Major Disputes in the Middle East

Dr. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman
This course will examine case studies of inter-state and domestic conflicts in the Middle East, a zone of endemic conflict and rivalry, involving civil strife, inter-state wars, and international intervention, and the efforts by regional and international actors to mediate and resolve them, including the Arab-Israeli arena, the Iran-Iraq war, the war in Iraq since 2003 or Lebanon. It will focus on the religious, social and ethnic underpinnings of such conflicts, e.g., the internal fault lines within the Islamic world, the ethnicity factor (Arabs, Jews, Kurds, and Berbers), and the ideologies which helped shape these conflicts - Arab and Jewish nationalism, socialism, Islamic fundamentalism. It will also foreground the international aspects of Middle East conflicts through geopolitical and economic aspects of international involvement.