ABSTRACT
The Middle East over the past half-century has been the most heavily militarized and war-prone region in the world. It has witnessed seven major interstate wars and many other militarized conflicts short of interstate wars. The value of armaments imported into the region since the end of the Second Gulf war runs to the high end of hundreds of billions of dollars, and military expenditures continue to account for a significant proportion of the national budgets of many states. Furthermore, the pursuit, acquisition and possession of WMD and their means of delivery has been part of the military and political landscape of the region for over four decades. In tandem with these phenomena, deterrence theory and its strategic application, which had developed in the context of the relationship and rivalry between two superpowers that were geographically distant from one another, was adopted by regional actors in the geographically constricted environment of the Middle East and adapted to serve the geopolitical and military realities in the region, primarily in the context of the Arab—Israeli conflict, but also during the First and Second Gulf Wars.
