Building Confidence in the Middle East: Exploiting the Information Age

As the Levant and the Gulf enter an era in which interstate tensions are beginning to ease, increasing attention is being paid to the role that confidence-building measures (CBMs) can play in creating new security structures in the region. CBMs depend upon open exchanges of information and mutually acceptable mechanisms for monitoring agreements. This article examines the ways in which the ongoing information revolution could ease the way toward comprehensive regional CBMs.