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| Volume XIV, Spring 2007, Number 1 |
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ABSTRACT
NATO in the Gulf: Who Is Doing a Favor for Whom?
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| Matteo Legrenzi |
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Dr. Legrenzi is a lecturer and manager of the Middle East Program at Cranfield University, the UK Defense Academy
This article explores the current and future role of NATO in enacting Security Sector Reform (SSR) in the Gulf through the three-year-old Istanbul Cooperation Initiative. The article is grounded in recent scholarship on military reform, democratization and collective security. Enough time has elapsed since the inauguration of the initiative that an initial balance sheet can be drawn. The article aims at starting to fill the gap between theoretical literature elaborated by authors who have focused on other regions of the world and the reality of SSR experiments in the Gulf and the Broader Middle East. Further, from a policy point of view, it explores the possibility of NATO's playing a role in any field of SSR in the Gulf and the Broader Middle East. The main argument is that the new initiative is bound to lay bare a significant gap between policy commitment and actual implementation for a host of political, military and historical reasons.
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