The place of the Middle East in bipolar international politics was quite clear: it represented a pivot between the European front and the Asian area, a region with huge resources whose control was perceived as vital by the United States and other Western powers. This strategic position was obviously dramatically altered by the change in the international system which took place between 1989 and 1991 (i.e., from the collapse of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe to the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself), making it difficult to gain a clear picture of its current position in the inter-national system. Moreover, it is difficult to distinguish between the effects of the "end of the Cold War," those of the crisis and war in the Gulf, and those of the eventual splitting up of the Soviet Union, closely interrelated events that took place in rapid succession.
A further difficulty is provided by the not easily definable structure of the international system. The hypothesis of unipolarity, which was fashionable during and immediately after the Second Gulf War, has proven to be of limited meaning with the decline of the United States as an economic power even while remaining the biggest military power. The feared or desired "New World Order" has not emerged, partly because of the unwillingness of the US to use its ground forces in crisis situations, and its unwillingness or inability to undertake the risks which are unavoidable if one wants to lead the governance of the international system.
Rather, transnational interdependence, different forms of power, and complexity in the international system make definitions of power and interest, and consequent forecasts, far less reliable than in the past. One can expect that we will face a combination of the increasing importance of international institutions together with an interaction of balances of different types of power, often split into sub-systems. In this world of differentiated and sometimes fragmented powers, the conflictual heterogeneity of values, i.e., the so-called "clash of civilizations," will make the evaluation and forecast of crises and conflicts even more difficult.
Regionalization of the international system is a useful hypothesis here. Fragmentation with respect to the globalization of security structures which characterized the Cold War,3 is postulated, and the appearance of a "central coalition" of states, formed by the Atlantic Community and Japan, among which there are no threat perceptions. Regional subsystems such as the Middle East are only partially connected to this central region: unlike during the Cold War, the security perceptions of the main actors of the international system do not affect unambiguously the patterns of security and conflict in peripheral subsystems.
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