A Mediterranean Canon and an Israeli Prelude to Long Term Peace. JMWP No. 34.01, April 2001

Adler, Emanuel (2001) A Mediterranean Canon and an Israeli Prelude to Long Term Peace. JMWP No. 34.01, April 2001.

Abstract

[From the Introduction]. A Canon is a piece of music in which a single theme is repeatedly played. The repeated theme, which I will weave within what may otherwise seem as a disjointed talk is "pluralistic security communities," "transnational regions comprised of sovereign states whose people are integrated to the point that they maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change." Some examples of pluralistic security communities include Scandinavia, the NAFTA region, the EU, the Euro-Atlantic community and, to a lesser extent, the southern cone of Latin America and ASEAN. There is no chance whatsoever, that, in the near future, a pluralistic security community, which is based on shared culture and identity, will develop in the Middle East. Because this is where all the remaining realists in the world seem to live and act, liberal ideas about the construction of regional communities will have a hard time to penetrate and succeed. In this neck of the woods, then, political actors will continue for the foreseeable future to rely on military deterrence, and, if anything else fails, force.