External Security Factors in the Most Fragile Arab Countries

Abstract

The article analyzes the issues of food, energy and military-political security in the unstable Arab states. The authors use «mirror» foreign trade statistics and reconstruct the structure of foreign trade in cereals, fuel and energy products and weapons in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Somalia to assess the strategic aspects of foreign influence on the states under consideration. The approach newly introduced by the authors permits to assess the outsider influence on the of traditional security, social stability and conditions for economic growth in a structural and dynamic context through indicators concerning trade in strategic goods.The study revealed a trend of diversification among external security provider states in all the considered components of strategic exports. This is due to the strengthening of the multipolarity of the world order and the growing role of ascending centers of power in solving the problems of unstable states, as well as the dominance of the globalization-based (liberal) rather than geopolitical vector in the world order evolution.

Acknowledgement: The work was financially supported by the National Research Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod Competitiveness Program, the project «Investigation of mechanisms affecting conditions and ensuring security in the Eurasian macro-regions».