ABSTRACT
The greater Middle East is arguably the most politically and militarily volatile region of the world. The region is periodically swept with convulsions of war. The fallout from these conflicts affects the security of major states – Russia, China, and the United States – that lie outside the region. As Robert Harkavy observes of the greater Middle East, it
occupies a crucial position with respect to some of the major issue areas of the contemporary era. Those issue areas are energy sources and availability; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems; and the dangerous pairings involving Israel and the Arabs, Iran and Iraq, and India and Pakistan. Surely, this region in its aggregate has come to be viewed by the contending and aspiring world powers – the United States, Russia, a united Europe, China – as a strategic prize, maybe the strategic prize.1
