Diplomacy of Quasi-Alliances in the Middle East

Quasi-alliance refers to the ideation, mechanism and behavior of policy-makers to carry out security cooperation through informal political and security arrangements. As a “gray zone” between alliance and neutrality, quasi-alliance is a hidden national security statecraft. Policy-makers tend to seek a third way to strengthen security cooperation and meanwhile avert the risk of conflict.. Based on declassified archives and secondary sources, this book probes the theory and practice of quasi-alliances in the Middle East. Five cases are chosen to test the hypotheses of quasi-alliance formation, management, efficacy and termination, including Anglo-French-Israeli quasi-alliance during the Suez Canal War of 1956; US-Saudi quasi-alliance during the Johnson administration; Soviet-Egypt quasi-alliance during the Sadat administration; and Iran-Syria quasi-alliance since 1979. The research finds that alliance is a hard balancing based on legally binding treaties, while quasi-alliance is a soft balance based on politically binding agreement. The task-oriented quasi-alliance features diversity of functions, flexibility of cooperative means, intangibility of targeting, and limitation of sovereignty transfer... This book, therefore, carries importance both in terms of deepening the understanding of international relations in the Middle East, but also developing a distinctively Chinese approach to the study of international relations in general. There are elements of constructivism in the Chinese approach, yet it would be wrong to subsume it entirely within the constructivist vision. (From the foreword by Tim Niblock)