A New Westphalian Framework for the Middle East

Isabelle McRae is Development Consultant at the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge. Brendan Simms is Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge.

The intractability of conflicts in the Middle East today is evident. The brutal war rages in Gaza, the Red Sea becomes a new hot zone, Türkiye pursues ongoing incursions into Iraq and Syria, and Russian interests continue to bolster Iran, Syria, and their proxies. Extremism threatens to make a comeback, and the refracted trauma of current conflicts make its resurgence a matter of time. Theories of isolationism and international security do not seem to make sense anymore.

We sit at roundtables of regional politicians, diplomats, and practitioners and debate what the focus should be: should it be a long-term solution or a short-term stabilization? How to negotiate such rooted and interconnected problems and guarantee peace? And indeed, who should be responsible? Is it the State, the people, the elites, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the United Nations, Religious authorities? Is there a big enough table for everyone to sit? Who should be invited to this table and who does the inviting?

“The historical impunity of some states shows that the absolute belief in sovereignty is not enough to ensure their own safety”

These are questions on many people’s minds in the Middle East and outside of it. There are many different opinions and today, in 2024, many of them seem more irreconcilable than ever. No matter where one’s allegiances lie, it seems clear that the destabilizing context we find ourselves in calls for a new regional solution. Although innovative voices are often drowned out by anger, those voices do exist. And they raise the question: is there a different way to think about peace that would help us address and resolve conflict in the Middle East?

This article presents a new and different framework for addressing this question. The Westphalia for the Middle East Project at the Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics is a small contribution to thinking differently about peacebuilding and international relations theory. Taking a historically rooted approach to conflict management, the project seeks to build and test new (or rather, very old) ways of approaching peace negotiations in a comprehensive, rather than piecemeal way. As a growing initiative, this article highlights the thinking behind the project, its aim, and proponents. It also explores the factors that make up the Westphalian framework for peace and draws on contemporary examples for their application in the Middle East.

 

The Need for Thinking Differently

Conflict in the Middle East presents itself as an enduring, extensive, and deeply entrenched phenomenon stemming from historical dynamics among various states, ethnicities, and sectarian groups. Its complexity and diversity reflect not only the remnants of Western imperialism but also the indigenous imperial legacies of the Ottoman and Iranian empires, which vied for dominance over centuries, leaving their legacies susceptible to destabilizing crises. These tensions, rooted in history, continue to the present day despite periods of latency. In recent years, many have been reignited, exacerbating existing grievances.

Examining the deeper historical context, current conflicts in the Middle East can be linked to significant disruptive events in regional history. The first such event was the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, which toppled the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and established an Islamic Republic openly hostile to the West. This revolution upset the established power balance, introducing revolutionary Islam into an already volatile environment, notably unsettling Sunni Arab states like Iraq. The ensuing Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988—at the time the longest conventional conflict since World War II—had far-reaching repercussions across the region.

In the new millennium, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent ousting of Saddam Hussein became a major disruptive event, further complicating an already unstable Middle East. This invasion added layers of disruption to a region that had yet to recover from the tumults of the 1980s, amplifying existing tensions and reshaping regional dynamics.

Soon thereafter, the Arab Spring’s popular uprisings pushed back against long-held hierarchies in the region and resettled constellations of power into new shapes. Hegemonies were contested and some toppled. The Assad regime’s response carried Syria into a war which has drawn in close and distant powers with contesting aims and revanchist aspirations. The United States’ abortive strikes on Syria in 2013—designed to take out Assad whilst he was barrel bombing his own civilians—were ineffective, indeed marking a turn away from a U.S. that wanted to get involved in other Middle Eastern conflicts. The way the U.S. and the UK stood down, and not just by themselves but also as allies in the region, paved the way for the subsequent Iranian entry into the Syrian theatre, as well as Russia’s intervention and its new alliance with Iran.

In recent years, we have also seen the precarity of diplomatic efforts. The collapse of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iran nuclear deal, indicated how multilateral efforts could be undermined through bad faith. The failure of the Turkish-Kurdish peace process in 2015 was another great disappointment. Meanwhile, the erosion of the GCC’s trust in American security guarantees, the emergence of a new and transformative leadership in Saudi Arabia, assertive and ambitious leaderships elsewhere in the GCC, and the Abraham Accords signaled recent steps towards at least temporary rapprochement between previously estranged or actively hostile regional actors. Examples include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Iran, Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen.

In the midst of this instability, we see new geopolitical alliances forming. The parallel emergence of China as a hugely significant player in trade and investment should be noted. Its economic interests translate into security terms as well, although China has been resistant to taking hard stances to back up its rhetoric.

Then there are developments of the war in Gaza that began with Hamas’s attacks of October 7th, 2023, and the broader implications of any failure to resolve this and other disruptive conflicts. What happened on October 7th, and the disastrous war that has erupted since, is a moment of clarity about the way in which we cannot now separate out different sorts of conflicts wherever they are taking place. It raises the salience of security guarantors, of transnational support, and political consequences. It underscores regional and extra-regional actors, historic and accelerated time-scales, and destructive and constructive sovereignty, indicating that the relative balances of power are changing. Our old framings of security and isolation do not apply anymore. That is one of the great lessons of the last months, and it is a lesson we should have learned a long time ago.

 

Lessons Learned

So how do we think about resolving conflict differently? In many ways it is clear that our way of thinking about state sovereignty precludes creativity in peace negotiations and conflict resolution. Ongoing conflicts are complex, interwoven with state and non-state actors, the interests of immediate neighbors, proxies, and distant allies and enemies, and diverse sectarian and ideological motivations. Yet many of the tools we use for resolution are dated, too narrow and precarious. They fail, often, to build the mutual trust and multilateral consensus needed to adjudicate and reduce violence.

Classical international relations theory tells us that states are the end-all-be-all and national sovereignty is the epitome of the world order. Decades of IR theory have posited that Westphalia was the start of the European state system. The textbook idea is that states are exclusively sovereign and unburdened by either the right to protect and guarantee or engage in supranational judicial practice. Yet historians know that this is contentious, and anyone with a light reading of current affairs would also recognize that gulf between theory and practice.

Michael Axworthy, Patrick Milton, and Brendan Simms’s 2018 publication, Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East, laid the foundation for this project of the same name. Axworthy, a British historian and practitioner with deep regional expertise in Iran, argued against the common view that Westphalia created a system of equal, sovereign states that were immune from intervention in their domestic affairs. Conflict management, harkening back to the initial Peace of Westphalia, highlights that a peace settlement must involve distinct actors, external guarantors, and enforceable judicial mechanisms. Only in this way can new norms towards peace be constructed and maintained. They drew parallels from this reading of history that offered us a new template for thinking about peace.

Thus, a few scholars at Cambridge, and a growing network of practitioners, have come round to the idea that history might offer us more expansive ways of thinking about geopolitics and international relations. The Westphalia for the Middle East project was founded at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Geopolitics on the back of the abovementioned publication. It was previously run in collaboration with the Berlin-based Körber Foundation and the German Foreign Office. The project has developed by bringing European historians and Middle East scholars and practitioners together. The project is now led by Sir John Jenkins, former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, and Syria; and Professor Ali Ansari, an expert on the modern Middle East with special emphasis on Iranian studies.

The project is premised on the idea that history has given us more varied options for thinking about conflict management than we give it credit. It is inspired by the idea of the Westphalian peace process in seventeenth-century Europe, which brought together clashing interests of all kinds and convinced them to sign up to guarantee each other’s peace in a war-ravaged and highly sectarian Europe. The Westphalian settlement of 1648, and its subsequent application and adaptation over the next 250 years of European history, provides a prism through which to consider possible solutions to what seems like endemic conflict. Certainly, the Peace of Westphalia emerged out of a specifically European historical trajectory and a particular set of political, legal, and religious sociologies. The situation is different but equally context-specific in the MENA region, involving distinct trajectories. To fully grasp the complexities involved requires a deep understanding of the region’s history and the implications of intersecting crises.

In the words of Ansari, the project’s co-lead, “Westphalia is a metaphor as well as an historical experience.” The project “seeks to draw lessons and themes from an earlier period when many of the assumptions of International Relations had yet to be established and when Europe was itself a complex tapestry of competing sovereignties, both state and non-state, secular and sectarian.” It recognizes the importance of strategically involving national elites, militant groups, and other key social actors.

Westphalia for the Middle East prompts us to question, in seeking to resolve conflicts and build peace and consensus, whether we need to change our framework to something more grounded in the reality of contesting interests. The Westphalian foundational idea laid the emergence of international law. Throughout the twentieth century, this idea became normative. Now it is up for debate again. Sir John Jenkins, an esteemed diplomat in the Middle East and the project’s new Director, underscored that in his long career, there were many lessons identified, but far fewer lessons learned. This project is a way to bring both those lessons to the table and hash out a better and more creative way of learning them.

The project’s unique approach has included bringing together different groups of thinkers and practitioners that normally do not enter into dialogue with each other, in order to encourage innovative, lateral and counter-intuitive thinking on peacemaking in the Middle East. These have included political and security practitioners, religious leaders, and historians of both Europe and the Middle East. The project provides a forum for these diverse parties to test their assumptions about the MENA region, particularly the Gulf (on both the Arab and Iranian sides), to acquire a more informed and rich comparative understanding of future trends around inter- or intra-state conflict or competition, and apply this knowledge in their respective policy areas. It furthers these aims through workshops, scenarios, roundtables, and published research in the Middle East, UK, and Europe.

 

A Framework Between Security and Justice

Looking closely at the Peace for Westphalia, we find that it is made up of components and methods which kept states and leaders in check, fostered concessions and built partnerships, ultimately developing new norms of peace. The project has identified seven such components for conflict management, based on our reading of history and practice, which made up the Westphalian framework and can be applied in our present context. 

Multilateralism. Negotiations are lengthy, complex, multi-track and multilateral. All primary regional actors must come together. Trust is not a given. The relationships between key interlocutors must be built over time, establishing legitimacy and trust in the process. Effective settlements require putting thought into who the interlocutors are so that these relationships can be durable. They must be willing to think creatively and break new diplomatic ground together. 

Recent returns to conflict have shown us that one cannot have justice without guaranteeing the other’s security, and one cannot have security without guaranteeing justice. The historical impunity of some states shows that the absolute belief in sovereignty is not enough to ensure their own safety, and indeed, that that security is contingent on others.

Pragmatism. Negotiations can and arguably should take place concurrently with the conflict in question. A ceasefire or cessation in hostilities is not a precondition for initiating peace talks. Negotiations can begin and continue as fighting continues and will be invariably affected by the direction of conflict. Insisting on a cessation of violence is in many ways impracticable, because without the normative change provoked through negotiation, impetus to cease fighting will not easily be in the self-interest of relevant participants.

Mutual Trust. A wide range of intersecting interests must be incorporated and accommodated. Effective settlements require parties to develop a degree of mutual trust. Participants must develop a sense of shared purpose toward lasting peace. Negotiations over time must create a prejudice towards peace, while the parties commit to foster such norms in their own communities.

Here transparency about security is important. The tension implicit in negotiation is due in great part to conflicting stances on security. Therefore, a clear understanding of these issues from all sides is crucial to build trust and ensure good faith in the process.

Inclusivity. Negotiations must include both state and non-state actors and interests—secular and sectarian. Who is included would naturally be a matter of debate. In thinking about contemporary negotiations in the Middle East, we should include various militias, including notably Hezbollah as well as religious and ethnic minorities such as the Yazidis and Kurds. Ruling and elite families also have an important role to play in legitimizing such peace processes.

Shared sovereignty. Mutual interests are recognized and incorporated in the framework, and shared sovereignty should be the guiding principle. The negotiation must take into consideration that rival political and territorial ideas exist in the same space and allow them to function. As one participant in the project’s recent roundtable on Gaza highlighted, “taboos can be broken” through talks.

External Guarantors. While any agreement needs to be indigenous and organic, it should be guaranteed by powers or institutions outside the region. A Westphalian system recognizes the need for people to be protected from their own rulers through external deterrence from time to time. Sovereignty is not independent, it is mutual. Indeed, history would indicate that if states or institutions claim that they will enforce red lines, and then they do not, antagonistic powers will draw conclusions and act with impunity in their own theatres.

The Westphalia project—as a judicial mechanism—underscores the necessity for limiting the sovereignty of most states or rulers in the region by providing a degree of protection to citizens against their own rulers, and giving citizens the right to appeal to a higher legal authority.

The Middle East has no preexisting supra-state judicial structure. However, the P5+1 and the United Nations in general may represent less problematic external guarantors. For the system to work, external bodies must have permission to adjudicate competing claims and keep states in check from self-destructing or destroying others. As such, the UN as an institution does have an international courts system and conflict-resolution mechanisms that could be adapted to this purpose, although it currently lacks enforcement mechanisms.

Patience. We need to think strategically and over the long term. The Westphalian framework seeks to address the day after, and also make provisions for the many days which will come after that. Peace will only last if external guarantors collectively enforce respect among states for their people’s basic rights of religion, property, and due process.

Taken together, the Westphalia for the Middle East project holds these seven factors as the key ingredients for effective peace negotiations. Yes, they are unorthodox. Yes, they require new levels of trust in a distrustful world. Yes, they subsume the primacy of the state to external guarantors and inclusive multilateralism. But no, they are not unprecedented. Arguably, that should give one cause for hope. Because not only can we learn the lessons from history, but we can also learn that in times of considerable confusion and conflict in the past, pursuing other options led to different outcomes. The project advocates that it is time to test out such different ways of approaching conflict and settlement and explore different outcomes in the present.

 

A Final Word

“What we can learn from Westphalia is that those who seek peace cannot expect to find the full truth, clarity and justice all at once,” said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in his speech on the project in 2016. For settlement to be possible, everyone had to make concessions. They had to “weigh up their interests, and accept painful processes to pave the way for peace. In any war or civil war there are always multiple truths, as told by the various parties to the conflict. That is as true now as it was then.” Westphalia teaches us that instead of seeking one single truth, the focus must be on other, procedural matters. The interests pursued by the parties must be used as tools to resolve the central conflict.

In the Westphalia for the Middle East project, we do not expect magical thinking to suddenly solve all the problems in the Middle East. We do not pretend that our humble initiative will be the guiding principle behind an inclusive regional settlement like the Peace of Westphalia, or that we will succeed tomorrow in bringing together all the relevant actors from a small green corner of England. But we believe that this initiative can foster a forum for substantive creative thinking through conflict and the role of the state in the Middle East today and historically. And we believe that the different ways of thinking, discussing, and negotiating at the heart of the Westphalia Project can influence policy and those who do the decision-making. In that way, this is what we aspire to bring to the bigger table.

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