The Politics of Survival: Israel’s Security Externalization and Jordan’s Fragile Stability

This article examines Israel–Jordan relations through the lens of security externalization. It argues that Israel’s security strategy is not limited to managing threats beyond its borders; it also incorporates the stability of the Hashemite regime in Jordan as a vital component of its eastern security perimeter. Covering the period from the 1994 Wadi Araba Peace Treaty to the 2023 Gaza war, the study adopts a qualitative and chronological analysis. In this framework, security externalization is conceptualized as a two-dimensional mechanism: the management of threats beyond the state’s borders and the incorporation of neighboring regime stability into the security calculus. The article demonstrates that border security, intelligence cooperation, counterterrorism coordination, and energy–water arrangements have generated stabilizing effects on Jordanian regime stability, while simultaneously producing legitimacy costs and anti-normalization reactions among the Jordanian public. It argues that Israel–Jordan relations cannot be reduced to mere diplomatic normalization or conventional security cooperation but should instead be understood as an asymmetric yet reciprocal security order. In doing so, the article offers security externalization as an analytical framework for International Relations (IR) and provides a new explanation of the relationship between regime stability and regional security strategies in the Middle East.