Security and Political Economy in the Middle East

This chapter examines the security implications of Middle East political economy. It argues that political economy constituted the deep structure that underlay both security threats and order in MENA. Sovereignty was securitized by the Arab nationalist movement; Egypt’s trajectory under Nasser and Sadat sharply exposed how far national security required a national economic base. Thereafter, OPEC ostensibly weaponized oil to serve Arab national security but failed when Saudi Arabia, putting its own security first, aligned with the US. Oil, enabling the consolidation of authoritarian states, became pivotal to the short-term domestic security of rentier states, although in the long term rentierism increased dependency and deterred democratization. Finally, oil turned into an issue in regional conflicts and a driver of oil wars, funding the militiarization of the region and becoming a magnet for external intervention.