The Australian Strategic Policy Institute today released a new Special Report, Middle East security after Iraq by Dr Leanne Piggott.  The report considers the future of Middle East security in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.   

Dr Piggott argues that the countries of the Middle East are relative ‘new-comers’ to the international state system, and still in a process of state-formation.  Many states have made relatively little progress towards the development of good governance, a vibrant civil society, a market economy and an established middle class.  Overall, these factors have been a potent combination in breeding disaffection and a propensity for violence, which, in turn, has led many regimes to ‘over-develop’ their own coercive capacities to counter dissent. 

Events in Iraq have acted as a catalyst for many of the security challenges across the region. The conflict is generating a variety of spill-over effects for Iraq’s neighbours, including increasingly sophisticated transnational terrorism, substantial refugee flows, and aggravated sectarian tensions.  The Middle East has reached a particularly ‘unstable’ moment. 

Iran looks likely to feature prominently amongst the region’s key players, and its nuclear program makes it an issue of special concern. But the US, its regional partners, Russia, China and Turkey will also play important roles in future regional security.  

Dr Piggott believes Australia’s interests in the Middle East will be focused on the region’s two major exports: oil and jihadi-salafism terrorism.  Those interests pull us in different directions, the first towards stability in the Middle East, the second towards modernisation and political and economic reform.  Since change will only come slowly to the Middle East, Australia should  ‘…remain focused on preventing the spread of jihadi-salafism in our own region through close cooperation with neighbouring governments and their law enforcement agencies.’

‘Australia also has an interest in supporting US and international efforts to control the proliferation of WMD in the Middle East’ she said. ‘Australia has an obligation as a coalition partner to do all that is possible to ensure that Iraqi society does not collapse and degenerate into all out civil war’. 

Dr Leanne Piggott is the Deputy Director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

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