17. Middle East Conflicts in the 1980s

This chapter focuses on conflicts in the Middle East during the 1980s. Despite the Camp David settlement, peace remained elusive in the Middle East. An Egyptian–Israeli settlement could neither resolve the conflict between Israel and the Arab states nor bring stability and peace to the region. Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin had achieved a limited peace for Egypt. Egypt, for its part, had abandoned the myth of Arab unity between the competing states of the region and pursued national interests. However, other conflicts were taking place in the region, including those arising from the Lebanese Civil War, which added to the fundamental failure to deal with the Palestinian Question. The chapter first considers Israel’s invasion of Lebanon before discussing the Arab–Israeli conflict and the Palestinian Question, the Iran–Iraq war of 1980–8, and the accusation of the US, that Libya was a supporter of ‘international terrorism’.

China’s Economic Diplomacy Approach in the Middle East Conflicts

This study analyses China’s economic diplomacy approach in the Middle East conflicts in order to explore the following question: How does China use diplomatic means to protect and pursue commercial investments, economic assets, and economic tools, and to advance its foreign policy goals in the Middle East conflict zones? This study argues that despite its adherence to the principle of non-intervention, Beijing’s economic diplomacy has a more flexible and pragmatic interpretive approach. Chinese economic diplomacy in the Middle East uses its diplomatic resources to intervene as needed to safeguard its investments and assets, and utilises economic incentives to promote its well-defined foreign policy goals in the region’s hotspots.