The China–India rivalry could be the key to global stability in the coming decades even though this may not be apparent at first. In Asia, the hotspots of Korea, Taiwan, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea tend to receive more attention, while the China–India militarized disputes are perceived as the backwaters of the regional theater. However, a Sino-Indian confrontation – whether on land in the Himalayas or in maritime realm in the Indian Ocean – may very well be the trigger that leads to a systemic war involving the United States. The China–India rivalry for power and influence at the regional level in Asia is in the process of fusing with the US–China rivalry in Asia and consequently at the global level. Given that the Sino-Indian spatial contest has intensified in recent years, the probability of escalation in the Himalayas is a distinct possibility. In fact, the presence of the more consequential positional dimension of the Sino-Indian rivalry suggests that there would still be a strong Sino-Indian rivalry even if the spatial dimension were to disappear. The Sino-Indian rivalry is now a part of the larger mosaic of regional and global power competition.

This chapter traces the formation of Middle Eastern regional order from the end of the First World War until the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. It first analyses the role of external powers and forces in shaping the political orders and foreign policies of the Middle East’s emergent pivotal powers. The chapter then discusses the pro-Western foreign policy orientation of Turkey, a relatively ‘hegemonic’ and strategically located state. It examines the role of Arab nationalism in the hegemonic strategies of Britain’s Arab client states, before analysing the more isolationist regional policy of Saudi Arabia – which counterintuitively had much in common with Turkey during this period. The final section of the chapter discusses Iran’s seldom remarked-upon embrace of Arab nationalism during the 1940s and early 1950s.

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.