ABSTRACT
This chapter assumes that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a regional security complex that the Arab region forms the core of it and, on the basis of these assumptions. It proceeds to analyse the complexities of the MENA regional system and the domestic, regional, and international forces and factors which have shaped it. The chapter draws attention to the contested conditions of the rise of nation-states at the centre of the Arab region which emerged from the ashes of the last true Islamic empire. Mobility has meant that even before the demise of the Ottoman order, Arab subjects of the empire were imagining alternative futures for their peoples, often articulated in terms of territorial liberation and Arab nationalism. In the 20 years following Libya’s independence from Italy in 1951, nine new countries were born, and the Arab order expanded to encompass virtually all of the southern Mediterranean, also stretching to the western edge of the Indian Ocean.
