Foreign Policy after Tahrir Revolution: (Re)-Defining the Role of Egypt in the Middle East.

• Author: Senel, Muzaffer
• Position: Book review

Foreign Policy after Tahrir Revolution: (Re)-Defining the Role of Egypt in the Middle East

By Mehmet Ozkan

Saarbrucken: Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011, 144 pages, ISBN 9783845404998.

The continuities, changes, ruptures, and transformation of Egyptian foreign policy have been analyzed from different angles. The changes in Egyptian foreign policy, in line with the Arab Spring and its transformative forces, were important for analysts, practitioners, and scholars working on both foreign policy and International Relations theory. Since the end of the Cold War, academia has become more receptive to the issues of the Middle East. However, in the last decade most work on the Middle East have revolved around a limited number of themes: ethnic/religious-based violence, the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Iranian nuclear issue, and problems related to Israel. Despite the prolific amount of literature on the foreign policies of Arab Middle Eastern countries, many of these works lack a theoretical analysis of the geostrategic positioning of these countries within the dynamics of international political power. Geostrategic positioning helps measure the possible weight of a country within the existing international and regional system, which leads to the analysis of what role a country can play in international politics. Mehmet Ozkan's book is a timely addition to this literature with its in-depth analytical historical analysis and theoretical angle.

Following the introduction, the book consists of three chapters. The first chapter sets the theoretical framework by focusing on the concept of pivotal middle power and its relations to constructivism. The second chapter provides analytical historical perspectives on Egypt's foreign policy since the 1930s, especially from the prism of Egypt's stance on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. The third chapter focuses on why and how Egypt lost its credibility and attraction in the minds and eyes of the Middle Eastern countries. Ozkan explains the factors that have contributed to the limits and opportunities, which have led to the different formulations and transformations of Egyptian foreign policy over the years. His periodization of Egypt's foreign policy is in line with Cairo's overall role in the Middle East. The author ties it into the Palestinian issue, frames this important issue as a conceptual basis of the book. He defines the concept of pivotal middle power through constructivism and he...