the communist bloc and the emergence of a new regime with the United States as the sole superpower. There is a wealth of global coverage: Four volumes on east and southeast Asia as well as individual volumes on China, Japan and Korea Particular attention is given to the Middle East, with volumes addressing internal sources of instability; geo-politics and the role of the superpowers; the Israel-Palestine conflict; and the Iran-Iraq War and the first Gulf War. There is also a volume on oil and insecurity There are also two volumes on Africa, the site of most of the world's wars during the period. The IISS has obviously made a particular contribution to the understanding of military strategy, and this is reflected with material on topics such as urban and guerrilla warfare, nuclear deterrence and the role of information in modern warfare. Volumes on military strategy are complemented by approaches from other disciplines, such as defence economics. Key selling points: Early papers were only distributed by the IISS and will have achieved limited penetration of the academic market A host of major authors on a range of different subjects (eg Gerald Segal on China, Michael Leifer on Southeast Asia, Sir Lawrence Freidman on the revolution in military affairs, Raymond Vernon on multinationals and defence economics) Individual volumes will have a strong appeal to different markets (eg the volume on defence economics for economists, various volumes for Asian Studies etc)

The main purpose of the study is to discuss the inter-state and intra-state conflicts and the main problem areas in the geography extending from China to Eurasia. The book consists of eighteen chapters, all written by senior professors and associate professors.