Tomasz Bojnicki
Wschodnioznawstwo (Eastern Studies), Volume 16, 2022, pp. 15 - 27
https://doi.org/10.4467/20827695WSC.22.002.16751The Middle East region has played an important geopolitical and geoeconomic role throughout human history. This was due to its geographic location, which made it a kind of „bridge” in trade connecting Europe with Asia and Africa. Nowadays, one of the key aspects is the significant oil deposits located in these areas, as well as the converging geopolitical interests of regional and global powers. This has led to the region becoming one of the key geopolitical and geo-economic areas in modern international politics. Historically, the region has been dominated by states with authoritarian or monarchical regimes. In late 2010 and early 2011, however, there were mass uprisings in a number of countries in the region seeking to improve the political and socioeconomic situation of the societies living there, and the uprisings were later dubbed the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring changed the political landscape of the region, which especially affected the regimes in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. The Arab transition has had a number of political, socioeconomic and geostrategic effects. The situation in individual countries is inextricably linked to regional and global politics. Geopolitical and geo-economic factors and conditions are key, taking into account the roles of global and local players, i.e. the United States, China, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Iran or Saudi Arabia. The Arab Spring intensified the geopolitical rivalry and spread it to Syria. The article attempts to characterize the definitions of the concepts of geopolitics and geo-economics. The main objective was to present the changes in geopolitical and geo-economic conditions in the Middle East region after the events of the Arab Spring of 2011.