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relative security. At first glance, we saw one full-fledged example of hard bal-
ancing: the Iraqi strategy from 1990 to 2003. We also observed some hard bal-
ancing pursued by Libya in the beginning of the 1990s and a preponderance of
soft balancing. When examining variations in  relative security , it appears as
though the relationship with the US plays the major role: in the case of prospects
of a major confrontation (and certain defeat) with the US, the states appear to
abandon hard balancing  with the important exception of Iraq until 2003. When
Syria replaced its bandwagoning strategy with balancing in the mid-1990s, it
chose a soft version. It backed down in a series of cases when risking further
confrontation with the US. When political pressure on Libya mounted in the
1990s, it began replacing hard balancing with soft balancing. The pressure on
Iraq was substantial throughout the 1990s and even increased after 2001, when
the US included the option of  regime change in its strategy towards Iraq. Iraq,
however, took a gamble and continued its hard balancing policy and was ulti-
mately invaded.
In the third place, we should expect the three states to pursue  hard balanc-
ing strategies due to the considerable ideological distance. We expected that
ideological distance would amplify the incentive to pursue hard versions of bal-
ancing and bandwagoning. The three case countries were all ideologically
distant to the world order and the unipole; during the period of investigation,
there was no significant variation except for the case of Iraq, which saw funda-
mental changes imposed after the war in 2003. The post-2003 change in policy
in Iraq was largely promoted by the US-led coalition, and the changes in strat-
egy, ideology and relative security occurred simultaneously.
In the fourth place, the model leads us to expect strategic behaviour to be pro-
duced not only by the individual variables but, given the loss of relative power,
by the combination of relative security and relative ideology. We assumed above
that the MENA states were subjected to mixed incentives, which ought to lead
us to expect greater strategic variation than in the two other regions in this study.
Furthermore, we should expect to see a comparatively high degree of balancing
in the MENA region. This was also the case.
Finally, even minor changes in the mixed incentives should count for
changes, which was the case to some extent. Iraq, which pursued the most
coherent hard balancing strategy until 2003, was lacking in relative security as
136 The Middle East
well as power and ideology, while Libya changed strategy twice in contrast to
Iraq, Libya was relatively secure regionally, but ultimately proved sensitive to
US pressure. Syria, which changed its strategy initially but also  changed back
again later, was regionally less secure than Libya and seemed to have acted
mainly in accordance with low regional security in the case of limited US
engagement.
Conclusion
Our study asked which strategies were pursued, in the cases of Iraq, Syria and
Libya, between 1989 and 2007, and whether we could explain the choice of
strategies by means of the model presented in Chapter 2.
We discovered that the three states had pursued a variety of strategies with a
comparative prevalence of hard balancing, which is significant compared to the
two other regions. The three losing MENA states had difficulties accepting the
US-dominated post-Cold War world order and relations of strength. They were
deprived of their major ally in the regional games as well as countering the US,
and the US world order challenged their political and economic systems. Fur-
thermore, they lost bargaining power in the sense that the US did not have to act
to prevent a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. When dealing with
these challenges, the three states would have to surrender fundamental political
aims and values or attempt to counter the US pressure. They all tried the hard
way in one way or another. By 2007, however, Iraq had been forced to change
its policy. Libya had  after substantial pressure  chosen to adapt in a con-
formist manner in several respects. Syria was still fighting on, but had continu-
ously done so within limits: it had not seriously confronted the US.
Nevertheless, none of the three states had reformed their domestic systems in
accordance with the US unipolar demands but the authoritarian, Ba athist Iraqi
system was overthrown and was replaced by the Parliamentarian Republic.
The results of the empirical analysis generally matched the expectations
derived from our model. Consequently, we explain much of the strategies of the
three MENA states on the basis of realist logic and a combination of relative
power, relative security and relative ideology  including the mixed incentives.
Our findings indicate that, in the case of the MENA, the relative security vari-
able regarding the US policy was particularly important. Moreover, it would
appear as though one other factor in particular influenced the strategic choices of
the case countries: the degree of authoritarian rule. Saddam Hussein s regime in
Iraq was the most brutal of the region s authoritarian regimes; in the case of a
downfall, it could therefore anticipate revenge as well as a lack of refuge
options. This might contribute to explain why the regime clung to power and did
not abandon its policy of hard balancing, even under ultimate US pressure, in
which case it was most likely bound to lose.
Three other factors ought to be mentioned in respect to the pursuit of non-
conformist strategies. The first factor is the capability profile of the three states,
which in all cases  most notably in the Iraqi case  was characterized by a high
The Middle East 137
degree of asymmetry between the general level of capabilities and military cap-
abilities. When choosing a strategy, states must consider the means available. In
the three cases, military means was at their disposal. This possibly favoured bal-
ancing strategies, either by means of aggression, military build-up or support for
sub-state terrorist groups. The second factor was the states engagement in the
development of WMDs. Iraq had previously had a record of granting high prior-
ity to the development of WMDs, and although there was no evidence at all of a
continuation or revival of such development to be found after the 2003 war, Iraq
had pursued a policy of ambiguity until the defeat. In contrast, the Libyan
nuclear programme turned out to be more advanced than estimated when Libya
decided to give it up towards the end of 2003. The Syrian efforts are still to be
revealed, but the  threshold status (genuine or not) of the three states might
have encouraged them to choose more non-conformist strategies than otherwise
would have been the case. The third factor is the authoritarian character of the
states regimes. As Steven David has shown, authoritarian regimes tend to act
differently, even in the case of alignments and the choice of security strategies.
The regimes fear what will happen to them in the case of a new regime, making
them act differently to some extent compared to non-authoritarian elites by [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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