Emergent Regional Powers and International Relations in the Gulf: 1988-1991.

• Author: Dokhanchi, Khalil

Reviewed by Khalil Dokhanchi

The end of the Cold War and the resulting economic and military developments have "produced a new independence for some southern states," or what Murden calls "emerging regional powers" (p. xv). The author examines the rise of three such "powers": Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, particularly their role in the Persian Gulf between 1988-91. Murden argues that growing capabilities enable an emergent power to "broaden its interests in international regimes" (p. 11) In addition, emergent regional powers "seek more lasting forms of power, using the growing capabilities available to them" in the Basic and Higher regimes (p. xvii) Basic regimes "relate to the formation of an authoritative state," whereas Higher regimes "seek to summarize the multiplicity of international norms, rule and institutions that set the conditions for interaction, and that regulate inter-state behavior" (p. xvii).

This book suffers from many conceptual, organizational and analytical problems. For instance, while the author rejects the term "Middle Powers" to describe the regional powers because the term is "subjective and relational" (p. 2), he fails to provide a clear definition of emergent regional powers. First, he implicitly seems to define these countries as those that have essential military capability. However, he confuses capability with acquisition of weapons. As such, from Murden's perspective, an emergent regional power may be any country that accumulates weapons. This definition does little to contribute to our understanding of this important subject. Specifically, in terms of regime analysis, capability is the ability to influence the regime outcome, or what the regime decides to do, not merely the ability to resort to force. Second, while he emphasizes the multidimensionality of power - military, economic and political - the majority of the author's narrative on the Middle East tends to focus on the military aspect of relations in the Persian Gulf. Third, Murden's analysis seems to suggest that all three states have serious economic and political problems which affect their classification as emergent regional powers. For instance, Iran's exports need to be diversified beyond production of "the traditional items - carpets, pistachio and agricultural products" (p. 67). The author apparently is not aware that little changed in the structure of the Iranian economy after the Iran-Iraq or Gulf Wars. This raises a...