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Michael C. Hudson (ed.)
1999
Preface
This project took shape in the aftermath of one of the most disintegrative events in modern Arab history–the Gulf crisis and war of 1990–91. The faculty executive committee of the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies decided to organize a symposium in April 1992 to reflect not just on the immediate consequences of the war but on these other trends as well. The situation in the region continued to change dramatically. Of particular importance, the Arab–Israeli "peace process" began to unfold, with its own significant implications for Arab unity, security, coordination, and cooperation. We therefore decided to ask many of the symposium participants to revise their papers in light of these new developments and to commission some new ones. What we have tried to provide is a new assessment of Arab regional integration in its broadest sense. The assembled scholars bring to bear a variety of theoretical perspectives from political science, international relations, history, and economics. We have sought to analyze not only the Arab region as a whole, with attention to economic as well as security aspects, but also to investigate through case studies a number of subregional integrative experiments. We hope that we have exposed some of the complexities of contemporary Arab regional relationships–nearly a century after the Arab national movement began to take shape.
The views expressed are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. No particular rigor has been exercised in the transliteration of Arabic names and terms: familiar proper names (e.g., Nasser, not Abd al–Nasir) are rendered in conventional fashion, and terms generally conform to a simplified version of the system used in the International Journal of Middle East Studies.
As will be clear from the chapters to follow, the editor and several contributors owe an intellectual debt to the late Karl W. Deutsch for his work on national and regional integration. As his former student, I would like to dedicate this book to his memory.
The editor gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Maggy Zanger, publications director at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, for her many contributions; she was assisted by Martha Wenger and Blanca Madani; Dr. Ibrahim Ibrahim and Dr. Michael Simpson, co–chairs of the 1992 symposium; Vera Hudson, Vivian A. Auld, and Steve Johnson–Leva for technical assistance; my student research assistant Nadia Ziyadeh; the external evaluators engaged by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies; and the two anonymous readers of the entire manuscript for Columbia University Press, whose comments were particularly valuable.
Michael C. Hudson
June 1998
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