Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Politics - Region: Near East, Near Orient, , course: Veranstaltung der "Zug Commodity Association", Zug, Schweiz, language: English, abstract: The Middle East remains one of the planet's major conflict arenas. It is among the highest military spenders. While global defence expenditures have been declining or only notching up slightly over the last three years, they have continued to grow by more than 10 % in the Middle East. Among the 15 countries with the highest defence expenditures in relations to GDP, more than half are from the Middle East. The text gives an overview about the historical and structural developments of the current conflict landscape in the Middle East and then focuses on the ascent of ISIS as an example of these developments at work. It closes with an Outlook about how the Middle East might look like after the demise of ISIS.