From Deterrence to Reconstruction

For a large part of the past two decades, the political and strategic discourse dominant in the Middle East was shaped around central signifiers such as “deterrence, sanctions, proxy wars, security crises, and the balance of terror.” In this draining atmosphere, states’ success or failure was measured solely by military metrics, hard strategic depth, and armament capabilities. In effect, the region’s architecture was built on a “pure security order” in which the economy was a dependent variable, serving the war machine or resilience against sanctions. However, the geopolitical earthquakes of recent years show that the global order—and, consequently, the Middle Eastern strategic chessboard—are moving from the era of “hard deterrence” to the age of “geoeconomic competition.” Rahmatollah Darijani