Amid Revolutions and Wars: Geopolitics of The Middle East and North Africa, 1951-2011

Level: Undergraduate, Graduate

Division: The New School for Public Engagement

School: Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy

Department: Milano General Curriculum

Course Number: NINT 5383

Course Format: Lecture

Location: NYC campus

Permission Required: No

Topics:

• International Affairs
• Conflict & Security
• Governance

Description:
Since WWII, the people of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have struggled through revolutions and wars, and have accomplished internal class, economic, political and cultural transformations. This has reshaped the geopolitical logic and security interests of MENA states and their relationships with the US, Russia, Europe, China and other foreign powers. We study several selected states across four broad periods, examining geostrategy driven by both MENA-regional factors and/or by the interests of external powers. Topics examined include: Iran's oil nationalization and the US-British coup against Mossadeq, Nasser's pan-Arab movement, the Suez Crisis, the Algerian Revolution, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, late Cold War, 1973 October War and Arab oil embargo, OPEC nationalizations, Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, the emergence of Globalism and U.S. rise to sole hyper-power status, the 1991 Gulf War, the anti-jihadist civil war in Algeria, the post-9/11 US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2006 Iraq Study Group and "surge," the U.S. "nuclear" crises with Iran, Palestinian Intifadas and Israeli-Lebanese wars, and the more current mass upheavals against autocratic regimes for political liberty and economic reform. The ramifications of these movements on the geo-strategic tensions and conflicts of the region, especially as concerns MENA OPEC states and oil and natural gas resources, and as the US and European powers and China are drawn in in new ways (viz. Libya), will be examined as they unfold.