Existential threats and regulating life: securitization in the contemporary Middle East

ABSTRACT

This article applies the concept of securitization to the Middle East with a focus upon the securitization of the Shi’a other. Such processes occur across time and space and are not restricted to state borders, escaping the Westphalian straitjacket. As a consequence, one must consider the construction of space and political structures across the region in order to understand the traction that such moves can find. It appears then, that in seeking to maintain short-term survival, regimes have sacrificed long-term stability, but the impacts of such moves transcend the typically linear constructed audiences within securitization moves. A key contribution of this article is to consider the extent to which audiences within the Middle East, both intended and unintended, transcend the linear audiences found within conventional processes of securitization. The article uses two case studies as a means of exploring the extent to which securitization can be applied to the Middle East. Such an approach helps us to identify the logics that are involved within the process of securitization, with consideration of the idea that we can populate a broad framework about the universal application of securitization to context specific cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Securitization
• sectarianism
• sovereignty
• Iran
• Bahrain
• Saudi Arabia
• Arab Uprisings

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Prose written by Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa in 1995. Cited in Gengler (2013).

2. Interviews with British and American officials, Manama and London, 2013.