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5.0 out of 5 stars
Overall understanding, Oct 22 2001
The 18 essays in this superb 392-page volume were all printed as articles in the US foreign policy quarterly, Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs between 1986 and 1991. A few pieces are clearly dated. But for the most part, age has not lessened their value. Overall, they provide understanding of a conflict-filled region that violently surged into view with the Islamic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The book is divided into 4 sections. Although scholarly, the articles are easily accessible to lay readers wanting a broad overview of the troubles currently afflicting the entire region. The first four articles provide a frightening window onto the political realities in Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon and the fundamentalist Sunni states. Emmanuel Sivan considers the shape an Egyptian Islamic republic might take. His sobering sketch is hardly far-fetched: Moderates and secularists like Hussein Ahmad Amin and Faraj Fuda despair that even former moderates like H. Hanafi and A. Abdel Malek now sympathize with fundamentalists. Similarly, Khalid Duran portrays the political dysfunction that overtook Algeria during its 2nd revolution in 1988, when Algerian soldiers killed nearly 500 rioting children and where militant Islam remains a force to reckon with. Hilal Khashan found Shi'i students in Lebanon to espouse surprising political moderation. However, he predicted a Pan-Arab revival north of Arabia, fueled by Sunnis who are apt to support Saddam Hussein and radical anti-Western views. This seems already to have occurred. Of six articles on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the first four are most interesting. Michael Mandelbaum considers Israel's security dilemma. Mitchell Bard predicts that, near-term, the "emotional, religious and historical sources of conflict" will not disappear. Aaron David Miller posits that Arab "cost/benefit" analysis has recently moderated their policies, though he considers a return to old animosities possible so long as Arab states maintain a war stance toward Israel. And Robert Satloff warns darkly that Washington risked disaster in attempting to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without considering the influence of fundamentalists in the West Bank and Gaza. The book also includes five superb articles on the Persian Gulf. Efriam Karsh's 1989 article warned that the Iran-Iraq war badly eroded international red lines during war, including the use of poison gas, increasing the potential for violent Middle Eastern wars. This was born out with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait a year later, and judging from recent events, we have not seen the last of this. Martin Kramer exposes the clash of Muslims against Muslims in Mecca in 1987. Two articles on Iranian-US relations are somewhat more dated, but still relevant. Eliyahu Kanovsky, whom I once interviewed for Forbes, predicted that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait would precede a decline in oil prices. Kanovsky's ideas were so counter-intuitive that Forbes wouldn't print them. Nevertheless, he was right. We should listen. The final section features only three articles--on the military benefits of US relations with Israel (Steven Spiegel); the April 1986 US raid on Libya (Frederick Zilian) and how the Iran-Contra story broke (Daniel Pipes). The last one is worth the entire price of admission, especially for journalists curious about the mechanical details of THE story of the 1980s. Alyssa A. Lappen
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