It is now a familiar theme in the literature on the emergence and development of the state in the Western world to refer to war and war preparation-in short, war making-as an important contributing factor to the development of the modern state. 1 As Charles Tilly succinctly put it, "War made the state, and the state made war." 2 We know, however, little about the relation between war making and the development of the state in the contemporary Middle East. This is rather surprising considering the importance of war and war preparation in the history of many states in the region and the current wave of academic interest in the study of state formation in the Middle East. A review of the literature would show that war is usually integrated as a contingent factor, but not as a systematic process that can influence state development. For instance, accounts of state development in Egypt mention the impact of the 1956 and 1967 wars on the capacity of the state to intervene in the economy and society; yet until recently no one had systematically studied the impact of war preparation on state formation in Egypt. 3 The absence of inquiry into the effects of war making is also widespread in the literature that focuses on the military. One finds coverage of the contribution (or lack thereof) of the military institution to state formation, economic development, and nation building, but hardly a word about the impact of the activity that justifies the existence of the military and for which large sums of money are spent on the acquisition of sophisticated weaponry-that is, the preparation and the waging of conventional wars. 4 This lack of attention to the impact of war making on state formation is understandable, because the literature on the military has largely emerged in response and in opposition to an earlier literature that portrayed the military as a modernizing institution or that focused exclusively on the phenomenon of military rule (its causes and consequences). However, this trend has resulted in the omission of war making from the research agenda on state formation in the Middle East, relegating war to the fields of foreign-policy analysis and security studies.The present article follows in the steps of Michael Barnett's pathbreaking study, which showed that war making (more specifically, war-preparation strategies) mattered in explaining the rise and decline of state power in Egypt and Israel. 5 This article confirms that, contrary to the historical pattern found in Europe, war making in Thierry Gongora is Research Associate at the Institut qu£b6cois des hautes 6tudes internationales, University Laval, Quebec, Canada.
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