CONFIDENCE-BUILDING MEASURES IN MIDDLE EASTERN CONFLICTS: AN EGYPTIAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The concepts of Confidence-Building Measures CBMs and their variants, Confidence and Security-Building Measures CSBMs have been increasingly suggested in the post-Cold War era as the main mechanisms of conflict resolution and peace building, not only in the Middle East, but also in virtually all regions. Today, CBMs have become an almost standard acronym in any discourse on conflict resolution all over the world. This has been a result of two major factors: i The positive achievements of CBMs in the European context. They succeeded in stabilising the East-West détente agreements in the 1970s and helped to avert the outbreak of a third world war. Having succeeded in Europe, it is suggested CBMs and CSBMs could succeed everywhere else; ii The notion of cross-regional learning, by which is meant drawing inferences from the successful experiences in one region and applying them to other regions.