Middle east: Instability and crisis of the regional order

Abstract

In the last two decades, the security situation and political stability in the Middle East has significantly worsened, in contrast with its strategic importance as the global economy's energy engine. This article offers a general interpretative perspective to help explain this contradictory evolution from the analysis of a set of exogenous and endogenous factors that have exerted a fundamental, although not limiting, effect on the regional order since the end of the last century, and to elucidate the causes of the Middle East's apparent geopolitical chaos at the dawn of this century.