Geostrategic Alliances in the Eastern Mediterranean and MENA by Marketos, Thrassy; Mazzucchi, Nicolas; Alexopoulos, Thomas A.;

Long description:

This book examines the geostrategic alliances in the Eastern Mediterranean and MENA regions. It analyzes how these alliances transcend stereotyped political and cultural prototypes throughout western Eurasia as the outcome of shifting regional power balances. The authors explain how this development has its foundation mostly in the United States' ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy, resulting in a lower priority ranking of the Middle East for Washington, but also in the emergence of China’s economic incursion on the wider region.

The book looks into and presents different reasons for this paradigm shift: First and foremost, the historical ambitions and conflicting assertions of sovereignty in the region. Then, competition over control of hydrocarbons reserves and pipeline politics, civil wars, and political chaos in certain littoral states. US retrenchment and Russia’s naval base expansion in Syria, as well as Turkish expansion in Libya, NATO allies divisions and, not to reckon with, waves of migration and refugees. Yet some internal and external factors could lead to some changes in these trends, including the need to engage in energy transitions due to climate change consequences in the region.

Therefore, this book is a must-read for scholars, students, policy-makers, and practitioners interested in a better understanding of the political development in the Eastern Mediterranean and MENA regions, as well as of International Relations in general.

Table of Contents:

Part I. Times of Change: The Energy Perspective of Things.- Chapter 1. Energy and the International System.- Chapter 2. The Economics of Energy: Restrictions Not to Be Overtaken.- Chapter 3. The Eastern Mediterranean and Mena Regions: Revisionist Areas in the International System?.- Chapter 4. The Aftermath of the New Energy Mandate.- PART IΙ. Energy Dynamics and Transitions in MENA and Eastern Mediterranean: From Hydrocarbons to Electricity.- Chapter 5. Energy Resources in Eastern Mediterranean and MENA.- Chapter 6. From Resources to Final Customers, The Transportation Issue.- Chapter 7. Energy Transitions in EM and MENA Regions, Towards New Alliances?.- PART IΙI. Eastern Mediterranean Systemic International Regionalism in Process.- Chapter 8. Eastern Mediterranean Geopolitical Conception.- Chapter 9. Turkey Extroventism.- Chapter 10. Eastern Mediterranean Geopolitical Sub-System.- Chapter 11. Eastern Mediterranean Regionalism Quest.- Chapter 12. Regional and Global Actors’ Involvement in the EM-MENA region.- Chapter 13. Erdogan, Sisi and The Fate of Egyptian-Turkish Relations.- Chapter 14. The New ‘Great Game’.- Chapter 15. Two Opposing Geostrategic Blocks for the Prize of Euro-Africa Trans-Mediterranean Trade and Energy Connection.- Chapter 16. Greek Foreign Policy Changing Geometry and The Re-definition of the West.- Chapter 17. Afterword.