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The Arab Spring and the Geopolitics of the Middle East: Emerging Security Threats and Revolutionary Change by A. Yossef and J. R. Cerami (review)

It is evident that it is a daunting task for the authors to present in ninety-one pages a scholarly monograph with in-depth treatment to all that is included in the title, in particular ‘Geopolitics,’ as the interplay between geography, demography and economics on one hand, and ideology, politics and foreign policy on the other hand. It is also more evident that in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)—where the authors aim is to make an assessment of the ‘revolutionary changes in politics and security’ after what has become known as the context of historical and political sociology. Mario Vassallo raises some issues concerning structural constraints and opportunities. Godfrey Baldacchino provides the outline for a typology of small islands within a global framework (although he seems to underestimate the historicity of what an ‘island’ is and how ‘insularity’ as a process is constituted by the major centres of power in relation to which an island is said to be isolated). The emphasis on historicity is given its due by Thomas Freller, who shows how a particular geopolitical conjuncture led to Malta being represented on maps, and elsewhere, as a ‘shield of Europe’ following the Ottoman siege of 1565—having previously been represented as an ‘African island’. All these three articles take ‘island’ to be a geological datum; but Gabriela Scripnic extends the meaning of island to refer to the Danube Delta and the rhetoric of isolation. Likewise, Alina Ganea extends the meaning to apply it to the Romanian diaspora and its representations. Both usages are appropriate but, since what is being discussed is marginalisation, so would the more usual image of centre-periphery relations. Once more, it is unclear what is analytically gained by choosing to see the data through the prism of ‘island’. There is some irony to a collection of articles about ‘insularity’ where many remain stand-alone pieces. The volume could really have done with a conclusion that reviews how the parts add up to a whole greater than their sum.