Middle East Policy articles from December 2004

Middle East Policy archives from December 2004

Editor's note.(Editorial)
December 22, 2004... To paraphrase Tolstoy: You may not be interested in the Middle East, but the Middle East is interested in you. American tax dollars, not to mention lives, are being inhaled by the military in both the destroying and the rebuilding of Iraq, as...

Securing U.S. energy in a changing world.
December 22, 2004... The following is an edited transcript of the thirty-sixth in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The meeting was held on September 17, 2004, in the Russell Senate Office Building with Chas. W....

U.S.-Saudi relations: a rocky road.
December 22, 2004... The following report was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. The meeting that generated it took place in Bellagio, Italy, July 19-23, 2004. The authors of the report are Clifford Chanin of the Legacy Project and F. Gregory Gause, III,...

Democratization in Gulf Monarchies: a new challenge to the GCC.
December 22, 2004... If Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" epithet stood the test of time in defining the Soviet Union, George W. Bush's "axis of evil," so belligerently uttered on January 29, 2002, gave way to a more perfunctory warning to Iraqis on January 28, 2003....

Possible pathways for Iraq's political evolution.
December 22, 2004... The ongoing violence and instability in Iraq prompt questions about how Iraq will evolve politically. The Bush administration has said that its policy is to build a stable, moderate and democratic Iraq, even if doing so requires an indefinite...

The Israeli disengagement initiative.
December 22, 2004... The disengagement initiative of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may prove to be the most significant step yet in the tortuous and so-called "peace process" (a process which in fact drew to a tragic close some four years ago). The reason is...

Implications of the U.S. reaction to the world court ruling against Israel's "separation barrier".
December 22, 2004... On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined that the Israeli government's construction of a separation barrier, or "wall," running through the occupied Palestinian West Bank was illegal. The court called on Israel to...

Radical Islam: the death of an ideology?
December 22, 2004... Since the tragedies of September 11, 2001, the United States has invested its war on terrorism with the loftier vision of diminishing the zeal of radical Islam. President Bush and the architects of America's policy insist that the best manner...

Structural impediments to economic globalization in the Middle East.
December 22, 2004... There has been a basic tension between the stated objectives of Middle Eastern leaders to integrate their countries into the world economy, on the one hand, and the actual, tangible levels of this integration, on the other. Consequently, the...

Sino-Arab relations: new developments and trends.
December 22, 2004... Historically, there have been no significant rifts between China and the Arab world; both sides share common views on a number of international questions. Yet Sino-Arab relations have been relatively cold since the 1980s. With the center of its...

All the Shah's Men: an American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer. John Wiley and Sons, 2003. 258 pages, with notes, bibliography and index. $24.95, hardcover: $14.95, paperback. To say that Iran has posed...

Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, by Seymour M. Hersh. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004. xix plus 370 pages, with index. $25.95, hardcover. About one year after the United States launched the war against Iraq,...

Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia, by Thomas W. Lippman. Westview Press, 2004.390 pages, including notes, bibliography, and index. $27.50, hardcover. In the words of Thomas Lippman, the relationship between...

Breaking Ranks.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Breaking Ranks, by Ronit Chacham, ed. New York: Other Press, 2003. 153 pages, with 8 maps. $25.00, hardcover. It is said that history is written by the victors. But it is not only history that is so written. Part of what goes into winning...

The Palestinian People: A History.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... The Palestinian People, A History, by Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal. Harvard University Press, 2003. 568 pages, with chronology of major events, foot notes, index. $12.57, paperback. This rich and comprehensive story of the...

Syria and the Palestinians: the Clash of Nationalisms.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... Syria and the Palestinians: The Clash of Nationalisms, by Ghada Hashem Talhami. University Press of Florida, 2001. ix plus 257 pages. $55.00, hardcover. This is the second time recently that I have had the pleasure of reviewing a book of...

The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, by Maria Rosa Menocal, foreword by Harold Bloom. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2002. xviii plus 315 pages, with index; maps,...

The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization.(Book Review)
December 22, 2004... The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, by Richard W. Bulliet. Columbia University Press, 2004. 192 pages. $24.50, hardcover. What went wrong in Iraq? Bernard Lewis, the author of the book What Went Wrong? and other promoters of the...