Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28701 in Books
• Published on: 1995-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Examining Western relations with the Middle East since WWI, Oxford international relations professor Shlaim criticizes American policy in the region, charging that the U.S. continues to ignore the economic and social needs of that community.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
To crown his political career and in the aftermath of the Gulf War, President Bush championed a New World Order to turn his military victory into a political cause. Alas, no such order emerged because Washington failed to recognize the underlying problems of the region-denial of democracy and human rights by authoritarian regimes and the gap between rich and poor. In this remarkable essay, Shlaim, the Iraqi-born, Israeli-raised, and British-educated Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, provides an unusually lucid historical analysis of the Middle East to underline seminal developments that shaped the region. He assesses the critical role of the Ottoman Empire and admonishes successive American administrations, which distinguished themselves by adopting a series of inconsistent policies during the past 50 or so years. Shlaim offers cogent insights on key issues and, without being coy, recommends a course of action that calls for more U.S. involvement in the peace process. Breathtaking in its scope and historical precision, this is a highly recommended volume for both public and academic libraries.
Joseph A. Kechichian, Rand Corp., Santa Monica, Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Shlaim (Collusion Across Jordan, 1988), a leading historian of the Israeli revisionist school, offers a brief but suggestive overview of the US role in the Middle East. The Middle East was one of the major theaters for the Cold War, the principal source of energy of the West, and a strategically central region in geopolitical terms. Even with the Cold War over, it remains both significant and volatile. However, for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, only one great power is in play--the US. The many conflicts that plague the region have their roots in the Ottomans' disastrous decision to enter WW I on the German side. The result was a brief period of British hegemony after the war, with English meddling creating a region of unstable and undemocratic states whose rulers lacked legitimacy. The aftershocks are with us today. Regrettably, Shlaim says, American policy has recapitulated British mistakes, usually viewing the region through ``the distorting prism of the Cold War.'' American policy makers haven fallen into two groups: the globalists, who saw the area as an extension of US-Soviet jockeying and envisioned Israel as a strategic asset; and the regionalists, who suggested a more even-handed approach to Israel and the Arab states. As Shlaim traces the policies of the last 20 years, one notes that every time the globalists have taken charge of US policy, the results have been disastrous. Shlaim concludes by noting the failure of American policy makers to address the real problems of the region: the lack of democracy and human rights in Arab states and the gap between rich and poor throughout the area. He urges the US to encourage Israel to ``contribute to stability, democracy and economic development'' in the region while pursuing an even-handed policy toward the Israelis and Palestinian and Arab- state interests. A concise, passionately argued essay, sparked by Shlaim's dry wit and scathing sarcasm. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Good Succint Intro to International Relations of Middle East
This book is a nice introduction to the great powers' influence on international relations of Middle Eastern countries. Surely, it offers a partial picture which is mostly about the role of great powers in shaping international relations in the Middle East. But it does a good job in doing what it does. Some of the stories and argumensts are so important for understanding contemporary conflicts in the Middle East. Here are some excerps from the books:

"The Ottoman Empire had provided a far from perfect political system, but it worked. During WWI Britain and it allies destroyed the old order in the Arabic-speaking Middle East without considering the long-term consequences."

"Nixon and Kissenger also aided the shah in his compaign to destabilize the Ba'ath regime in Baghdad. In 1972 they agreed to covert American-Israeli-Iranian action in support of the Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq."

"[regarding Iran-Iraq war] Kissinger summed up the general preference when he indicated that the best outcome would be for both sides to lose."

"[The Iran-Iraq war] started as a result of rivalries inside rather than outside, but Reagan's intervention prolonged it unnecessarily."

"On July 31 [1990], three days before Iraqi troops charged into Kuwait John Kelly [the US assistant secretary of state for Near East and South Asian Affairs] testified on Capitol Hill that America had no treaty and no commitement obliging it to send forces should Kuwait be overrun."

"[The Gulf War] also demontrated that Americans are better at short, sharp burst of military intervention designed to restore the status quo than at sustained political engagement to resolve the undrlying origins of instability in the Middle East."

"Most of the American mistakes in the last half century can be traced to the combination of globalism and the Israel-first approach."

More--or less--than you bargained for
This is a brief work which bills itself as "A Concise History." Concise it is, and at fewer than 150 pages its pace is of a necessity very efficient, except at points where the author pauses to vent toxic fumes that rise from his belly while digesting certain of the more combustible materials of Middle Eastern history. Schlaim is an avowed revisionist--which is not to say propagandist--and is not delicate when recounting events in Israel's past at uncomfortable odds with history as taught in Tel Aviv elementary schools.

Nor is he inhibited--when incomplete historical records require extrapolation in order to connect dots otherwise forever separated--in offering his own sometimes byzantine, usually cynical, always overweight conjecture. If he succeeds in nothing else, it's in noting the inherent weakness of national folklores in which fragments of credible history are mortared into cohesion using generous spadefuls of agreeable, pleasant myth. Iron walls they are not. A true enough assertion, and perhaps of greater ultimate value to the reader than a dry listing of names, dates and events--even if it could be argued that the latter was the implied good or service, the thing you bargained for when picking up the book.

Having said that, I'll also say that I couldn't find, nor have since discovered any error in any fact Schlaim presented as such. There are times when a "revisionist" would be more aptly titled a "correctionist."

If I have a serious critique, it's that he at times overstepped the boundaries of both historian and social commentator in order to satisfy personal disdain he felt for some of the characters in the drama. Such as Ronald Reagan, for instance, whom he accused not only of "...intellectual mediocrity and lax leadership," but of spending "...sleepless afternoons in the White House worrying about the Soviet threat."

Get it? (wink, nod). Poor Ronnie was so afflicted with old age and infirmity that pressures of the job cut into his afternoon naps. Not the best nor worst old joke I heard spoken during Reagan's presidency, but Schlaim chose the wrong venue for it. With a scant 150 pages to wedge both a history and bloated personal perspective of the Middle East into, malicious humor would have been better held for Volume II, if only to preserve the dignity of Volume I.

How the West and East relate to the Middle East
Rather than a concise history of the Middle East this book offers only 146 pages of brief summary of outside powers effects on the region.

This isn't a history of the Middle East, it's a history of how Europe, the US and the Soviet Union interacted with the Middle East. Though undeniably important in understanding the region, Western and Eastern relations with the Middle East are not the only reasons for studying it. There is more going on, far more, that Shlaim does not address, and it opens a large crediblility gap.

What is missing? A lot.

This might be a good book if it's only goal were to teach people a very concise history of Western and Eastern relations to the Middle East, so perhaps it is just poorly titled. The information that it did offer though seemed good enough, and it provided a fair overview of US relations with the Middle East, but I expected more and was dissapointed.