This essay is about the massive Iranian aid to Hezbollah and the Saudi Arabian, likewise, towards the Taliban. The main view is that the two countries aid respective aid to Hezbollah and the Taliban is/were not a gesture of goodwill but rather an economic method of getting influence and controlling the receiver. This view that is based on a theory called; economic statecraft. The economic statecraft theory is used in this paper to investigate why Iran’s influence towards Hezbollah has been successful while the Saudis ambitions with the Taliban have failed. In order to so, four different approaches towards economic statecraft are consumed. These four approaches are economic liberal theory (purely economic), the realist theory (political pressure), conditional approaches (international prestige) and domestic approaches. In both cases, all four approaches are relevant and explain the different development in the two cases. The main conclusion is that the Taliban were more finically independent than Hezbollah. The Taliban also had no loyalty with the Saudi government while Hezbollah has always been strongly linked to Iran. Both groups were indeed based on radical Islam. This radicalism goes with symbioses in the Iran/Hezbollah case while The Taliban could not agree with the Saudi friendship with USA. These are some of the reasons why Iran has managed to control Hezbollah with their economic statecraft and why the Saudis failed. At the end of this paper there is comparing discussion of the two cases.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-7537 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Moshiri, Behrang |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för samhällsvetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds