Abstract
The Middle East has long been dominated by conflict interactions, both among Arab states and with the non-Arab regional powers Israel and Iran. Yet despite much violence and wars the old order in the Middle East—established at the end of World War I—was remarkably stable until 2011, when it disintegrated as a result of the “Arab spring.” The principal cause for this has been the weakness of the Arab states. Outside powers have been invited into the region to compensate for those weaknesses, but they have also exploited them. The disastrous US intervention in Iraq 2003 for a while dampened the willingness of outside powers to intervene, but since the intervention in Libya 2011 there has been a return to interventionism. None of these has been able, however, to overcome the principal dilemma of the region: the weakness of the Arab states.
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