ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the entry, in the 1990s, into the world stage of the ‘Euro-Mediterranean’ as a subject of security in counter-distinction to the ‘Middle East’. Where the latter prioritized insecurities as experienced by the United States and its local allies, the former was designed to address insecurities identified by the European Union. What is more, the former constituted a short-lived attempt to re-cast the ‘Euro-Mediterranean’ as a region and a security community. The significance of tracing the emergence and evolution of the spatial constructs such as the ‘Euro-Mediterranean’ and the ‘Middle East’ is not about the so-called ‘artificiality’ of ‘regions’. For all regions are ‘artificial’. Rather, the chapter seeks to highlight insecurities that shape the construction of regions, and practices that have been shaped in line with these spatial constructs. Studying the ‘Mediterranean’, ‘Arab world’ or the ‘Middle East’ is no innocent task. For, as ‘our’ spatial constructs are shaped as part of the attempt to respond to ‘our’ insecurities ‘in here’ while insecuring ‘others’ ‘out there’. Accordingly, defining regions and studying regional security in X or Y ‘region’ is a political act worthy of critical scrutiny.
