A Region in Turmoil: The Greater Middle East since 1948 - Einzelansicht

Wars in the Greater Middle East seem an almost natural state of affairs. While especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has received much attention, the aspects of several other wars that ravaged the region since 1945 are seldom studied in context of the Cold War and development in military affairs. Yet, the Iraq-Iran War (1980-88) and the Russian war in Afghanistan (1979-1989) have foreshadowed many developments and peculiarities of armed conflicts in the 21st century.

This course aims to contextualise the Arab-Israeli Wars during the Cold War to neighbouring ones in the Greater Middle East. Another emphasis will be placed on the development of asymmetrical and hybrid threats in the region after the Cold War.

Ahron Bregman, Israel’s Wars. A History since 1947 (NY: Routledge, 2002)

Samy Cohen, Israel’s Asymmetric Wars (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

Kenneth M. Pollack, Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 (Lincoln, NE: Nebraska UP 2002)

Williamson Murray and Kevin M. Woods, The Iran-Iraq War. A Military and Strategic History (Cambridge: CUP, 2014)

Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy. The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 (Oxford: OUP, 2011)

Mirjam E. Sørli, Nils Petter Gleditsch, and Håvard Strand, ‘Why is there so much conflict in the Middle East?’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 49:1, (2005), pp.141-165.

Antony Cordesman, ‘The Changing Nature of War in the Middle East and North Africa’, Harvard International Review, January 14, 2017.

Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East. A Military History (NY: Random House, 2016)

Presentation and end of term paper (45.000 characters).