Middle East Policy articles from June 2003

Middle East Policy archives from June 2003

Editor's note.
June 22, 2003... The shooting war in Iraq lasted a mere three weeks. As usual (see Panama, Grenada, Iraq I, Afghanistan), the First World trounced the Third, losing fewer than 150 combatants; Iraqi dead, officially uncounted, number approximately 10,000. The...

Is a two-state solution still viable?
June 22, 2003... The following is an edited transcript of the thirty-second in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The meeting was held on April 11, 2003, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building with Chas. W. Freeman,...

The war against Iraq: normative and strategic implications.
June 22, 2003... In the twenty-first century, going to war entails not merely strategic calculations but normative ones as well. Norms of international society have changed sufficiently in the past few decades, and especially in the past decade, to compel...

Islam, nationalism and resentment of foreign domination.
June 22, 2003... Islamists generally condemn nationalism, yet they are often remarkably nationalistic. One is reminded of the relationship between Marxism and nationalism. In principle, Marxists condemn nationalism just as vehemently as do Islamists. Yet the...

Beyond the crusades: why Huntington, and Bin Ladin, are wrong.
June 22, 2003... Samuel Huntington's 1993 article "The Clash of Civilizations?" and his subsequent book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of Worm Order (1996) may seem prescient at first glance. Declaring the onset of"a new phase in global history,"...

Islamism in Algeria: a struggle between hope and agony.
June 22, 2003... With its vast oil deposits and a Francophone intellectual and ruling elite devoted to reshaping the state along modern (albeit socialist) lines, decolonized North Africa was seen as one region where secular modernization had the greatest chance...

Killing in the name of Islam: Al-Qaeda's justification for September 11.
June 22, 2003... By means of this document we send a message to America and those behind it. We are coming, by the will of God almighty, no matter what America does. It will never be safe from the fury of Muslims. America is the one who began the war, and it...

Shia political alternatives in postwar Iraq.
June 22, 2003... Some 14.4 to 15.6 million Iraqis--60-65 percent of a population of approximately 24 million people--practice Shia Islam, and for many years this sector of Iraqi society faced severe repression from the Baathist regime. From the 1970s onward,...

Iranian Shiism under debate.
June 22, 2003... More than two decades after its victory, Iran's Islamic revolution has resulted in profound theoretical and theological consequences for Shiite political thought. This unfolding discourse--especially as represented by the writings of highly...

Saudi Arabian-Iranian relations: external rapprochement and internal consolidation.
June 22, 2003... Within the discipline of sociology and the field of international relations is found a longstanding proposition that regimes in trouble at home create enemies abroad. The idea is that external conflict leads to internal cohesion. When a...

Beyond the nation-state: privatization of economic sanctions.
June 22, 2003... DOMESTIC INTEREST GROUPS IN U.S. SANCTIONS POLICY Special-interest groups--business associations, ethnic-based or religious groups--play a central role in the American political system. Organized for the purpose of exerting influence on...

War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land.(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... by Anton La Guardia. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2002. 408 pages, with bibliography and index. $25.95, hardcover. No issue in current international politics has stirred more partisan fervor than the...

The Iraqi Economy under Saddam Hussein: Development or Decline.(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... by Muhammed-Ali Zainy. London: Al-Rafid Publishing Company, 2003. 419 pages. $20.00, paperback (in Arabic). The new edition of Muhammed-Ali Zainy's The Iraqi Economy under Saddam Hussein: Development or Decline is composed of two sections....

The Druze Between Palestine and Israel, 1947-49.(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... by Leila Parsons. London: Macmillan Press, 2000. xvii and 144 pages; notes and index to p. 180. $75.00, hardcover. The Druze community in Israel is unique among the Palestinian Arab population for its wholehearted cooperation with the...

Globalization, Gender, and Religion: the Politics of Women's Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts.(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... edited by Jane H. Bayes and Nayereh Tohidi. New York: Palgrave, 2001. 265 pages, plus index. $21.95, paperback. Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society, edited by Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Marsha...