Why has the Middle East experienced so many violent conflicts in the post-WWII era?  Are these conflicts unique?  What future do efforts to end political violence face?  In this course, we will explore the Middle Eastern record in light of what political scientists know about war and peace.  While much attention focuses on the Arab-Israeli conflict, we will examine a much broader array of regional experiences.  Although state-building and decolonization wars were important and interesting dynamics, we will focus on the latter half of the 20th century and the most recent conflicts due to time constraints.

The course will begin by focusing on two basic types of political violence: interstate wars, including interventions, and intrastate or civil wars, including revolutions and coups.  We will close by examining peace processes in the region, particularly those following the Lebanese civil war , Arab-Israeli conflict, and PKK war between PKK and Turkey.  The class is designed to familiarize you with historical reasons for some conflicts such as Iraq-Iran war , Kurdish wars in Iraq and Turkey, and modern developments in the Middle East, and to teach you techniques of analysis in political science. Ultimately, this course will help you better understand why the Middle East seems so violent, how the types of violence in the region differ, and when attempts to end such violence succeed.  You also should understand the interactions between theory and evidence, be able to apply theory to explain the dynamics of specific cases, and be able to draw on knowledge of specific cases to refine existing theories.