On Monday, 15 November 2021, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha hosted Pete Moore, Professor of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University in the United States, who presented a lecture titled “War and Institutional Change in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan 1980-2020.”

The researcher began his lecture by presenting the context of the emergence of modern Jordan. Since its inception during the First World War (1914-1918), Jordan has been associated, directly or indirectly, with almost every major war that took place in the Middle East, as the country lacks natural resources. While employing this history of conflict to explain Jordan's ongoing social and economic crisis and periodic threats to stability, the researcher seeks to reverse this narrative, beyond presenting the direct effects of war, toward an understanding of how leaders' readiness for war shapes the ongoing dynamics of political economy and state consolidation.

The researcher indicated that from the events of 1970 until the war on terror in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Jordanian leaders have made huge investments in preparations for war, specifically in the security sector, and US support has played a crucial role in it. In this, he believes that the United States relies on Jordan more than other countries in the region, as it has one of the largest security budgets in the world, which has generated a sustainable financial crisis in the country, and chronic social and economic deterioration, which Jordanian society has periodically responded to with protests.

In his lecture, and in his research project in general, the researcher sought to make an epistemological contribution to a growing body of security studies focusing on the Middle East, by taking Jordan as a case study of the relationship of war to institutional change, focusing on the local political economy of war and cross-border links, especially given that so little of the literature on security studies focuses on the Middle East, despite the prevalence of violent conflict in the region.