Globalization has profoundly affected the economics and politics of nations across the globe, particularly in the Middle East. The Summer 2006 issue of The Middle East Journal includes articles on globalization and on the unintended consequences of the West’s Middle East policies.

Professor Mark LeVine of the University of California at Irvine offers a thought-provoking article, “Chaos, Globalization, and the Public Sphere: Political Struggle in Iraq and Palestine.” He analyzes the effects of globalization on Palestine and Iraq, two very different case studies in which both society and the state are weak or failed.

Two articles focus on the interaction of Western economic policy with Middle East politics. Professor Hamed El-Said of Manchester Metropolitan Business School and Professor Jane Harrigan of the School of Economic Studies at the University of Manchester offer, “Globalization, International Finance and Political Islam in the Arab World.” The piece discusses how political Islamist movements have been inadvertently strengthened by Western aid policies. The second article, “The Economic Policies of Turkey’s AKP Government: Rabbits from a Hat?” by Professor Marcie Patton of Fairfield University, examines how the Turkish government’s ideological position has not prevented it from supporting IMF conditions.

Trita Parsi of the School of Advanced International Studies contributes, “Israel and the Origins of Iran’s Arab Option,” which analyzes Israeli-Iranian and Iranian-Arab relations throughout Iran’s regime changes.

The question of Saudi Arabia and nuclear proliferation is addressed by Gawdat Bahgat, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Bahgat offers an insightful survey of Saudi Arabia’s potential motives for pursuing a nuclear program, concluding that speculation that the Kingdom is doing so is unwarranted.

In the Book Review Essay, “Who’s Sorry Now?: Britain, the United States, and the Politics of the Middle East Status Quo 1945-1967,” Spencer Mawby of the University of Nottingham examines recent books on British policy in the Middle East.