ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a history of the key conflicts within the Middle East region since 1945. It illustrates that warfare has defined and shaped the region in the recent past and continues to do so today. It focuses on the Arab–Israeli conflict, but also examines other too-often forgotten regional conflicts, such as the Iran–Iraq War and the Lebanese Civil War. Whereas state-level warfare once dominated the Middle East, contemporary threats are not just the strength of states, but also their weakness; violent, non-state actors have frequently exploited regional power vacuum. Accordingly, this chapter divides regional conflict along three themes: (i) wars of external intervention; (ii) inter-state regional wars and; (iii) intra-state and asymmetric wars. In each case, it unpacks the conflict’s origins, outcomes and consequences. Overall, this chapter demonstrates that these diverse forms of warfare shared a common theme: they wrought more unintended conflict in the Middle East and also failed to achieve an actor’s goals.
