Today, it is generally acknowledged that structures at global and international levels are undergoing changes. Most also agree that this carries consequences for current and future dynamics of Middle East international relations and for the role of regional and extra-regional powers. However, it is far more contested how the implications of these changes are to be grasped analytically and whether it requires a fundamental rethink of our way of studying Middle East international relations. In order to examining this question, the paper (re)visits two related and yet quite different debates on (Middle East) i.r./IR. First, the paper revisits the classic debate on global vs regional-centric understandings of Middle East international relations as it traditionally has been has been played out between discipline-oriented IR scholars and area specialists, sometimes in the context of the so-called Area Studies Controversy. While this debate is often presented as highly polarized, the paper reveals a large middle-ground of approaches and shows how some of these deserve renewed attention as they provide promising tools as for how to grasp the interplay between regional and global dynamics in a ‘post-American’ Middle East (dis)order. Second, the paper visits the so-called ‘Global/Post-Western IR’ debate. It emerges from Hoffmann’s classic statement about how ‘IR is an American Social Science’, Barkawi/Laffey’s remark about how security studies traditionally have not only been ‘made by, but also for the West’ and Wæver’s suggestion that ‘IR might be quite different in different places’. During the last two decades, this has given rise not only to various calls for making IR ‘truly international’, but also to a growing interest in how international relations are perceived outside of the ‘West’. For long, this debate only received marginal attention among Middle East scholars, but this is currently changing as reflected in manifestos about a ‘Beirut School of Critical Security Studies’ and explorations into IR scholarship ‘in, from, and about the Arab world’. Based on a comparison of the general and more Middle East specific strands of this trend, the paper shows how the existing Global IR debate does not only highlight promises but does also reveal potential pitfalls associated with an aspiration for including local/regional and non-Western perspectives (e.g., Russian, Chinese, Latin-American) in discussions about to grasp Middle East international relations ‘after the American Era.’