Threat Perception and State Behaviors: A Perspective of Regional Security Complex Theory

• Main Authors: Chao-Hsien Lee, 李昭賢
• Other Authors: Mu-Min Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/00435449436133415617

博士 === 國立中興大學 === 國際政治研究所 === 104 === These years, the Middle East is not calm. Since the United States began to withdraw from Iraq, and after the Arab Spring swept the Middle East, Syria was plunged into civil war. The Sunni Islam militant group "Islamic State" (IS) has also occupied parts of the region and is expanding its influence through terror. Scholarship on the Middle East has traditionally used the balance of power or clash of civilizations theories to assess regional security threats, rarely providing an eclectic perspective that considers both material power and intangible cultural variables. In particular, such analyses have been unable to provide a clear understanding of regional security threats that emerged following the end of the Cold War. This study addresses this gap by using the "Regional Security Complex Theory", proposed by Barry Buzan and Ole Waever in 2003, which enables a regionally-centered examination of contemporary Middle Eastern security threats, taking into account both material and non-material, cultural, variables. This research focuses on the impact of political instability in Iraq and Syria and the raise of the Islamic State on the security of Saudi-Arabia, Iran and Turkey, with a view to understanding the latter’s subsequent reaction.