Author

Nam Sik In is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He received his B.A. and M.A. in Politics from the Department of Political Science at Yonsei University, and his Ph.D. in Middle East Politics from the University of Durham, U.K. He served as an EBS correspondent for the U.K., and was a visiting research fellow at Cairo Al-Ahram Newspaper’s Centre for Political Science and Strategic Studies. His major works include Understanding International Conflict (in Korean, 2000) and Perspective and Implication for the Establishment of Democratic Government in Iraq (in Korean, 2004), and his research covers the Middle Eastern politics and terrorism. His recent works are Appearance of Voluntary Network Terrorism and its Implications (in Korean, 2009) and Pakistan and the U.S.’s Dilemma (in Korean, 2008).

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to examine a changing political environment of the Middle East with a historical overview of alliance networks in the Middle East since the Cold War. As the concept of Middle Eastern alliances go beyond traditional military concerns and economic interests to include shared cultural, racial, and religious identity as reflected in the doctrine of oneness, the four different layers of identity – tribal identity (assabiyyah), national identity (wataniyyah), Arab nationalism (qawmiyyah), and religious/Islamic identity (ummah) – have been critical determining the Middle Eastern alliance system throughout history. During the Cold War period, national identity was a dominant variable facilitating the establishment of multilateral organizations to contain the Soviet influence in the region, which was later developed to Arab nationalism, and ultimately an alliance based on ummah in the post-Cold War period. With the revival of Islam and the politicization of Islam in the Middle East in the post-9/11 world, which is characterized by the dominance of alliances based on ummah, the Obama administration takes a fundamentally different approach toward the region, abandoning the Bush Doctrine in dealing these Islamic alliances. In contrast to the Bush administration, the new administration primarily focuses on multilateralism and soft power (or smart power) within the framework of international institutions on many pressing issues such as Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its sour relations with Israel. In addition, dynamics of domestic politics in the United States put more pressure to maintain close ties with Israel, its critical ally at all times in the region, despite a growing criticism of its cognitive alliance with Israel.

The full text in Korean is available here