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The demise of the middle east arms raceAaron Karp aa Research coordinator and adjunct professor for the Graduate Programs in InternationalStudies, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VirginiaPublished online: 07 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Aaron Karp (1995): The demise of the middle east arms race, The Washington Quarterly, 18:4, 27-51

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The MiddleEast inTransitionFrom hotbed of intractable conflict to regionof hope and promise—the remarkabletransformation of the Middle East, as yetincomplete, is one of the great surprises ofthe post-cold war era. What accounts for thistransition, and how durable is it? In thefollowing two articles, experts trace the endof the arms race in the region and theexhaustion of the passing strategic culture.

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The Demise of the MiddleEast Arms RaceAaron Karp

PROGRESS IN THE Middle East to-ward a durable peace has been pain-fully slow, its path littered with falsestarts and failed schemes. The greatestaccomplishments of the peace processare usually understood almost exclu-sively in political terms, becauseagreements between Israel and Egypt,and the Palestine Liberation Organiza-tion (PLO) and Jordan stand out aslandmarks. Middle East armed forcesremain the source of greatest interna-tional concern and one of the leastpromising areas for negotiated re-straint. Nonetheless it is becoming in-creasingly clear that military confron-tation in the region is not what it oncewas.

Slowly but surely, the race for con-ventional military superiority in theMiddle East has come to an end. Insome respects military affairs have lostnone of their dominance in MiddleEast security. All countries in the re-gion maintain large armed forces, andmost continue to modernize theirequipment. But in critical ways few ifany of the armed forces in the Middle

Aaron Karp is research coordinator and ad-junct professor for the Graduate Programs inInternational Studies at Old Dominion Uni-versity, Norfolk, Virginia.

Copyright © 1995 by The Center for Strategicand International Studies and the MassachusettsInstitute of TechnologyThe Washington Quarterly • 18:4 pp. 29-51

East appear as menacing as they did30, 20, or even 10 years ago. The paceof modernization has slowed sig-nificantly and some countries are al-lowing their conventional forces toshrink. Almost 50 years after the estab-lishment of the state of Israel createdan environment of unparalleled ten-sion, the arms race in the Middle Easthas lost much of its desperation andimmediacy.

The decline in the armaments com-petition has not proceeded withoutchallenges. The process has been re-versed temporarily by major crises, es-pecially wars in the Beka'a Valley andthe Persian Gulf. Time and again ma-jor arms deals also fostered the impres-sion that all restraint was lost, sug-gesting that the region was plungingagain into a hopeless spiral of armingand counterarming. Upon reflection,though, hysterical arms buying looksincreasingly anachronistic. Althoughthere have been exceptional armsdeals, these have done no more thaninterrupt downward trends in militaryprocurement, a process that has beenperpetuated by stronger long-terminterests.

The decline of the Middle Eastarms race deserves wider recognition,but it is not reason enough for celebra-tion. Its foundations lie exclusively indomestic interests and official percep-tions. These are not weak forces, butthey require considerable reinforcing

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to form the basis for a long-term set-tlement of regional disputes. Like in-formal arms-control processes in otherregions, this one is vulnerable to dis-ruption, lacking formal commitmentsand institutional mechanisms to mini-mize adverse effects.

Even though the regional dangers ofconventional armaments are subsiding,the role of confidence-building andarms control is no less important thanbefore. The burdens they must carry,however, are not so great as previouslyassumed. Instead of having to trans-form regional security politics, MiddleEast arms control is needed more toreinforce existing trends and extendthem to include other kinds of weap-onry. Like other factors affecting Mid-dle East security, the effect will not berevolutionary but incremental, sup-porting processes already changing thenature of the region. Even with thismore modest goal, such measures areessential to insulate the gains of recentyears and to help ensure that factorsoutside the conventional balance can-not undermine the stability that has sofortuitously emerged.

A Hidden Transformation

The failure to appreciate this unprece-dented change in Middle East securityis strikingly similar to the greatestblunder of contemporary political sci-ence, the failure to anticipate the col-lapse of communism and the end ofthe Cold War. Five years after theevents in the Soviet Union and East-ern Europe, a lively debate hasemerged in intellectual circles onwhere to pin the blame for that fail-ure.1 The essential causes of the short-sightedness of so many observersprobably lay in the blinding grip ofpowerful assumptions and ideologiesand the compulsions of political prag-matism and expediency. The practical

causes, however, may have been noth-ing more than lack of imagination andcontentment with the status quo.

Few would admit to liking the ColdWar, but virtually all responsible ob-servers accepted it; as bad as it some-times was, the Cold War was infinitelysuperior to the worst disasters theycould conjure.2 The most dynamic andinfluential policies during the lateryears of the Cold War—from Ostpoli-tik and detente to arms control andconfidence-building—aimed not toend the superpower competition butto manage it, ameliorating its worst as-pects while preserving the acceptableparts.

The Middle East is not Europe, andits strategic environment is very differ-ent from that of the Cold War. Unlikepost-1945 Europe, it has seen full-scale warfare between key antagonists.It is marked by widespread unhappi-ness with the political status quo. Ter-ritorial divisions remain in dispute,and the region's ethnic, religious, andother cleavages have not been allowedto wither. But the status quo is notwithout its benefits and many govern-ments have little interest in changingit. Just as in Europe of the late coldwar years, in the Middle East politicstend to inhibit and conceal fundamen-tal change.

The transformation of Middle Eastsecurity politics has been obscured bymany factors, but by none more thanthe conventional assumption that theregion remains the most dangerousplace on earth. The numbing repeti-tion of cliches obscures trends movingin the opposite direction. The declineof the Middle East arms race has beena subdued process, almost invisiblebehind the rhetoric of polarization andconfrontation. Most regional leadershave an interest in emphasizing onlythe most provocative acts of theirneighbors, not the acts that demon-

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strate restraint. In a region wherewords often matter more than deeds,it can be easy to miss real geopoliticaltrends.

Change has also been concealed byexcessive expectations. By identifyingregional peace with completion of acomprehensive settlement (includingresolution of the Golan Heights prob-lem, the establishment of a full-scalePalestinian state, conventional armscontrol, and nuclear and chemical dis-armament), the peace process casts adark shadow over lesser but more tan-gible achievements. It also confusesthe most important lessons of the su-perpower experience, which demon-strated that there is no inherent linkbetween peace and arms control. TheU.S.-Soviet arms-control dialoguemade only modest contributions toeasing tensions, and the initial rise ofdetente only permitted the most hum-ble of arms-control measures.3 Stabil-ity between the superpowers hadother, more fundamental, sources innational self-interest.

Often observers simply have notknown what to look for. The passionsof confrontation naturally led them tohope for a radically different politics ofmutual respect and accommodation.Although no one can fault such long-ings, grand aspirations can be empha-sized to the exclusion of less dramaticprogress. One of the innumerable iro-nies of Middle East politics is that allbut the most extreme voices clamor forpeace but scarcely know how to recog-nize it. Peace is not necessarily theopposite of confrontation. It is aboveall the absence of war. Although uni-versal amity among nations will alwaysbe the long-term goal of internationaldiplomacy, in the short term the avoid-ance of war is no small accomplish-ment.

Many serious security problems facethe Middle East today, but the danger

of major war is probably lower than atany time in modern memory. Todayone need look only to the former Yu-goslavia, the Caucasus, Central Asia,and Central Africa to find regionsstruggling with more immediatethreats to human life from conven-tional warfare. Even the dangers ofweapons of mass destruction, still anoverwhelming consideration in theMiddle East, pose considerably moreurgent threats in South Asia and theKorean Peninsula.

Despite these changes, military dan-gers remain serious. The mobilizationcrisis triggered by Iraq's dispatch oftroops to the Kuwaiti border in Sep-tember 1994 illustrated the continuingrelevance of conventional forces. Con-frontations between Saudi Arabia andYemen and the Gulf sheikhdoms inthe winter of 1994—95 showed that warscares cannot be dismissed as an Iraqimonopoly either. Nonconventionalforces, especially nuclear, biological,and chemical weapons and ballisticmissiles, have become more salientthan ever before. And the continualloss of life—whether from Muslim ex-tremism in Algeria, Egypt, and Israel,an endless war of succession in Sudan,or chaos and terror in Kurdish lands—leaves no doubt that the emerging re-gional order is not idyllic. Even so, theMiddle East today is more stable thanat any time since the collapse of theOttoman empire.

Ending the Middle East ArmsRace?

Despite the progress of the MiddleEast peace process, major arms dealshave continued, leading many ob-servers to the conclusion that the reso-lution of the Arab-Israeli conflict willnot have an appreciable effect on mili-tary spending and the armaments com-petition.4 Some go so far as to question

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the value of a peace process that allowsan arms race to proceed apparently un-hindered.5

To be sure, all countries in the Mid-dle East continue to buy new militaryequipment, often acquiring advancedweapons and support systems inboldly immodest quantities. Yet it hasbeen a long time since the region sawa real arms race. Although most re-gional governments still buy arms, thegoals and rationales for their purchaseshave changed, bringing the size oftheir acquisitions down dramatically(see figure 1). A few of the smallestGulf states are expanding their con-ventional forces. Virtually all others areconcentrating their resources to mini-mize the effects of inevitable reduc-tions. Their arms investments go pri-marily into new equipment to preservethe utility of forces that reached theirmaximum size years ago. Althoughthey undoubtedly spend more than se-cure states that have no truck withtheir neighbors, this is not the arma-ments strategy of countries planning togo to war with one another.

The events behind this transforma-tion have never been concealed. Manywere highly publicized as they oc-curred, but their strategic significancewas hidden by the nature of the proc-ess. Instead of appearing in a single,swift revolution of the sort typicallysought in resolutions in the UnitedNations (UN) General Assembly orambitious disarmament proposals,change has come slowly and incremen-tally over a period of decades. Usuallyit has come not through well-publicized shifts in policy, but in theform of decisions not taken and op-tions not pursued.

Ironically, the roots of this restraintgo back to the untenable buildups thatfollowed the 1967 and 1973 wars. Evenas military expansion accelerated afterthese conflicts, the seeds of restraint

were germinating. Economic forcesplayed a role, as did diplomatic andmilitary factors. These expansions,whether due to fear or ambition, cameat tremendous cost, driving militaryspending up above 20 percent of an-nual gross national product (GNP) formany countries. But high levels ofmilitary spending, although painful,were sustainable so long as militaryrequirements remained extreme.6

What allowed high levels of militaryspending to come down was the reduc-tion of threat perceptions. More thananything else, it was gradual accep-tance of the status quo that enabledprogressively more countries of theMiddle East to slow their arms pro-curement. By the mid-1980s the proc-ess was virtually complete amongIsrael and its neighbors. In the mid-1990s the logic of the status quo hasreached most countries throughout theMiddle East. As in Europe after WorldWar II, general and unrestrained war isincreasingly unacceptable.7 The dan-ger of general war in the Middle Eastcomes not from deliberate choice, butfrom mistakes and miscalculation.

States in the traditional crucible ofMiddle East tension—around Israel—no longer fear for their survival. Theirgrand ambitions—achievable only atthe direct expense of the security oftheir neighbors—are gone. All states inthe region still have goals beyond theirborders, but they understand thatthese can be achieved only throughpolitical initiatives. With this transfor-mation has come a change in the roleof armed forces. Instead of being maxi-mized for interstate warfare, theystand ready for small-scale operationsand suppressing domestic strife. Thereadiness of the armed forces has beenreduced and there is greater willing-ness to divert troops to non-militarytasks.

Outside forces have played virtually

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Figure 1The Decline of Middle East Arms Imports

35.000

30,003 •

25,000 •

20,000 ••

15,000

10,000 ••

5,000 -

Sources: Sipri Yearbook 1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press and the Stockholm International PeaceResearch Institute, 1995). Sipri figures are in millions of constant 1990 U.S. dollars. World MilitaryExpenditures and Arms Transfers, 1993-1994 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Arms Control and DisarmamentAgency, February 1995). ACDA figures are in millions of constant 1993 U.S. dollars.Note: The Sipri data cover transfers of major weapons only. The ACDA data cover all transfers ofmilitary equipment and assistance.

no role in the process. Foreign armssuppliers of conventional equipmentplace virtually no restraints on theirMiddle East clients, with the partialexception of Iran and Libya and thecomplete exception of Iraq. Risingeconomic pressure also cannot explainthe shift in priorities, which goes be-yond simple budget cuts to includewholesale reductions in the proportionof GNP going to the military. Althoughmany countries in the region havefewer economic resources than they

did at the height of the oil boom, noneare so poor that they could not rapidlyincrease defense spending if there wasa consensus that national security wasin jeopardy.8 A few countries, more-over, have enjoyed exceptional eco-nomic prosperity in the 1990s—Israelis the most obvious example—yet stillallow military spending to decline.

In the absence of external compul-sion, the only forces left to influencethe Middle East armaments competi-tion are internal. At the basis of the

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process is a change in perceptions. Al-though no one pretends that the re-gion is becoming safe and secure, itsleaders show little of the fear and anxi-ety that characterized their defenseplanning for decades. It is this changein official attitudes and domestic inter-ests that leads so many highly diversecountries to adopt increasingly similarsecurity policies. The process has norelation to the formal processescodified in superpower arms control.Nor does it reflect any clear reciproc-ity; one searches chronologies in vainfor a shred of evidence that any coun-try shows restraint in response to theforbearance of another. Rather theprocess can be understood exclusivelyin terms of domestic responses to agenerally improving political-militaryenvironment.

The transformation of Middle Eastsecurity came unevenly, affecting dif-ferent areas in different ways. Analystsare accustomed to thinking of theMiddle East as a single region whereinnumerable linkages make it impossi-ble to separate out individual conflicts:the Iran-Iraq conflict threatened to ex-plode across the Persian Gulf; Iraqcould credibly threaten to escalateconflict in 1991 by attacking Israel;Saudi efforts to deter Iran and Iraqimplicitly threaten Israel; and coun-tries as diverse as Afghanistan, Iran,and Sudan can conspire to underminegovernments across the region. Thissituation, it is widely assumed, createda web in which resolution of individualdisputes could only be accomplishedthrough a comprehensive peace re-solving all conflicts together.

There is considerable truth to thisperspective, but it also exaggerates theday-to-day problems of regional secu-rity building. In practice, the diversecountries of the Middle East increas-ingly pursue their security interests in-

dependently and pose less and less ofa threat to one another. Most impor-tant, the environment around Israelhas evolved along one path and thataround the Persian Gulf along another.

The situation around Israel wasthe first to yield to the logic of mu-tual acceptance. One by one, Israel'sneighbors became reconciled to itsexistence. The lessons of military de-feat were an essential part of this proc-ess. By the mid-1980s all sides hadabandoned the dream of acquiringstrategic superiority and achievingpolitical goals through military con-quest. Armed forces had not lost allrelevance, but they had ceased to bea serious instrument of geopoliticalchange.9 Military establishments werenot allowed to atrophy uncontrollably,but they ceased to grow and in somecases actually shrank.

Jordan

The transformation came first to Jor-dan, which swiftly came to accept—infact if not in formal policy—the loss ofthe West Bank in the 1967 war. Smalland internally divided, Jordan couldnot hope to challenge Israeli powermilitarily. After the 1970 crises withthe PLO and Syria, moreover, Jordancame to rely on indirect security guar-antees from Jerusalem. By the late1970s the Jordanian military had be-gun a steep decline. King Husseinsigned his last major arms deals in1982. After these Jordan ceased tomodernize its military seriously.10

Other major arms deals were dis-cussed, but none were finalized. Thesole exception was a contract forMirage-2000 fighter planes initialed in1988 only to be canceled the followingyear.

New equipment has been acquired,but mostly by happenstance. The

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most impressive example came whenSaddam Hussein gave Jordan severalhundred armored vehicles his forceshad captured from Iran. Lucky breakscould only slow a broader pattern ofcontraction, however. In the late 1980sJordan began to expedite the declineof its forces, cannibalizing weaponryfor spare parts and selling excessstocks to raise capital.11 The very ideaof excess arms was an extraordinaryinnovation in the Middle East.

A more recent transaction is espe-cially illuminating. In November 1994seven Jordanian F-5E fighters pre-viously declared excess and decom-missioned were sold to Singapore in adeal worth $21 million. Only a cursoryeffort was made to replace these air-craft and it was later abandoned, al-though the sale will help to financemodernization of Jordan's remainingF—5 fleet.12 Other, more marketableequipment such as helicopters andtransport aircraft has been sold off aswell.

Behind these actions lies a new se-curity strategy. Like many other na-tions that do not face a major militarythreat, Jordan no longer relies on largestanding forces. Instead its military es-tablishment is maintained as a smallbut highly qualified cadre. Althoughthis cadre cannot defend the nation, itwill serve as a basis for long-term train-ing and expansion should regionalthreats reemerge.

Egypt

Egypt's decision to abandon strategicparity with Israel was equally tacit. In-stead of a clear decision, a series ofevents gradually led in that direction,events with a clear cumulative effect.The path that emerged was not en-tirely intentional, but Egyptian leadersdid not vigorously pursue others. The

first step came when Anwar Sadat sev-ered the arms relationship with Mos-cow in 1973, even though he had noalternative suppliers. This decisioncan be described only as a massivereordering of priorities; Sadat calcu-lated that his country did not need theassurance of Soviet military aidsufficiently to justify the loss of auton-omy it entailed.13 After signing theCamp David accords five years later,Sadat found a new supplier in theUnited States. But U.S. aid was neveras generous as Soviet assistance. Thestrict formula for U.S. military aid en-sured that Israel always received more($1.8 versus $1.3 billion annually),while Israel also had greater wealthand domestic resources.

More recently Egypt has been oneof the greatest beneficiaries of the endof the Cold War, receiving hundreds of1960s-vintage M-60 tanks, armoredpersonnel carriers, and other equip-ment decommissioned by U.S. forcesin Europe. This "cascade" allowedEgypt finally to get rid of 1950s-vin-tage Soviet hardware, but it has notbrought a significant improvement inEgyptian offense potential. More seri-ous modernization will include thegradual acquisition of 550 M-l tanksand some 160 F-16 fighters. The latterwill form the real nucleus of Egypt'sfuture military capability.

Despite the limits imposed by U.S.aid policy, Egypt has displayed littleinterest in striking out on its own. Ithas abandoned most efforts at domes-tic arms production and concluded fewmajor agreements with European sup-pliers or the Soviet successor states.The nation's economic difficultiesmake it impossible for it to sign majornew agreements except under tremen-dous pressure, while peace with Israelremoves any motives for such invest-ment.

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Syria

Syria's transformation was more self-conscious, emerging largely throughthe lessons of war, the pressures ofeconomics and technology, and delib-erate strategic choice. In 1982 Syriafound itself more isolated than everafter its disastrous Beka'a Valley warwith Israel. Fighting alone—except forsome coordination with Palestinianfactions—it suffered the most lopsideddefeat in the history of Middle Eastconflict up to that point.14 Among themost prominent casualties were theSyrian military's self-esteem and itstrust in its Soviet-designed militaryhardware. Although Moscow and itsEast European allies were delighted tosell replacement equipment, and Syriabought readily, there was no possibil-ity of matching Israel's technical wiz-ardry. The arms shipments that fol-lowed—including over 1,400 T-72tanks, 2,400 other armored vehicles,200 combat aircraft, and air defensesystems—confirmed only Syria's quan-titative superiority, something that wasnever in doubt.

The futility of building further nu-merical superiority became evident toDamascus by 1986. Syrian officialsceased speaking of pursuit of "strate-gic parity" with Israel and allowed de-fense purchases to decline rapidly.15

Purchases of Soviet-style equipmentcontinue to this day, but at a muchslower pace. Since 1988 a total of 70MiG-29s have been ordered to replacea force of some 300 obsolete MiG-21sand MiG-23s.16 The MiG-29 forcemay grow to 120 or 150 by the end ofthe decade, but this should be com-pared to an Israeli force of F-16s andF-15s that soon will amount to 350aircraft. Smaller orders are addingmore modern Su-24 bombers andSA-10 air-defense systems to Syrian

inventories. In each case the main ef-fect is not to expand overall capabili-ties but to preserve elite units fromtotal obsolescence.

Syria's investments in new arma-ments make it the most important cus-tomer for several ex-Warsaw Pact pro-ducers.17 Its suppliers undoubtedlywould sell even greater quantities ofeven more advanced hardware if Da-mascus asked, but Syrian officials havenot shown much interest. The moneyis there; in the early 1990s defensespending amounted to an average ofjust 10 percent of GNP, far below the20 percent levels the nation tolerated10 years earlier. What is lacking mostis hope of matching Israel's qualitativesuperiority. Having participated at themargins of Iraq's overwhelming defeatin 1991, Syrian leaders can be underno illusions regarding their nation'sconventional capabilities.18

From this recognition came a revo-lution in Syrian policy. A political dia-logue with Israel was one result. Presi-dent Hafez Assad has convinced manyobservers that he has made a strategicchoice for peace, even if it must be onterms that satisfy his personal require-ments. New policies deemphasizingcombat readiness and training are an-other consequence.19 Another, less re-assuring, result is a long-term shift inarmaments strategy, placing less em-phasis on the ability to win warsthrough conventional forces. InsteadSyria relies more on weapons of massdestruction designed not to win mili-tary victory in war so much as toinfluence adversaries in peacetime.

The data in figure 2 show thesetrends graphically. After peaking in theearly 1980s, arms imports by Israel andits immediate adversaries slowedgreatly. Despite aggressive promo-tional efforts by nearly desperate ex-porters around the world, few buyers

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5,000 )

Figure 2Arms Imports by Israel and Neighboring States

(in millions of constant 1993 U.S. dollars)

Source: World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1993-1994 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. ArmsControl and Disarmament Agency, February 1995).

have been found among the states atthe core of the Arab-Israeli conflict.Modernization continues, at times inresponse to long-term domestic pro-curement plans, at times to take ad-vantage of bargain offers, especiallyfor second-hand equipment. Whenviewed individually these arms dealscan look alarming, but when viewedtogether and compared to previouseras, the trends are far less disturb-ing.20 Regional arms buying remainsdangerous—these are instruments ofdeath and destruction after all—but ittakes a fertile imagination to see con-ventional arms as a potential cause ofwar.

When evaluating recent Arab-Israeli arms trade trends, it is helpfulto speculate on hypothetical alterna-

tives. How extensive would the re-gional arms trade be if the Arab-Israeliconflict did not exist at all? Althoughit would undoubtedly be smaller, itprobably would not be considerablyso. Given the size of the armed forcespresent in the region and their specialimportance in non-democratic re-gimes, a significant arms trade wouldexist under almost any political cir-cumstances, even the most peaceful.21

For the same reason, the failure of theMiddle East arms trade to slow evenmore than it has need not mean thatold arms races continue. The morelikely explanation is that in the MiddleEast, as elsewhere in the world, armiesretain a symbolic and domestic politi-cal value regardless of the likelihoodof actual fighting.

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Disruptions in the RegionThe trends in the immediate vicinityof Israel are clear, but there is greaterambiguity elsewhere in the region.Over the years hard-line states else-where have engaged in their ownbuildups. At times their military poli-cies have been justified largely by localdisputes; the Iran-Iraq War especiallydistorted arms procurement patternsin the Persian Gulf. At other times thepreoccupation with Israel has beenused to justify these developments.Yet even among these more volatilestates there is growing acceptance ofthe regional geopolitical balance, al-lowing conventional arms spending tocome down significantly.

It is one more irony of Middle Eastpolitics that the further a country isfrom Israel, the weaker and less reli-able its commitment to the currentgeopolitical balance tends to be. Evenamong these actors, though, the logicof the status quo has gained greaterweight. Like Syria, they may seek spe-cific adjustments to make the regionalgeographic order more palatable. It isalso among these countries that thereis the strongest interest in switchingfrom strategies based on conventionalweapons to greater reliance on weap-ons of mass destruction. Their objec-tives are, however, increasingly—ifstill not exclusively—political in char-acter.

Libya

For many years the most troublesomeMiddle East dangers appeared tocome from Libya, where Mu'ammarQadhafi supported every trendy revo-lutionary group and built up a massivemilitary stockpile of advanced militaryhardware, far more than his nationcould ever deploy. Libya was the firstexport client for Soviet weapon sys-tems like the SU-24 strike bomber

and MiG-25 interceptor, and its pur-chases were instrumental in the emer-gence of many new arms exporters likeBrazil. Expansion continued even afterdeclining oil prices in the early 1980smade such purchases increasinglypainful.

The earliest restraint came fromabroad. Some suppliers said no: Chinaand Pakistan refused to share nuclearwarheads, Brazil and the Soviet Unionturned down requests for long-rangeballistic missiles. Tired of Qadhafi'spolitical and military excesses, Mos-cow became less sympathetic. Afterthe embarrassing defeat of his forcesin Chad in 1987, even Qadhafi lostinterest in military adventure. Eco-nomically weakened and politicallyisolated, Libya ceased much of its pre-vious support for terrorism and al-lowed its military establishment toatrophy.

Tripoli has not ordered any majorconventional weapons since 1988.22

Four years later came the UN embargoon further arms sales in response tothe Lockerbie bombing.23 The em-bargo raised barriers, but it did notbring Libyan arms imports to a halt;rather it imposed a choice Libya hadalready made itself. Like Syria, Libyacontinues to invest in alternative tech-nologies instead, especially chemicalweapons and ballistic missiles.24 Thesemay allow Tripoli to remain a seriousfactor in regional strategic stabilityequations, in other words, to continueto be taken seriously. Libya is keepingits options open—no one in their rightmind would trust Qadhafi on any-thing—but Libya is no longer the en-fant terrible that it once was.

Iran

Today the greatest risks of strategicdestabilization in the Middle Eastcome not from traditional confronta-

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tion states but from the Persian Gulf.The Iranian revolution and the rise ofIraqi military power created threatsthat potentially could leapfrog over themore settled confrontation states toengage Israel directly. So long as thetwo Gulf powers fought each other inthe 1980s the dangers could be man-aged. The key was to ensure that nei-ther side defeated the other deci-sively.25 In practice, this imperativehad the effect of removing virtually allrestraint on international arms trans-fers to the combatants.26 This dis-torted Middle East arms import pat-terns, creating a mid-1980s bulge instatistics that otherwise would haveshown a consistent decline beginningmuch earlier.

With the end of the Iran-Iraq Warin August 1988, energies that the an-tagonists had focused on each otherbegan to shift toward outsiders again.Iran's threat to regional stability hasbeen widely debated. Its support forHizbollah forces in Lebanon and itsinexcusable delight in vicious rhetorichave created a fearsome image. Thesubstance behind the language is moreobscure. The purchase of advancedKilo-class submarines and a fewsquadrons of MiG-29s from Russia in-itially appeared to justify such con-cerns. Even if they did not make Iranan overnight superpower, they wereseen as evidence that Tehran mighthave long-term ambitions.27

Although Iran's goals for comingdecades remain enigmatic, the nationis in no position to continue signingmajor arms deals. Only a decision toalter national priorities dramaticallycould make it possible for Iran toemerge as a major military power.28

Iran still has a long way to go beforeits forces approach the strength ofthose it inherited from the shah in1979. Even in defeat, Iraq retains con-siderable superiority over its old en-

emy. Geography and its own growingstrength help ensure that Saudi Arabiacan also defend itself against an Ira-nian attack.29 Although Iran's ballisticmissile capabilities have grown sub-stantially, its nuclear capability re-mains nascent—even after it signed adeal with Moscow for light-water reac-tors—expressing distant intentionsthat must be taken seriously but havelittle effect on contemporary strategicplanning.30

Iraq

Iraq remains the strongest land powerin the Gulf region, but SaddamHussein's threats increasingly relymore on his personal unpredictabilitythan his military resources. With oneof the largest armed forces in the Mid-dle East—even after Allied attacksand UN disassembly of much of itsremaining infrastructure—Iraq canstill be worrisome. But deprived ofsupplies, spares, and foreign assis-tance, Iraq's conventional forces poseno serious danger to its neighbors, pro-vided the latter have enough warningto mobilize. The near-certainty of U.S.intervention reduces the threat evenfurther.

Iraq will inevitably grow weakerduring the next decade compared toits neighbors. The armaments bingeamong moderate Gulf regimes that fol-lowed the 1991 war will show resultsby the end of the century. The coun-tries of the Gulf Cooperation Council(GCC) may still lack personnel andconfidence, but the Gulf military bal-ance seems more reliable than ever.Even Iran can acquire new militaryhardware with greater ease than Iraq.UN inspections under Security Coun-cil resolution 715 will make it impos-sible for Iraq to resume developmentof nonconventional armaments at thesame pace as before, although this ave-

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nue remains its most likely hope formilitary influence.

Saudi Arabia and the GCC Countries

The scale of arms contracts signed bythe moderate regimes of the GCC be-tween 1991 and 1993 aroused concernthat a new arms race was being cre-ated. Every GGG government boughtstate-of-the-art aircraft and armoredvehicles. Several also purchased highlyadvanced equipment like militarycommunications gear and air defenseand antisubmarine systems. By theyear 2000 Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, andthe Gulf sheikhdoms will have someof the best quality equipment in theworld.

All that is missing is quantity. Nocountry can afford an indefinite mili-tary buildup, even Arab oil sheikh-doms. The arms race that some fearedwould emerge out the trauma of the1991 Persian Gulf War proved to be atwo-year buying binge. Instead of go-ing on uncontrollably, it ended almostas suddenly as it began. In effect Sad-dam Hussein, through his excesses, ac-celerated the normal modernizationcycle of his GCC neighbors by a dec-ade or more. As this procurement cyclewas completed in 1993, its total di-mensions became evident. Ratherthan expanding their armed forces, theGCC countries have created seg-mented military establishments, di-vided between a well-armed andtrained nucleus and less impressive re-serve and militia units. New equip-ment is going almost exclusively intomodernization of existing units, notcreation of new ones.

Saudi Arabia and the other moder-ate Gulf countries have not gained theability to attack Israel or more distantadversaries. Rather their acquisitionswill enable them to defend their ownterritories more effectively, hopefully

slowing an attack long enough for aninternational response to assemble.The gradual relaxation of tensions af-ter Saddam Hussein's defeat is per-haps the strongest evidence that gov-ernments throughout the region arebent on nothing so much as preserva-tion of the status quo. It is revealingthat after completing a series of armspurchases that logically might haveraised their self-confidence to an all-time high, Saudi leaders chose not toconfront Israel, but to initiate steps to-ward political accommodation.31 It isthrough measures like this that statesshow the real degree of their security.

Israel

Another sign of this security is Israel'snew confidence. The end of the 1991war did not occasion an Israeli militaryinvestment program comparable tothose that followed previous wars. De-spite the fact that Israel's economy ishealthier than it has been in more thana decade, growing by over 5 percent ayear in the mid-1990s, defense is be-ing cut. A few critical projects con-tinue such as the Merkava tank, Eilat-class corvettes, and the Arrow missileinterceptor. Otherwise domestic de-fense industries are being closed orstreamlined.32 The military itself hasbeen reoriented to devote greater re-sources to domestic security and ter-rorism, a shift to low-tech operationsthat the Ministry of Defense expectsto maintain for many years to come.33

Like other regional actors, Israel de-liberately avoided being drawn into anew arms competition. Its leaders re-main deeply suspicious of countrieslike Iraq but show no interest in ex-panding their armed forces in re-sponse.34 Instead of building it up, Is-raeli leaders seek to trim defensewhere possible while preserving exist-ing military capabilities. In this respect

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Israeli armaments policy is no differ-ent from that of any West Europeancountry.

The clearest example came afterPresident George Bush announced thesale of 72 F-15X fighters and severalhundred missiles to Saudi Arabia inSeptember 1992. The deal, worth $9billion, was criticized for destabilizingthe regional balance.35 Yet the countrypotentially most threatened barely re-acted. Instead of demanding a hugepackage of comparable weaponry incompensation, as it had always done inthe past, Israel allowed its previousprocurement planning to stand un-modified. Instead of seeking newarms, Israel used the Saudi deal toforce action on a long-sought U.S.commitment to share intelligence,something of far greater strategic im-portance than additional hardware.36

Reinforcing Regional PeaceThe greatest weakness in the declin-ing salience of conventional arma-ments in the Middle East is that theprocess is not based on any concept ofself-restraint, let alone charity towardone's neighbors. Rather it is based ex-clusively on narrow self-interest, onperceptions of declining threats andambitions, coupled with economicpressures. For a few countries—espe-cially Iran, Iraq, and Libya—the hesi-tancy of foreign suppliers is also a se-rious barrier to greater procurement.Despite the strength of recent trends,there is every reason to suspect that ifthe economics were less pressing andforeign arms more easily available,some countries would be expandingtheir forces again, albeit at a slowerrate than before.

Without a comprehensive peace noregional arms slowdown can be suffi-cient for long-term confidence. Effortsto promote regional amity and arms

control remain as important as before.The range of Middle East arms-control and confidence-building pro-posals is very broad.37 Good ideas haveaccumulated in a way typical of a fieldin which such proposals have been ad-vanced for years without success. Theimpact of formal peace politics hasbeen especially disappointing. TheCamp David accords did nothing tomitigate military preparations, nor didthe 1993-94 agreements between Is-rael and the PLO. The 1994 Israeli-Jordanian agreements came at the end,not the beginning, of a long process ofinformal deescalation. All three sets ofagreements are of singular importance,if not because of their role in endingold arms races, then because of thefuture arms races they may prevent.

Syria continues to distance itselffrom similar agreements, pending thereturn of the Golan Heights. The Ma-drid process, which it was hopedwould advance military transparencyand offer a basis for regional arms con-trol, foundered on this issue. Theminimal arms talks organized underthe Madrid process's Arms Controland Security Working Group (ACRS)have not been completely unproduc-tive, but the process has also beencounterproductive.38 Syria's refusal toparticipate, along with the non-partici-pation of Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, un-dermined the credibility of these talksand highlighted the extent of regionaldifferences. Having spurned theACRS forum, the governments ofthese countries will not be able to joinit without sacrificing their domesticcredibility and international dignity.Unless these governments are re-placed with more accommodatingones, or another, unforeseen revolu-tion alters the regional security equa-tion, it will not be possible to reinvig-orate the current dialogue. If and whena regional agreement becomes feasi-

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ble, a completely different forum willbe necessary.

The outlook for confidence-build-ing has been damaged further by theexcessive politicization of confidence-and security-building measures. Theneed to score political points encour-ages Arab governments to presentmaximum proposals emphasizing Is-raeli nuclear transparency and disar-mament.39 They contend that Israel'snuclear forces must be brought into acomprehensive system for long-termsecurity. Insisting on this as the firstand primary goal of regional arms con-trol eliminates possibilities for coop-eration on conventional forces thatwould do more to enhance MiddleEast security today. There is more tobe gained by building on the processesalready restraining conventional forcesthan by trying as a first step to encom-pass the region's most contentious ar-maments.

A variety of confidence-building andarms limitation proposals have beenadvanced in initiatives such as thoseproposed by Presidents Bush andFrancois Mitterrand in 1991, but allmust wait on diplomatic break-throughs, especially with Syria, andchanges in domestic priorities in otherArab countries. Meanwhile, it may beeasier to organize a new forum amongarms suppliers to coordinate and re-duce transfers. The previous effort—the dialogue initiated in 1991 by thefive permanent members of the UNSecurity Council—agreed on nothingbut banal generalities before collaps-ing in 1992. Although similar discus-sions can be started again, competitivepressures make it unlikely that sup-plier restraint will achieve much with-out direct support from recipient coun-tries as well.40 The arms trade cannotbe stopped by good intentions. Con-trol requires the harnessing of thesame political forces that make other

forms of regional arms control so dif-ficult to achieve.

Throughout the foreseeable future,Middle East arms restraint will relymore on domestic factors and informalunderstandings than formal interna-tional agreements. This undoubtedlyis an enormous improvement over theuninhibited competition of the past.But it is a weak basis for long-termstability. In lieu of formal agreements,the greatest danger will come fromforces outside the balance of conven-tional arms. It is these factors that willbe of the greatest importance to re-gional security.

Unconventional Weapons:A New Regional Arms Race?

The competition in conventionalweaponry may have abated, but fewcountries in the Middle East haveshown a comparable willingness to re-duce their nonconventional weaponsprograms and some have clearlyshifted priorities in that direction. Hasa competition in weapons of mass de-struction and ballistic missiles risen toreplace the stymied quest for conven-tional superiority? If so, does this ris-ing competition threaten to under-mine the stability that has emerged inthe conventional area?

The threat of nuclear weapons,chemical and biological weapons, andballistic missiles has been part of theMiddle East security framework sincethe late 1950s. Starting with Israel'sdecision to acquire nuclear weaponsafter the massive Soviet-Egyptianarms deal of 1956, weapons of massdestruction were originally seen in theMiddle East as a remedy for weaknessin conventional arms.41 Similarly, dur-ing the long war with Iran, Iraq devel-oped chemical weapons in an attemptto circumvent battlefield stalemate.Syria's chemical weapons program and

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its efforts to acquire long-range ballis-tic missiles both accelerated in 1986,the year Damascus apparently aban-doned efforts to achieve parity withIsrael in conventional forces.42

For countries lumbered with in-creasingly dubious conventionalforces, weapons of mass destructionand ballistic missiles offer a partial ex-ception to the seeming immutabilityof the strategic status quo. They arethe clearest military alternative to con-ventional forces, virtually the onlypath left for acquiring useful power.For the most antagonistic Middle Eastregimes the goal of defeating Israelmay be as elusive as ever, but throughnonconventional armaments they canaspire to retain some degree of directinfluence over Israel's freedom to useits own forces. The lessons of Iraq'smissile attacks on Tehran in 1988 andTel Aviv in 1991 have not been over-looked. Unconventional weapons maynot be sufficient for victory, but theymay be enough to tip the scales ofconflict, breaking stalemates or pre-venting utter defeat.

Competition in unconventionalweapons is suppressed by the patch-work system of treaties and exportcontrol regimes. All have becomestronger since the discovery in 1991 ofIraq's covert progress. Membership inall these regimes has grown dramati-cally, restrictions are tighter, and en-forcement is far more aggressive. Butall face threats from evasive states andprofit-minded exporters.

Of these regimes, the nuclear re-gime is the strongest and yet the mostfragile. Impressive barriers have beenerected to halt the further spread ofnuclear weapons, but if only one addi-tional Middle East country acquires asingle bomb, the credibility of the en-tire effort will be gravely damaged.The Arab countries and Iran are in-creasingly vocal in their discontent

with Israel's nuclear status, as seen inthe tortuous politics of indefinitely ex-tending the Nuclear Non-ProliferationTreaty in April-May 1995, but few areseriously interested in acquiring nu-clear weapons of their own. Althoughit leads Arab protests against Israelinuclear capabilities, Egypt long agolost interest in acquiring a nuclear op-tion.43 Syria never assembled the tech-nical resources. Others, like Saudi Ara-bia, toyed with the possibility butwere never seriously interested. Thefew that remain interested, like Iranand Libya, have had little luck, al-though foreign technical assistance orillegally acquired fissionable materialscould change that.

The situation regarding chemicaland biological weapons is much lessstable. These weapons are difficult touse and their effects are difficult topredict, but they have become thestrategic weapon of choice for severalMiddle East governments. To be sure,several governments have signed the1993 Chemical Weapons Convention,agreeing to its intrusive inspection re-quirements, but none of those directlyface Israel. Although Iraq's largechemical stockpile has been destroyedby the UN Special Commission onIraq, its biological weapons infrastruc-ture is thought to remain intact. Othercountries, including Iran, Libya, andSyria, are widely believed to maintaincomparable stocks of chemical agentsand to continue to develop theirchemical warfare potential.44

The long-range missile situationprobably is the most delicate of thethree. In contrast to other unconven-tional weaponry, there is no interna-tional norm to inhibit the spread ofballistic and cruise missiles. Nor arethere barriers to their use. Since 1973,ballistic missiles have been fired in an-ger nine times; all but two of thoseoccasions were in the Middle East (the

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exceptions were in Afghanistan andBosnia).45 Although Saddam Husseinapparently thought it wiser not to usehis chemical arsenal in 1991, he felt nosuch inhibitions about unleashing hisSCUD force. Future regional conflictswill almost certainly be punctuated bylong-range missile attacks.

The Missile Technology ControlRegime has gained members andstrength, but SCUD technology is al-ready ubiquitous throughout the re-gion and cruise missile technologymay soon become equally available.46

Virtually every country in the regionthat wants one now has a missile force.The number of SCUDs transferred tothe Middle East by the Soviet Unionalone is very large. Iraq is known tohave received over 800, and the totalnumber in the inventories of otherArab states could surpass 2,000.47

Since the late 1980s most suppliershave left the field. Today North Koreais the preeminent supplier, havingdelivered at least 500 to 700 of itsSCUD versions. If Pyongyang doesnot change its export policy, there is aserious danger that its clients in theregion could acquire missiles like theNodong-1, with a range of 1,000 km,as well as more powerful rockets stillin development.48

Can Unconventional WeaponsDestabilize the ConventionalBalance?

Despite the genuine successes of non-proliferation treaties and export con-trol agreements, greater competition inweapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles remains likely. Whetherthis competition can undermine theregion's conventional stability is farless certain. Nonconventional forcesare developed for very different rea-sons from conventional ones and servevery different goals.49 They have

greater implications for the region'senduring political conflicts than for itsdiminishing military confrontation.

These weapons may have beensought as a substitute for conventionalpower or a last redoubt in case ofits failure, but there are clearly limitsto their substitutability. When armedwith high explosives, long-range mis-siles can be used as super artillery, butwhen carrying other armaments theirrole changes dramatically. More gener-ally, nuclear and other weapons ofmass destruction are most effective asinstruments of deterrence in time ofpeace, while conventional forces re-main the basic tools of actual fightingin time of war. Just as in Europe andbetween the superpowers, the twokinds of armament have become pro-gressively more detached over theyears.

The importance of weapons of massdestruction in the Middle East rose asthe salience of conventional weaponswaned, but the relationship betweenthe two has since lost its flexibility.The day when one could substitute forthe other appears to have passed. Thelogic that has been apparent since thebirth of the nuclear era, which was firstunderstood in terms of the superpowerrelationship and the situation inEurope, now seems increasingly ap-preciated in the Middle East as well.

Only under the most peculiar of cir-cumstances can unconventional arma-ments be used to conquer territory.They are poorly suited to defeating astanding army in the field. This is trueeven of chemical weapons, which aremost effective when used on unpro-tected civilians. Weapons of mass de-struction are overwhelmingly politicalinstruments. In Europe and among thesuperpowers this was understood tomean deterrence of a potential at-tacker in times of peace and inhibitingescalation in times of war. The same

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rule applies in the Middle East, albeitwith important differences. As SaddamHussein's attacks on Israel in 1991demonstrated, in the Middle East thelist of political missions can includedeliberate escalation of a conflict aswell.

Although conventional forces tendto grow or shrink in response to chang-ing domestic priorities and the logic ofthe status quo, unconventional forcesdevelop through a more independentprocess. There is a strong consensusthat the only way to bring about reduc-tions in their spread will be throughverifiable arms-control agreements,probably beginning with confidence-building measures and progressing to-ward negotiated caps and reduction.50

Some, however, argue that the onlyhope for control is through globalmeasures to reduce the salience ofthese weapons.51

Whereas the Middle East arms racewas once seen as a single phenomenonrequiring overarching solutions, thereis now a widening split between theoutlook for conventional and uncon-ventional weapons. Solving the Mid-dle East's nuclear quandary will be farmore difficult than the resolution of itsconventional arms race. The unfortu-nate side of this schism is that progresstoward conventional stability may cre-ate little if any momentum for controlover weapons of mass destruction. Thefortunate side is that the possibleworsening of the nuclear, chemical,and biological or missile confrontationprobably will not weaken the underly-ing conventional stability.

The New Link: Terrorism andArms Races

A greater danger of destabilizationcomes from the threat of terrorism andfundamentalist violence. Their riseposes a direct threat to safety, but this

is not, except in the most extreme cir-cumstances, a threat that can be metwith military means. The exceptions,however, are of such importance as torequire serious and searching consid-eration. Although terrorist violence it-self does not justify procurement ofadvanced major weapons, the dangerthat extremists might acquire weaponsof mass destruction cannot be dis-missed, nor can the potential for des-tabilization. Should fundamentaliststake power in the Arab world as theyhave in Iran, the possibility of re-newed conventional escalation wouldbe very difficult to control.

The rising importance of terrorismand fundamentalist violence reflectsnot only their growing deadliness, butalso their changing political nature,which makes them more difficult todeal with. The most serious terroristgroups of the 1970s and 1980s—theRed Army Faction, the Irish Republi-can Army, the PLO, or Hizbollah—relied on foreign state support; theirdeadliness waxed and waned with thefavor of their foreign sponsors.52

Through its reliance on foreign sup-port, terrorism became in effect an in-strument of covert government policy,a way for smaller powers like Bulgaria,East Germany, Libya, or revolutionaryIran to assert themselves indirectly.

As long as terrorism was directly re-lated to state policy, its dangers couldbe addressed by going to the statesponsors. Whether or not Washingtoncould track down the bombers of thela Bell Disco in Berlin in 1986, forexample, an air strike could bemounted against Libya. Similarly theinternational community could react tothe Lockerbie bombing by applyingUN sanctions to Libya even withoutknowing the exact identity of thebombers. Regardless of whether theWest could strike at terrorist factionsbased in Damascus, it could deal with

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Syrian authorities. When France ap-prehended the terrorist leader Carlosin August 1994, it reportedly was withthe direct assistance of Sudanese (andprobably Syrian) officials.

The capture of Carlos was widelyacknowledged as a climactic event ofanother era. The end of the Cold Warbrought an end to the sponsoring ofterrorism by states of Eastern Europeand convinced most others to abandonthe business. Today's most demandingsecurity dangers come not from statesor their proxy cells. Fundamentalistslike the Islamic Salvation Front in Al-geria, the Muslim Brotherhood inEgypt, or Hamas in Israel do not relyon the support of state sponsors. Theygladly accept cash and arms from Iran,Iraq, or other patrons, but their mostimportant support comes from well-organized individual supporters. Hav-ing evolved beyond state sponsorship,terrorism has shed its critical vulner-ability, rendering the most importantinstruments of anti-terrorist policy allbut irrelevant.53

The 30,000 deaths in Algeria since1990 leave no doubt that the toll fromthe activity of terrorist groups can rivalthe destruction caused by orthodoxstate-against-state warfare. And theerosion of public confidence is no lesspalpable. The made-for-televisiongruesomeness of even relatively smallterrorist attacks creates a special bur-den by convincing people that theirgovernment cannot defend their lives,stripping the state of a key element ofits legitimacy.

The danger of ungovernability mustnot be underestimated, but it is notthe same as facing hostile armies di-rectly across your borders. It is not aproblem that justifies major militarybuildups, if only because extremists—in and of themselves—do not pose aconventional military threat. For ex-tremists to undermine the basic ele-

ments of regional stability, they musteither take control of governments andnational armies or acquire weapons ofmass destruction.

The latter scenario is the source ofwidespread fear. One need look nofurther than best-selling novels, inwhich the theme of nuclear-armed ter-rorists long ago became commonenough to bore anyone not addicted tothe genre.54 Since the collapse of theSoviet Union, the international com-munity and the ex-Soviet states havetaken several steps to prevent nuclearweapons from falling into the hands ofsubstate actors. After the Russian plu-tonium smuggling scares of July andAugust 1994, action to control fissilematerials also became more coordi-nated. Yet the possibility that nuclearweapons may reach a subnationalgroup remains serious.

Other weapons could be harder tocontrol. The possibility that terroristswill threaten to use biological agents isespecially realistic and troubling, asthe use of Sarin bombs in the Tokyosubways showed. Even so, this is adanger that cannot be addressed di-rectly through full-scale warfare, ratherit must be fought with discrete uses offorce. Renewed large-scale militaryconfrontation could still result, butonly through more direct paths. Al-though the threat of a Muslim Broth-erhood bomb, for example, would notjustify a massive Israeli arms buildup,it could provoke uncontrollable ten-sions that would compel leaders on allsides into a new arms race.

Aside from detonating a nuclearbomb over a major city, the greatestdanger that extremists pose is the pos-sibility of igniting a crisis like that ofJuly 1914. By threatening to use weap-ons of mass destruction, they couldcompel governments to take extrememeasures. The Middle East is accus-tomed to Israeli strikes against extrem-

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ists like Hizbollah in Lebanon, usuallyin response to relatively limited at-tacks on Israelis. But Lebanon is weak,virtually a regional punching bag, un-able to respond in any effective man-ner. If confronted by nuclear or bio-logical threats from terrorists based ina stronger state like Egypt or Iran, Is-rael undoubtedly would feel com-pelled to threaten much more forcefulaction. In this scenario, however, thehost state—much stronger than Leba-non—might feel equally compelled toreact. However intended, the use orthreat of force against extremists basedin a neighboring state could provoke acycle of arming and counterarming,starting a new arms race and possiblyoutright warfare.

Conclusion

Although the Middle East conven-tional arms race may not be com-pletely over, this powerful engine ofregional instability is not the threat itonce was. With increasing acceptanceof the region's geopolitical status quoand changing domestic priorities, theintensity of the Middle East race forsuperiority in conventional weaponryhas diminished greatly. In and of itself,this is not a sufficient basis for regionalpeace, but it should encourage thosewho believe that regional security canbe strengthened.

It may be premature to speak of theend of the Middle East arms race, buta new watershed in regional securityaffairs has been reached. The transfor-mation remains informal and incom-plete; it lacks the reinforcement of in-ternational commitments and treaties,and it still does not fully embrace nu-clear, chemical, and other weaponstechnologies. Despite its shortcomingsand limitations, the process has provedsurprisingly durable. Gradual and in-conspicuous rather than sudden and

dramatic, it has acquired a momentumof its own with clear consequences forregional stability. The decline of theMiddle East arms race may not be easyto see, but its effects are increasinglyobvious.

As the danger of interstate war re-cedes and military preparations ceaseto be of overwhelming importance inrelations between states, the MiddleEast becomes increasingly like otherregions of the world. A comprehensivepeace of the kind described in innu-merable speeches at the UN may notbe close at hand, but important aspectsof it are being established piecemeal.Above all, fewer countries of the re-gion pose a direct danger to the mili-tary security of their neighbors. Evenif this is not the peace the world haslong sought, it is one with which theworld can long live.

Four major consequences followfrom this transformation. The firstconcerns the international trade inmilitary technology. The trade in con-ventional weapons is less dangerousthan previously thought. Individualarms deals—even large ones like theSaudi Arabian F-15 deal—pose littlethreat. The chief danger of conven-tional arms would come from a largeand sustained series of transfers thatwould permit not just modernizationbut outright expansion. The most des-tabilizing technologies are those di-rectly related to weapons of mass de-struction or long-range missiles.Although they may not undermine thestability of the conventional balance,their own potential must not be under-estimated.

The second consequence concernsthe outlook for Middle East confi-dence-building and arms control,which is now much better than everbefore. Although the conventionalconfrontation has been ameliorated in-formally, formal agreements still have

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a vital role to play, reinforcing and in-stitutionalizing the stability so felici-tously achieved. The key to successfulnegotiations will be trimming expecta-tions, shifting from the long-term goalof general regional disarmament to fo-cus more on closer objectives, andstressing more modest but still vitalmechanisms that control conventionalforces.

The third consequence is that, as inother regions, the most serious threatsto international stability come notfrom the excesses of demonic leadersand rogue states but from the collapseof power in otherwise normal coun-tries. Efforts by substate actors to takepower or carve out sovereignties oftheir own are as destabilizing in thelong term as official government re-vanchism. In a world increasingly di-vided between strong states and inef-fectual ones, groups acting beyond theauthority of any government areemerging as the dominant source ofhavoc.

A fourth consequence is that re-gional armed forces must be reori-ented to meet this new threat. Insteadof orthodox large-scale conventionalmilitary operations, the new threat ofterrorism and fundamentalist violencecalls for small-scale operations by spe-cial forces. In the Middle East as else-where, Napoleonic mass armies are in-creasingly irrelevant, preserved moreout of respect for aging memories thanfor day-to-day utility. In the MiddleEast as elsewhere, the armies of thefuture will tend to be small, highlytrained forces designed to deal withspecific contingencies. Such forcespose a minimal threat to neighboringstates, while they have a greater abilityto deal with the thorny challenges ofterrorism and fundamentalist violence.The immediate goal of the interna-tional community should be to encour-

age this trend through arms-control in-itiatives, diplomacy, and aid.

This essay is based on a chapter prepared forM. Ehsan Ahrari, ed., Continuity and Change inthe Middle East: Conflict Resolution and Pros-pects for Peace (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, forth-coming).

Notes

1. This debate was anticipated in PaulJohnson's Modern Times: The World From theTwenties to the Nineties, rev. ed. (New York,N.Y.: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 696-704,750-768. Also see the symposium on "TheStrange Death of Soviet Communism," inNational Interest, no. 33 (Spring 1993).

2. John Lewis Gaddis, "International Rela-tions Theory and the End of the ColdWar," International Security 17 (Winter1992/93), pp. 5-57.

3. Colin S. Gray, House of Cards: Why ArmsControl Must Fail (Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 1992).

4. Julian Ozanne and Roger Matthews,"Ploughed Back into Swords," FinancialTimes, September 9, 1994, p. 13.

5. Michael Eisenstadt, Arming for Peace?Syria's Elusive Quest for Strategic Parity, Pol-icy Paper no. 31 (Washington, D.C.: Insti-tute for Near East Policy, 1992), andGerald M. Steinberg, "Middle East ArmsControl and Regional Security," Survival36 (Spring 1994), pp. 129-130.

6. It has been argued that even in the MiddleEast, high military spending is not eco-nomically sustainable over time. See, forexample, Yahya M. Sadowski, Scuds or But-ter? The Political Economy of Arms Control inthe Middle East (Washington, D.C.: Brook-ings Institution, 1993). In practice, how-ever, economic pressure rarely reducesmilitary spending unless the politicalcauses of a conflict have been minimizedfirst.

7. John Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: TheObsolescence of Major War (New York, N.Y.:Basic Books, 1989). Whether Mueller's hy-pothesis applies to regions other thanEurope and North America is the subjectof lively debate. See Akhtar Majeed, "Hasthe War System Really Become Obso-lete?" Bulletin of Peace Proposals 21 (De-

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cember 1991), pp. 321-328, and Mueller," . . . A Response to Akhtar Majeed," Bul-letin of Peace Proposals 23 (March 1992),pp. 103-107.

8. On the great plasticity of defense spend-ing, see Saadet Deger and Somnath Sen,Military Expenditure: The Political Economyof International Security (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1990), pp. 3-8.

9. Glen Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land:Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a NewIsrael (New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schus-ter, 1994).

10. In the early 1980s Western observers be-gan to express concern that Jordan wasbecoming too weak to defend itself againstPalestinian or Syrian intervention. See An-thony H. Cordesman, Jordanian Arms andthe Middle East Balance (Washington, D.C.:Middle East Institute, 1983).

11. Philip Finnegan, "Jordan Cuts ArmedForces; Plans to Sell Off Aircraft," DefenseNews, November 25, 1991, p. 1.

12. "Jordanian F-5s to Singapore," Militaryand Arms Transfers News 94 (December 2,1994), p. 5.

13. Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Red Star on the Nile:The Soviet-Egyptian Influence Relationshipsince the June War (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-ton University Press, 1977), especiallychap. 6, "The End of Illusion."

14. John Laffin, The War of Desperation: Leba-non 1982-85 (London: Osprey, 1985),pp. 119-121.

15. Efraim Karsh, "The Rise and Fall ofSyria's Quest for Strategic Parity," RUSIand Brassey's Defence Yearbook 1991 (Lon-don: Brassey's, 1991), pp. 197-215.

16. International Institute for Strategic Stud-ies, The Military Balance 1994-1995 (Lon-don: Brassey's for the IISS, 1994), pp. 123,140.

17. Craig Mellow, "Saber-Rattling Helps Rus-sia Ring up Arms Sales," International Her-ald Tribune, December 19, 1994, p. 9.

18. Geoffrey Kemp, "Impact of the Gulf Waron Attitudes Toward Advanced Weap-onry" (presentation at a conference spon-sored by the Institute for Foreign PolicyAnalysis and the United Nations Institutefor Disarmament Research, Geneva, Feb-ruary 14-15, 1994).

19. Roger Matthews, "A Crisis of Leader-ship," Financial Times, December 21,1994, p. 13; "Syria in 'Secret' Talks withIsrael," Financial Times, December 23,1994, p. 4; "Father Figure," Economist,January 7, 1995, pp. 33-34; and JamesBruce, "Syria's Inner Circle's Reshuffle,"Jane's Defence Weekly, September 17, 1994,p. 27, and "Assad Sanitizes Agencies toPrepare for Peace Deal," Jane's DefenceWeekly, November 26, 1994, p. 13.

20. A similar point is made by Saleh Al-Mani,"Conventional Weapons and Arms Trans-fers in the Middle East," in Chantal deJonge Oudraat, ed., Conference of ResearchInstitutes in the Middle East (Geneva:United Nations Institute for DisarmamentResearch, 1994), pp. 58-59.

21. Keith Krause, "Middle East Arms Recipi-ents in the Post-Cold War World," Annalsof the American Academy of Political and So-cial Science 535 (September 1994), pp. 73-90.

22. According to the Stockholm InternationalPeace Research Institute (SIPRI), the lastLibyan order of major weapon systemswas a 1988 contract with Moscow for 15SU-24 bombers. SIPRI Yearbook 1991 (Ox-ford: Oxford University Press, 1991),p. 262. According to the IISS, though, theorder was apparently canceled after only 6of the aircraft had been received. IISS, TheMilitary Balance 1994-1995, p. 145.

23. Security Council resolution 748 of March31, 1992. The resolution's impact is dis-cussed in Paul Lewis, "U.N. TightensSanctions against Libya," New York Times,November 12, 1993, p. A-10.

24. W. Andrew Terrill, "Libya and the Questfor Chemical Weapons," Conflict Quarterly14 (Winter 1994), pp. 47-61.

25. Stephen C. Pelletiere, The Iran-Iraq War.Chaos in a Vacuum (Westport, Conn.:Praeger, 1992), and Dilip Hiro, The LongestWar. The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict (Lon-don: Paladin, 1990), chap. 3.

26. European support for Iraq was unambigu-ous from the start of the war. See KennethR. Timmerman, The Death Lobby: How theWest Armed Iraq (London: Fourth Estate,1992). The strength of U.S. support forSaddam Hussein is more obscure. An ex-treme position is developed by Alan Fried-man, Spider's Web: Bush, Saddam, Thatcher

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and the Decade of Deceit (London: Faber andFaber, 1993).

27. R. James Woolsey, Director of Central In-telligence, testimony before the U.S. Sen-ate, Committee on Governmental Affairs,February 24, 1993.

28. James W. Moore, "An Assessment of theIranian Military Rearmament Program,"Comparative Strategy 13 (Fall 1994),pp. 371-389, and Elaine Sciolino, "Iran'sDifficulties Lead Some in U.S. to DoubtThreat," New York Times, July 5, 1994,p. A-l.

29. Shahram Chubin, Iran's National SecurityPolicy (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie En-dowment for International Peace, 1994),pp. 29-38.

30. Iranian efforts to buy reactors and enrich-ment technology have caused alarm. See,for example, Chris Hedges, "Iran May BeAble to Build an Atomic Bomb in 5 Years,U.S.and Israeli Officials Fear," New YorkTimes, January 5, 1995, p. A-10. The reac-tors' light-water design, however, does notoffer a practical basis for nuclear weaponsproduction. See the repudiation of theHedges article in Clyde Haberman, "U.S.and Israel See Iranians 'Many Years' fromA-Bomb," New York Times, January 10,1995, p. A-3. A balanced assessment isShahram Chubin, "Does Iran Want Nu-clear Weapons?" Survival 37 (Spring1995), pp. 86-104.

31. Youssef M. Ibrahim, "Muslims Argue theTheology of Peace with Israel," New YorkTimes, January 31, 1995, p. A-9.

32. Julian Ozanne, "Economic Policy Splits Is-raeli Cabinet," Financial Times, January 18,1995, p. 4. Israeli Military Industries(IMI), for example, is cutting employmentfrom 21,000 in the mid-1980s to 3,000 in1995. Eric Silver, "Israel Aims to Cut 5,000Defence Jobs," Financial Times, January 6,1995, p. 3.

33. Stuart A. Cohen, "How Did the IntifadaAffect the IDF?" Conflict Quarterly 14(Summer 1994), pp. 7-22, and Efraim In-bar, "Israel's Small War. The Military Re-sponse to the Intifada," Armed Forces andSociety 18 (Fall 1991), pp. 29-50.

34. Interview with Israel's Ministry of De-fense director-general, David Ivry, in Jane'sDefence Weekly, April 9, 1994, p. 32.

35. Natalie J. Goldring, testimony before theU.S. House, Subcommittee on Arms Con-trol, International Security and Scienceand the Subcommittee on Europe and theMiddle East of the House's Foreign Af-fairs Committee, Washington, D.C., Sep-tember 23, 1992, and William D. Hartung,And Weapons for All (New York, N.Y.:HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 276-281.

36. Barbara Starr, "Israel Will Get Early Warn-ing Downlink," Jane's Defence Weekly, Feb-ruary 13, 1993, p. 5. Two years after theSaudi F-15 Israel did purchase 20 addi-tional F-15Es, but this had no direct con-nection to events in Saudi Arabia; the dealfulfilled a requirement established severalyears earlier to replace aging F-4 Phan-toms. It was a classic example of forcemodernization, not expansion.

37. Useful introductions to this large literatureare Avi Becker, ed., Arms Control WithoutGlasnost: Building Confidence in the MiddleEast (Jerusalem: Israel Council on ForeignRelations, 1993); Efraim Inbar, ed., Re-gional Security Regimes, Israel and Its Neigh-bors (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995); andAlan Platt, ed., Arms Control and ConfidenceBuilding in the Middle East (Washington,D.C.: United States Institute of Peace,1992).

38. The most tangible accomplishment is anagreement to establish a network of Mid-dle East Conflict Prevention Centers inEgypt, Israel, and Jordan with a coordina-tion center in The Hague to share infor-mation on troop movements and exercises.Caroline Faraj, "Mideast States Get Secu-rity Centers," Defense News, February 20,1995, p. 16.

39. Mounir Zahran, "Strengthening the Nu-clear Non-Proliferation Regime," UNIDIRNewsletter, no. 26/27 (June-September1994), pp. 16-18, and Chris Hedges, "Dis-pute over Nuclear Treaty Is Souring Rela-tions between Israel and Egypt," New YorkTimes, February 24, 1995, p. A-8.

40. David Mussington, "Understanding Con-temporary International Arms Transfers,"Adelphi Paper 291 (London: Brassey's forIISS, September 1994).

41. Avner Cohen, "Stumbling into Opacity:The United States, Israel, and the Atom,1960-63," Security Studies 4 (Winter1994/95), pp. 195-241.

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42. Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr., "Syria's Acquisi-tion of North Korean 'Scuds,' " Jane's Intel-ligence Review, June 1991, p. 250.

43. Shyam Bhatia, Nuclear Rivals in the MiddleEast (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 1988),pp. 47-63.

44. Philip Shenon, "Libya Expels Thais inChemical Weapons Dispute," New YorkTimes, November 10, 1993, p. A-14, andDaniel Pipes, "Trust Assad? Not yet," NewYork Times, January 18, 1994, p. A-22.

45. Aaron Karp, Ballistic Missile Proliferation:The Politics and Technics (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1995), pp. 44-46.

46. On the latter point, see W. Seth Carus,Cruise Missile Proliferation in the 1990s,Washington Paper 159 (Westport, Conn.:Praeger and the Center for Strategic andInternational Studies, 1992), and K. ScottMcMahan and Dennis M. Gormley, Con-trolling the Spread of Land-Attack Cruise Mis-siles (Marina del Rey, Calif.: AmericanInstitute for Strategic Cooperation, Janu-ary 1995).

47. Aaron Karp, "Ballistic Missiles in the Mid-dle East: Realities, Omens and Arms Con-trol Options," Contemporary Security Policy16 (April 1995), pp. 111-129.

48. The latter are described in David Wrightand Timur Kadyshev, "The North KoreanMissile Program: How Advanced Is It?"Arms Control Today 24 (April 1994), pp. 9 -12.

49. This conclusion is shared even among ana-lysts with opposite views of the dangers ofnuclear proliferation in the region. See

Shai Feldman, Israeli Nuclear Deterrence: AStrategy for the 1980s (New York, N.Y.: Co-lumbia University Press, 1982), pp. 32-52,and Yair Evron, Israel's Nuclear Dilemma(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,1994), especially chap. 2.

50. Efraim Karsh and Yezid Sayigh, "A Coop-erative Approach to Arab-Israeli Security,"Survival 36 (Spring 1994), pp. 114-125.

51. See Elisa D. Harris, "Towards a Compre-hensive Strategy for Halting Chemical andBiological Weapons Proliferation," ArmsControl 12 (September 1991), and GeoffreyKemp, "The Middle East Arms Race: CanIt Be Controlled?" Middle East Journal 45(Summer 1991).

52. Max G. Manwaring, ed., UncomfortableWars: Toward a New Paradigm of Low Inten-sity Conflict (Boulder, Colo.: Westview,1991), pp. 20-24, and Edward E. Rice,Wars of the Third Kind (Berkeley: Univer-sity of California Press, 1988), especiallychap. 4.

53. On a specific case, see Claire Spencer, "Al-geria in Crisis," Survival 36 (Summer1994), pp. 149-163. More generally, seeJ. E Holden-Rhodes and Peter A. Lupsha,"Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Gray AreaPhenomena and the New World Disor-der," Low Intensity Conflict and Law Enforce-ment 2 (Autumn 1993), pp. 212-226.

54. A formal statement of the novelists' favor-ite theme is Tom Clancey and RussellSeitz, "Five Minutes Past Midnight," Na-tional Interest, no. 26 (Winter 1991), pp. 3 -14.

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