Author: Peter L. Hahn Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc. ISBN: 1597973475 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
Although it seems almost incredible today, the United States had relatively little interest in the Middle East before 1945. But the dynamics and outcome of World War II elevated the importance of the Middle East in the American mind, and the United States has viewed the region with vital interest to its security and economy ever since. The projection of American power into the region has had consequences that have forever changed the United States and the Middle East, with the rise of al Qaeda and the turbulent occupation of Iraq being the latest examples. Crisis and Crossfire surveys and analyzes the broad contours of U.S. involvement in the region. It probes the reasons why the United States implemented various policies and assesses the wisdom of American leaders as they accepted greater responsibilities for preserving stability and security in the Middle East. Major themes include U.S.-Middle East policy in the context of the Cold War, the rise of Arab and Iranian nationalism, decolonization, the U.S. approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the politics of Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and America's military interventions, particularly its two wars against Iraq. This book's concise narrative and selection of primary-source documents make it an ideal introduction to U.S.-Middle East relations for students and for anyone with an interest in understanding the history behind today's events.
Author: David W. Lesch Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429972415 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 581
Book Description
This volume addresses the changes in the Middle East—and in the United States as well—that has significantly affected the US-Middle Eastern dynamic. It provides an objective, cross-cultural assessment of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Author: Joel S. Migdal Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231536348 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 423
Book Description
Joel S. Migdal revisits the approach U.S. officials have adopted toward the Middle East since World War II, which paid scant attention to tectonic shifts in the region. After the war, the United States did not restrict its strategic model to the Middle East. Beginning with Harry S. Truman, American presidents applied a uniform strategy rooted in the country's Cold War experience in Europe to regions across the globe, designed to project America into nearly every corner of the world while limiting costs and overreach. The approach was simple: find a local power that could play Great Britain's role in Europe after the war, sharing the burden of exercising power, and establish a security alliance along the lines of NATO. Yet regional changes following the creation of Israel, the Free Officers Coup in Egypt, the rise of Arab nationalism from 1948 to 1952, and, later, the Iranian Revolution and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979 complicated this project. Migdal shows how insufficient attention to these key transformations led to a series of missteps and misconceptions in the twentieth century. With the Arab uprisings of 2009 through 2011 prompting another major shift, Migdal sees an opportunity for the United States to deploy a new, more workable strategy, and he concludes with a plan for gaining a stable foothold in the region.
Author: Melissa Rossi Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 9780452289598 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 518
Book Description
The What Every American Should Know series returns with a timely guide to the region Americans need to understand the most (and know the least) The latest edition of Melissa Rossi's popular What Every American Should Know series gives a crash course on one of the most complex and important regions of the world. In this comprehensive and engaging reference book, Rossi offers a clear analysis of the issues playing out in the Middle East, delving into each country's history, politics, economy, and religions. Having traveled through the area over the past year, she exposes firsthand the U.S.'s geopolitical moves and how our presence has affected the region's economic and political development. Topics include: · Why Iran is viewed as a threat by most Middle East countries · What resource is more important than petroleum in regional power plays · What's really behind the fighting between Sunni and Shia · How Saudi Arabia inadvertently feeds the violence in Iraq and beyond · How monarchies like those in Jordan and Qatar are more open and progressive than the so-called republics With answers that will surprise many Americans, and covering a vast history and cultural complexity that will fascinate any student of the world, What Every American Should Know About the Middle East is a must-read introduction to the most critical region of the twenty-first century.
Author: Bernard Lewis Publisher: Hoover Press ISBN: 0817912967 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
Bernard Lewis looks at the new era in the Middle East. With the departure of imperial powers, the region must now, on its own, resolve the political, economic, cultural, and societal problems that prevent it from accomplishing the next stage in the advance of civilization. There is enough in the traditional culture of Islam on the one hand and the modern experience of the Muslim peoples on the other, he explains, to provide the basis for an advance toward freedom in the true sense of that word.
Author: Roger Owen Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134643543 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 550
Book Description
This book continues to serve as an excellent introduction for new-comers to the modern history and politics of a region that is usually portrayed as mysterious, unpredictable and violent.
Author: Ella Habiba Shohat Publisher: University of Michigan Press ISBN: 0472028774 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora traces the production and circulation of discourses about "the Middle East" across various cultural sites, against the historical backdrop of cross-Atlantic Mahjar flows. The book highlights the fraught and ambivalent situation of Arabs/Muslims in the Americas, where they are at once celebrated and demonized, integrated and marginalized, simultaneously invisible and spectacularly visible. The essays cover such themes as Arab hip-hop's transnational imaginary; gender/sexuality and the Muslim digital diaspora; patriotic drama and the media's War on Terror; the global negotiation of the Prophet Mohammad cartoons controversy; the Latin American paradoxes of Turcophobia/Turcophilia; the ambiguities of the bellydancing fad; French and American commodification of Rumi spirituality; the reception of Iranian memoirs as cultural domestication; and the politics of translation of Turkish novels into English. Taken together, the essays analyze the hegemonic discourses that position "the Middle East" as a consumable exoticized object, while also developing complex understandings of self-representation in literature, cinema/TV, music, performance, visual culture, and digital spaces. Charting the shifting significations of differing and overlapping forms of Orientalism, the volume addresses Middle Eastern diasporic practices from a transnational perspective that brings postcolonial cultural studies methods to bear on Arab American studies, Middle Eastern studies, and Latin American studies. Between the Middle East and the Americas disentangles the conventional separation of regions, moving beyond the binarist notion of "here" and "there" to imaginatively reveal the thorough interconnectedness of cultural geographies.
Author: Peter Mansfield Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141989556 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 592
Book Description
The definitive history of the Middle East, now updated in its fifth edition 'The best overall survey of the politics, regional rivalries and economics of the contemporary Arab world' Washington Post Over the centuries the Middle East has confounded the dreams of conquerors and peacemakers alike. This now-classic book follows the historic struggles of the region over the last two hundred years, from Napoleon's assault on Egypt, through the slow decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire, to the painful emergence of modern nations. It is now fully updated with extensive new material examining recent developments including the aftermaths of the 'Arab Spring', the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict and the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars. 'An excellent political overview' Guardian
Author: Douglas Little Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 0807877611 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 462
Book Description
Douglas Little explores the stormy American relationship with the Middle East from World War II through the war in Iraq, focusing particularly on the complex and often inconsistent attitudes and interests that helped put the United States on a collision course with radical Islam early in the new millennium. After documenting the persistence of "orientalist" stereotypes in American popular culture, Little examines oil, Israel, and other aspects of U.S. policy. He concludes that a peculiar blend of arrogance and ignorance has led American officials to overestimate their ability to shape events in the Middle East from 1945 through the present day, and that it has been a driving force behind the Iraq war. For this updated third edition, Little covers events through 2007, including a new chapter on the Bush Doctrine, demonstrating that in many important ways, George W. Bush's Middle Eastern policies mark a sharp break with the past.
Author: Robert G. Rabil Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 0313071896 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
Ever since Syria won its independence from France in 1946, it has been a crucial player in Middle Eastern politics. Over the years, relations between the United States and Syria have fluctuated as Washington has tried to balance its commitment to Israel's security with its support for Arab regimes in order to protect vital and strategic interests in the Arab world. The Arab-Israeli conflict is, however. no longer the only focal point of the relationship. Now, terrorism has entered the fray. On the State Department's terrorism list since 1979, Syria became even more persona non grata as far as Washington was concerned when Damascus vocally opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The American war in Iraq, occupation, and promotion of democracy throughout the Middle East pose a strong challenge to the Syrian regime. The new Syrian leadership, in power only since 2000, faces immense challenges—protecting Syria's regional status and surviving internal and external threats. Against this background, Syria and the United States have set themselves on a collision course over terrorism, arms proliferation, Lebanon, the Middle East peace process, and Iraq. Syria is, nevertheless, extremely important to the United States, because it can be a force for either stability or instability in an extremely volatile region. Recent events have put the spotlight on Syria's policies and actions. After the assassination of a Lebanese politician, protests in Lebanon led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops. While the withdrawal averted an immediate threat of bloodshed, the Bush administration accused Syria of being a source of instability in the Middle East, with Secretary of State Rice charging that Syria was still active in Lebanon and was supporting foreign terrorists fueling the insurgency in Iraq. The U.S.-Syrian relationship is of critical importance to the United States' efforts to promote democracy throughout the Middle East. At the same time, the United States has been pressuring Syria to clamp down on terrorism within its own borders. Rabil provides a history of the modern U.S.-Syrian relationship, putting the latest events in the context of this contemporary history, and placing the relationship in the context of Middle Eastern politics.
Author: Peter L. Hahn
Author: David W. Lesch
Author: Joel S. Migdal
Author: Melissa Rossi
Author: Bernard Lewis
Author: Roger Owen
Author: Ella Habiba Shohat
Author: Peter Mansfield
Author: Douglas Little
Author: Robert G. Rabil