ABSTRACT
The Middle East and Persian Gulf are examples of regions facing both troubled economic conditions and unstable security affairs. The region suffers from slow growth rates and inability to compete in the world economy. Moving from the regional to the international/global level of analysis, and attempting to understand the basic dynamics of this new strategic epoch, one of the most important geostrategic phenomena of the past several years has been the extraordinary diffusion of war-making capabilities from the developed North to the developing South. Moving from the regional to the international/global level of analysis, and attempting to understand the basic dynamics of this new strategic epoch, one of the most important geostrategic phenomena of the past several years has been the extraordinary diffusion of war-making capabilities from the developed North to the developing South.
