Proxy warfare has been the signature mode of power politics in the post-uprisings Middle East. Competing regional powers have intervened in the political affairs and the civil wars of weaker states around the Middle East by supporting local allies with arms, money and media. At the heart of the post-2011 decade, active proxy wars were being waged by more than half a dozen different powers in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. In several cases, proxy war evolved over time into more direct intervention – overt intervention by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with the support of multiple partners, in Yemen; covert intervention by Egypt and the UAE in support of their struggling proxies in Libya; Turkey taking control of parts of northern Syria and sending forces into Libya. Proxy competition and interventionism could be observed in numerous other countries in the form of political parties, the media, and the cultivation of networks within regimes and militaries. Why did proxy warfare become so prevalent after 2011? What effects did this proxy warfare have? Will it prove an enduring feature of the landscape?

These questions point towards deeper assessments of the conceptualisation of structure in the regional order, the fundamentally international nature of the uprisings and their aftermath, and the nature and degree of change. More than ten years after the 2011 Arab uprisings, it would be easy to conclude that nothing of significance in the international relations of the Middle East had changed. The Trump administration's approach to the Middle East, consolidating an alliance with Israel and key Arab states against Iran, recreated that of the Bush administration in key dimensions. Trump's indifference to human rights and democracy aligned well with the preferences of those Arab regimes to restore autocratic rule. The Biden administration, for its part, came into office determined to reduce US involvement in the region in order to focus on Asia – just like the Trump and Obama administrations had done. The surface similarity between regional order in 2009 and 2020, despite the enormous upheaval of the previous decade, is indeed a striking testament to the power of structure to replicate itself.