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Joeychgo.com Book Store > Joeychgo.com books beginning with W
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War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History, Revised and Updated |
Author: Avi Shlaim
Published: 1995-08-01 |
List price: $14.00
Our price: $11.20
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Customer comments on this selection.
 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:
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br / "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."
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br / "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."
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br / "[regarding Iran-Iraq war] Kissinger summed up the general preference when he indicated that the best outcome would be for both sides to lose."
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br / "[The Iran-Iraq war] started as a result of rivalries inside rather than outside, but Reagan's intervention prolonged it unnecessarily."
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br / "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."
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br / "[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."
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br / "Most of the American mistakes in the last half century can be traced to the combination of globalism and the Israel-first approach."
 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.
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br /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.
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br /What is missing? A lot.
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br /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.
Unmissable classic - please bring out a new edition!
When this first came out I nearly missed it because it appeared too short to be anything but a simplistic popularised summary. Thank goodness I did start browsing, because not only did the style have me hooked, the argument's balance and lucidity, and (whatever Likudnik propagandists may say) the thoroughly scholarly grounding of the account, made me realise that here at last I had the perfect introductory text for the intelligent student entering upon a study of modern Middle Eastern history and politics. It has been a top recommendation in my final-year university course on Middle East politics ever since. The only frustration has been that, since it went out of print in the UK, my students have had to rey on the few library copies and my own. I shall now be directing them to Amazon to get their own copy - and order some more for the library.
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br /The book somehow manages to synthesise a mass of historical detail and controversy into a straightforward but finely judged account, bringing out all the key themes and dynamics: this is not only a list of facts and events, but a compelling analysis. He brings to life especially well the interplay of external actors (especially Britain, France and the US) and regional factors (the calculations of regional elites, balancing between dynastic/regime ambitions and the constraints of the international environment; and in places the outbursts of popular anger against both regimes and outsiders - including against the influx of Jewish settlers and eventually the establishment of Israel).
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br /The book wears its scholarship and erudition lightly - but it is perhaps only someone as thoroughly grounded in the disciplines of International Relations and History as is professor Shlaim, that could perform this feat with such apparent ease and elegance.
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br /Serious scholars of the region, while perhaps willing to quibble with small details, will (and indeed do) agree about the author's mastery of the material and the soundness of his judgement. That he ties a number of observations to the historical analysis that have a political flavour about current events (e.g. about US foreign policy), does not make the historical analysis itself any less rewarding. Nor indeed can the conclusions regarding the current shape of the Palestine problem be dismissed (as happens in one or two of the other reviews on this site) except by those with the sorts of preconceived convictions (and political agendas?) that brook no challenge.
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br /This is a little gem of a book, and one of those few that serve the wider public as well as the novice student of Middle Eastern affairs. Buy it and help persuade the publishers (and the author!) to bring out an updated edition for the mid-2000s!
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Try some other book
Daniel Pipes said about this book:
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br /"With uncommon skill, Shlaim has managed-in the confines of a very small volume with very large margins-to pack misjudgments, arrogance, and lack of sense into 1994's worst book on the Middle East."
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br /Well, is that true? Probably. But just to show everyone that I am not only tolerant and soft-hearted, but generous, I'll give this book not just one, but two stars!
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br /You see, there are plenty of facts in this small book. In addition to the misjudgments, arrogance, and lack of sense which it does indeed abound with.
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br /Shlaim claims that the 1973 Yom Kippur War broke the diplomatic stalemate in the region and led to peace. He's not the only one to have said this. But I wouldn't consider saying something like this on a dare. I'd be laughed out of town! Could I say with a straight face that the way to start negotiations towards peace is to launch a war of aggression against a neighbor? No. And just how strong is the peace between Egypt and Israel anyway? Not very. It is more a cease-fire than a peace, with a constant barrage of anti-Israeli propaganda from the Egyptian side.
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br /After that, we see Shlaim explain that land-poor Israel can have territory or peace. Really? I think it is more reasonable for those who want peace to permit land-poor nations to buy or keep something closer to their fair share of land. In my opinion, Israel is more likely to have both territory and peace or neither of them than one or the other. And the author says that Israel can have territory or American support. Again, this could well be a false choice. Even if Israel, for some reason, can not have both American support and territory, why ought one expect it to have American support if it does not have territory?
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br /Shlaim sums up the problem of the Arabs versus the Jews. Security pleases the Jews. Fairness pleases the Arabs. I wish this were true.
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br /Let's see. Fairness. Does that mean letting everyone, including Jews and Arabs, buy land throughout the region and keep it? Does that mean a Truth and Reconciliation session or two where the Arabs can apologize for their violence and aggression against Levantine Jews? Sounds fair to me! Shlaim is totally out of line to pretend that it is unfair to not steal Jewish land, or that it is unfair to allow Israel to stay on the map.
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br /As for the Oslo peace accords, Shlaim praises them as the beginning of a new era. Plenty of people were extremely suspicious of Oslo. Shlaim was wrong here. And those who were suspicious of Oslo generally had the right reasons to be suspicious. I think that ought to make us more than a little suspicious of Shlaim.
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br /Now, what does Shlaim recommend? It is simple. America is simply too much in favor of Israel! Shlaim thinks we need a more "even-handed" approach. And that (this was written before 9/11) America ought not "bolster Israel as a strategic partner in an unwinnable war against an imaginary Islamic threat." Wow. Imaginary. But unbeatable. Shlaim really took a strong view here. I think 9/11 showed that we're dealing with a real, not an imaginary threat. And in the long run, why shouldn't a war in favor of truth, justice, and human rights be winnable? I see no reason to give up without even trying.
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br /If you want to learn about war and peace in the Middle East, try some other book.
 Arab-Jewish Family Feud
The author is clearly an educated man but in places this book looks like neither he nor the publisher took time to give the manuscript a careful edit. For example, we read of a rumored attempt by Jimmy Carter to get the Iran hostage crisis resolved in time to strengthen his chances for reelection, and are told that George Bush, Reagan's V.P. candidate, called this Carter's "October Surprise". A few pages later, the author speaks of the "October Surprise" as a (again rumored) secret manipulation by Reagan to delay resolution of the crisis until after his own election-the second reference being nearly a direct opposite of the first, and one not fitting the name. There are also some grammatical errors, mostly near the end of the book.
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br /Knowing that author grew up in Israel, we rather expected to see the subject treated with Jewish bias. Not so, happily. There is plenty of blame to go around, and Schlaim gives the Israel its (small) share while, from his opening sentence, reserving his severest criticism for outsiders:
br / "Ever since Napolean's expeditionary force landed in Egypt in 1798, the Middle East has been the object of rivalry among the great powers".
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br /He's objective enough however, to give credit to Abdul Shafi, head of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference in August,1990, for the eloquence and moderation of his position, contrasting it with that of Israel's Yitzhak Shamir.
br / "He [Shamir] used the platform to deliver the first ever Israel Bonds speech in front of an Arab audience. His version of the Arab-Israeli conflict was singularly narrow and blinkered, portraying Israel as the victim of Arab aggression, and refusing to acknowledge that any evolution had taken place in Arab or Palestinian attitudes"
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br /For all its seriousness, we're treated to a laugh now and then.
br /"Ronald Reagan spent many sleepless afternoons in the White House worrying about the Soviet threat."
br /"Pope John Paul II is said to have described two solutions to the problems of the Middle East, one realistic, the other miraculous. The realistic solution would involve divine intervention, while the miraculous calls for the Arabs and Jews to resolve their differences."
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br /The book's main shortcoming is that it leaves out a lot of things. There's also the problem of currency. Written ten years ago, it tells us nothing of the events leading up to the American invasion of Iraq.
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br /If you have time for only a brief account of this subject, you'll not be disappointed in this book. Otherwise, try "Righteous Victims, A History of the Zionist-Arab conflict 1881-2001", by Benny Morris. Though longer, it's better in many ways.
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