Unity in Action: Explaining Alignment Behavior in the Middle East

Abstract

Stephen Walt’s The Origin of Alliances is the most comprehensive, theoretically informed, and widely cited study to date of Middle East alignment behavior during and after the turbulent ‘Arab cold war’ period of the 1950s and 1960s. But Walt may have overstated the discordant character of inter-Arab behavior when he concludes that Arab states ‘balance’ more than they ‘bandwagon’. This study argues that the strength, duration, and ultimate impermanence of regional alignments against Israel indicate that they had a more important basis in ideology than Walt presumes or that realists can accept. Through a graphical portrayal of the results of a factor analysis performed on COPDAB (Conflict and Peace Data Bank) data for the 1948–78 period, and WEIS (World Event Interaction Survey) data for the 1966–93 period, this study establishes that, into the 1970s, the divisions implied by Walt never fully overshadowed the unity in opposition to Israel that was found among parties on the front lines of that confrontation. More specifically, it finds that concordance rather than division prevailed in relations among Israel’s principal adversaries, that concordance had an important basis in conflict with Israel, and that, by the late 1970s, regional politics were far less orderly. It supports a constructivist perspective by concluding that, as a focal point of Arab nationalism, the conflict with Israel imposed normative constraints upon the behavior of Arab leaders.