If the pathologies of international relations (described in Chapter 3), especially those that derive from the nature of the international system, are not remedied, effective international cooperation to address climate change much more effectively will be elusive. If the pathologies of national politics (described in Chapters 4–6), especially narrow and short-term conceptions by states of their interests, are not modified to better comprehend the collective interest in mitigating the climate crisis for the benefit of people around the world, other attempts to govern the problem will be insufficient. If pathologies of human nature (described in Chapter 7), particularly overconsumption, continue to manifest themselves in the developed countries and spread metastatically to the developing countries, greenhouse gas pollution will be extraordinarily difficult, and probably impossible, to bring down to the degree, and with the speed, that is needed to avoid or at least mitigate dangerous climate change. This chapter conducts some diagnoses of the pathologies and explores some potential therapies for climate governance.

This chapter explores the pathologies of human nature. It describes why human population matters for climate governance, especially insofar as it is associated with voluntary material consumption. Consumption almost invariably involves the direct or indirect use of energy, which globally still comes disproportionately from fossil fuels and thereby contributes to greenhouse gas pollution. This means that, while the size of the human population matters greatly for climate change, what matters even more is how many people are consuming more than necessary to meet their needs. This chapter also describes some of the individual, social and economic forces that stimulate people’s consumption behaviors. One of the contemporary pathologies of human nature is increasing materialism and overconsumption. Finally, the chapter highlights how the impact of human nature on climate change and its governance is being exacerbated enormously as more people around the world obtain the economic resources to consume much like people of the developed world. The globalization of consumption is a growing force that has made effective climate governance extraordinarily difficult.

Having made the empirical case for the utility of the hegemonic strategy model in explicating regional order since the end of the First World War, this concluding chapter draws out some of the book’s broader theoretical implications and the questions it raises for understanding trajectories of change in the Middle East.

This introductory chapter lays out the conceptual framework and main argument of the book. It begins by critiquing some existing approaches to understanding Middle Eastern regional order before explicating the concepts of competitive support-seeking and ideological externalisation. An understanding of these principles requires a broader and deeper conception of the state and its ideological apparatus than that normally employed in IR. The chapter advances such a concept, drawing in particular on the work of Marxist theorists Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser. The final parts of the chapter provide an overview of how Middle Eastern states have contributed to the formation of regional order since the end of the First World War.

This chapter examines three intersecting dynamics underpinning regional order during the 1990s. The first dynamic centres on the Gulf. The chapter examines Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent divergence between Iranian and Iraqi hegemonic strategies, as well as Saudi Arabia’s efforts to preserve its primacy in the face of a moderating Iran and rising domestic opposition. The second dynamic concerns the rise of Islamist, including jihadist, opposition movements as by-products of renewed neoliberalisation and growing disillusionment with the New World Order. The chapter discusses the rise of Islamist opposition with a particular focus on Egypt. The final key regional dynamic was the Arab-Israeli peace process, and the chapter discusses the ways in which the ‘dualistic’ foreign policies of Syria and Israel reflected their broader hegemonic strategies.

This book is for readers who are frustrated with the chronically slow action by governments and other actors to stem climate-changing pollution and to deal effectively with its manifestations and future consequences. Much as a physician diagnosing a patient with multiple diseases would aim to treat the most life-threatening pathologies before moving on to lesser problems, the focus here is on the most important pathologies of climate governance – those that are vital to understanding and identifying therapies and remedies. (Much of climate governance up to now has focused on many significant but lesser pathologies.) A few of the remedies for climate governance that are proposed here may at first appear to border on the idealistic. However, they are practicable because they are premised on promoting the interests of the actors involved. They will not harm the interests of states or their citizens; to the contrary, they will promote their long-term security and well-being. Promotion of self-interest is not the only thing that motivates governments, corporations or individuals to do the right thing. But it helps.

A picture that emerges is one of national interests being perceived, for reasons arising almost exclusively from national politics, in ways that effectively discount the threat of climate change. Climate change has been on the national agenda for decades, but national politics has repeatedly prevented it from being interpreted as a vital national interest by most national governments. Most countries still perceive the risk of acting to address climate effectively as being a threat to their economies, or at least to powerful economic actors. This does not necessarily cause them to ignore climate change, but it does result, at best, in watered-down climate policies. A question is whether this picture of national politics reveals widespread pathologies of climate governance in developed countries. This chapter aims to start answering this question by looking at the governance of climate change in the European Union, Russia, Australia, Canada and Japan. This gives a picture of how pathologies of national politics influence climate governance globally. Climate change is perceived to be a national interest to the extent that national politics determine it to be so.

The analysis of this chapter first reflects upon the structural impact of the Cold War on Middle Eastern state hegemonic strategies, including Western allies Israel, Iran and Turkey. It then discusses the impact of the revolution of 1952 on Egypt’s foreign policy of Arab neutralism. The chapter proceeds to trace the rise of the Ba’th Party in Syria, and in particular its ‘ideological co-dependency’ with Egypt, and provides an explanation for the formation and collapse of the United Arab Republic. It examines the roots of Egypt’s rivalry with Iraq between 1958 and 1963 and discusses the ideological co-dependency that formed between Nasser’s Egypt and Iraqi Nasserists and Ba’thists.

The climate crisis – the worsening climate crisis described in Chapter 2 – and the failure of governments and other actors to govern it effectively are very largely a consequence of the pathologies of international relations, national politics and human nature described in Chapters 3–7. These interacting, overlapping and self-reinforcing pathologies are extraordinarily persistent because they have deep historical, institutional and psychosocial roots. What is more, they are premised on anachronistic assumptions and perceptions of the interests of the actors whose behaviors cause and exacerbate the climate crisis, and whose changed behaviors are needed to mitigate climate change. As such, alleviating the pathologies of climate governance requires a variety of prescriptions, as considered and outlined in Chapters 8 and 9. The prescriptions point to the types of policies and approaches to climate governance that will be required. This chapter outlines what some of those policies might look like and considers the potential prospects for climate governance going forward.

This chapter explores evolving regional dynamics first through an examination of the relationship between Iran’s revolution and its foreign policy. It proceeds to analyse the Islamic Republic’s efforts to export revolution and the underpinnings of Iran’s burgeoning alignment with Syria. The second half of the chapter focusses on the other Arab states’ efforts to contain the revolution, including through manipulating state–society relations, before moving on to examine the role of the anti-Soviet ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan in the hegemonic strategies of regional states.

This chapter describes the basic features and lasting influence on climate governance of the international system of states. When the problem of climate change became apparent, countries responded to it through diplomacy leading to international agreements for collective action. This chapter describes major aspects of this process. It summarizes how countries have negotiated a regime of international agreements and institutions intended to address climate change collectively and individually. A quarter-century was devoted to top-down measures – internationally agreed conventions and protocols setting out allowable greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries. More recently, the focus has been on bottom-up measures – nationally determined contributions to wider global efforts to govern climate change. While these efforts have resulted in a wide array of actions around the world to address climate change, they also demonstrate concretely the ways in which the international system, and the countries operating within it, have precluded aggressive collective action.

This chapter identifies a number of prescriptions for climate governance that could, alongside other actions being taken worldwide, mitigate the climate crisis. Success in this regard would entail dramatic and quite rapid declines in greenhouse gas pollution globally and successful adaptation to the impacts arising from past pollution. These outcomes would engender greater protection of human interests and substantial reductions in the many injustices arising from climate change, all while enhancing environmental sustainability in the long term. The prescriptions outlined here are intended to address corresponding governance pathologies described in Chapters 3–7. Before these prescriptions can be applied in practice, much more explication would be required. Thus, they are intended to illustrate the kinds of steps that will be required to make climate governance much more effective. All of these prescriptions for climate governance are aspirations: they are proposals for action that will have practical significance for the climate crisis only if they are taken seriously.