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6 Kerr, Malcolm, The Arab Cold War, 1958–1964. A Study of Ideology in Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar . It is important to stress that our intention is not to draw parallels to the rivalry between the superpowers during the global ‘Cold War’ as the case has been with some of the recent calls to contain and deter Iran in a manner similar to the USSR. Besides the ‘cold’ dimension, that is, the ideological nature of the rivalry carried on by methods short of sustained overt military action, the reason for employing the notion about an ‘Arab Cold War’ is instead to bring attention to similarities with distinct features of Arab politics during the 1950–60s, the era examined by Kerr.

7 Rice, Condoleeza, Special Briefing on Travel to the Middle East and Europe (21 July 2006)Google Scholar .

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13 Cf. Sedgwick, Mark, ‘Measuring Egyptian Regime Legitimacy’, Middle East Critique, 19 (2010), pp. 251–267CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Egyptian president Mubarak, one of the quintessential ‘moderate reformists’, was also among the first to fall in the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011.

14 Levy, Daniel, ‘Picking up the Peace’, Prospect for Peace Blog (21 January 2009)Google Scholar . Cf. also Malley/Harling, ‘Beyond Moderates’.

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16 Being an outstanding legal scholar, a major Islamist ideologist and the famous host of al-Jazeera's most popular religious programme, ‘Islamic Law and Life’, Yusuf al-Qaradawi is arguably the best-known Sunni religious figure in the Arab world today. Cf. Graf, Bettina and Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob (eds), The Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (London: Hurst, 2009)Google Scholar .

17 Kifaya– Arabic for ‘enough’ – is the popular term for the ‘Egyptian Movement for Change’. Cf. El-Mahdi, Rabab, ‘Enough!: Egypt's Quest for Democracy’, Comparative Political Studies, 42 (2009), pp. 1011–1039.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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19 Lynch, Marc, ‘Power Ploy – Why three Arab regimes are publicly aligning themselves against Hezbollah and Iran’, American Prospect (20 July 2006)Google Scholar .

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21 Khouri, Rami, ‘Heed the Changes in Arab Public Opinion’, Agence Global (28 July 2006)Google Scholar .

22 On this terminological distinction and the general debate on ‘who are the Arabs’ cf. Valbjørn, Morten, ‘Arab Nationalism(s) in Transformation: From Arab Interstate Societies to an Arab-Islamic World Society’, in Buzan, Barry and Gonzalez-Pelaez, Ana (eds), International Society and the Middle East – English School Theory at the Regional Level (New York: Palgrave, 2009), pp. 142–144Google Scholar .

23 These three variants of Arab nationalism constitute an analytical distinction, which does not directly correspond with the classical Arabic dichotomy of ‘qawmiya’ (trans-state Arab nationalism) vs. ‘wataniya’ (nation-state nationalism).

24 Kerr, Arab Cold War.

25 While Kerr also addresses the effects of the international structure of bipolarity on the Middle East, his focus and main contribution is on the ‘relative autonomy’ of intra-regional dynamics within an Arab framework. On the complex implications of the global Cold War for Middle Eastern regional politics until the early 1990s cf. Hinnebusch, Raymond, The International Politics of the Middle East (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 14ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Sayigh, Yezid and Shlaim, Avi (eds), The Cold War and the Middle East (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)Google Scholar .

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27 Noble, ‘Arab System’, p. 56.

28 Hinnebusch, International Politics.

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32 The United Arab Republic (UAR) existed between 1958 and 1961. Cf. Barnett, , Dialogues in Arab Politics, pp. 129ffGoogle Scholar .

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37 Kazziha, ‘Impact of Palestine’.

38 Barnett, , Dialogues in Arab Politics, p. 158Google Scholar . Cf. also Bank, André and Valbjørn, Morten, ‘Bringing the Arab Regional Level Back in… – Jordan in the New Arab Cold War’, Middle East Critique, 19 (2010), p. 308fCrossRefGoogle Scholar .

39 Hinnebusch, Raymond, ‘The Foreign Policy of Egypt’, in Hinnebusch, Raymond and Ehteshami, Anoushiravan (eds), The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (London: Lynne Rienner, 2002), pp. 91–114Google Scholar .

40 Ajami, Fouad, ‘The End of Pan-Arabism’, Foreign Affairs, 57 (1978), pp. 355–373CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; for an overview of this debate, cf. Dawisha, Adeed, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar .

41 Zisser, ‘Trends’.

42 Humphreys, Stephen, Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 82Google Scholar .

43 On the transformations of Arab nationalism before and after the 1950–60s cf. Valbjørn, ‘Arab Nationalism(s)’, pp. 157ff.

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45 Sirriyeh, Hussein, ‘A New Version of Pan-Arabism?’, International Relations, 15 (2000), pp. 53–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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47 It remains to be seen to what extent and in what ways the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011 will really change the traditionally prevalent authoritarianism in the region.

48 On the ‘hardening’ of state institutions in the Arab world cf. Gause, F. Gregory, ‘Sovereignty, Statecraft and Stability in the Middle East’, Journal of International Affairs, 45 (1992), pp. 441–469Google Scholar . Besides the rise of the new trans-Arab media, this ‘hardening’ has also been challenged by privatisation policies in recent decades leading to the restructuring of state power across the region. Cf. Guazzone, Laura and Pioppi, Daniela (eds), The Arab State and Neo-Liberal Globalization. The Restructuring of State Power in the Middle East (Reading: Ithaca, 2009)Google Scholar .

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50 Lynch, New Arab Public.

51 Furia, Peter A. and Lucas, Russell E., ‘Determinants of Arab Public Opinion on Foreign Relations’, International Studies Quarterly, 50 (2006), pp. 585–605CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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53 Telhami, Shibley, ‘America in Arab Eyes’, Survival, 49 (2007), pp. 107–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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55 The New Arab Cold War conception also acknowledges the importance of shifts in the global political structure for regional politics in the Middle East. In this article, however, we concentrate primarily and almost exclusively on the regional level of Middle Eastern politics. For a more substantial analysis of the global-regional interplay cf. Valbjørn, Morten, ‘The ‘New Middle East’ and the Encounter with the Global Condition’, in Stetter, Stephan (ed.), Globalisation and the Middle East, forthcomingGoogle Scholar . For a thorough analysis of the regional-domestic interplay in the New Arab Cold War context cf. Bank/Valbjørn, Jordan, pp. 313ffGoogle Scholar .

56 Fuller, ‘Hizballah-Iran Connection’.

57 Valbjørn/Bank, ‘Signs’.

58 On Iran playing ‘the Arab card’ cf. Roy, , The Politics of Chaos, p. 117Google Scholar .

59 This regime/people divide as regards the perception of Iran can also be traced in a more recent Arab opinion poll. Contrary to the hype about Arab support for a US attack on Iran based on official Arab statements about an ‘Iranian threat’, 57 per cent of the Arab public did in 2010 describe Iran's possession of nuclear weapons as a ‘more positive’ development for the Middle East region. Cf. Telhami, Shibley, 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll (5 August 2010)Google Scholar .

60 Murphy, Dan, ‘In war's dust, a new Arab ‘lion’ emerges’, Christian Science Monitor (29 August 2006)Google Scholar .

61 Rubin, Barry, ‘Arab Politics: Back to Futility’, Middle East Quarterly, 14 (2007), pp. 53–62Google Scholar .

62 The war left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and large parts of the socioeconomic infrastructure in the Gaza Strip destroyed. Cf. Human Rights Council, Human Rights in Palestine and other Occupied Territories. Report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (15 September 2009)Google Scholar .

63 For the moderate-radical narrative of the Gaza War cf. Susser, Asher, ‘The War in Gaza – A View from Israel’ (RUSI.org 2009)Google Scholar . The sectarian narrative has been partly superseded by the view that Hamas fights a proxy war for Persian-Shi'i Iran, cf. Halevi, Yossi Klein and Oren, Michael B., ‘In Gaza, the Real Enemy Is Iran’, Los Angeles Times (4 January 2009)Google Scholar .

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72 See references in fn. 2.

73 This controversy is not only played out between the various IR traditions but also within these. Within Realism, it is for instance possible to find both global-centric perspectives, for example, Hansen, Birthe, Unipolarity and the Middle East (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001)Google Scholar , and regional-centric perspectives, Karsh, Efraim, ‘Cold War, post-Cold-War: does it make a difference for the Middle East?’, Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 271–291CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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75 This has been reflected in a debate on whether the Middle East is to be perceived as a region like ‘any other’ or like ‘no other’. Cf. Valbjørn, Morten, ‘Culture Blind and Culture Blinded: Images of Middle Eastern Conflicts in International Relations’, in Jung, Dietrich (ed.), The Middle East and Palestine: Global Politics and Regional Conflicts (New York: Palgrave, 2004), pp. 39–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

76 For an example of how a growing attention to the regional level does not necessarily imply a concern for non-state actors and of how this may result in a neglect of distinct regional features, cf. Buzan/Wæver, Regions and Powers.

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78 Buzan, Barry, ‘The English School: an underexploited resource in IR’, Review of International Studies, 27 (2001), pp. 471–488CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Buzan, Barry, From International to World Society – English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar ; Buzan, Barry and Gonzalez-Pelaez, Ana (eds), International Society and the Middle East – English School Theory at the Regional Level (New York: Palgrave, 2009)Google Scholar .

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80 Krasner, Stephen, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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