ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 (representations) traced the trajectory of the Middle East from its invention in the late nineteenth century into the Cold War era and argued that the Middle East had its origins in British and US security thinking and practices. It also introduced an alternative that emerged during this period, that of ‘Arab Regional System’. This chapter will continue to follow the trajectory of spatial representations ‘Middle East’ and ‘Arab Regional System’. Two more representations will also be looked at, those of the ‘Euro-Med Region’ and ‘Muslim Middle East’. The latter two representations have shaped and been shaped by the European Union’s approach to security in the Mediterranean and the Islamist discourse on security, respectively. This is intended as a further illustration of the point (made in Chapter 2) that the origins of regions have had their roots in security thinking and practices of their inventors. It will further be argued that in the post-Cold War era, the competition between these four representations took place at multiple levels with non-state actors playing more active roles than they did during the Cold War.
