Middle East Policy articles from September 2008

Middle East Policy archives from September 2008

Editor's note.(Editorial)
September 22, 2008... This is our last issue before the next president is chosen, in a so-called "change" election. Much may need changing in U.S. foreign policy, but it is not clear that the damage in the Middle East can be repaired in any normal political time...

War with Iran: regional reactions and requirements.(Symposium)(Discussion)
September 22, 2008... The following is an edited transcript of the fifty-third in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The meeting was held on Friday, June 20, 2008, in the Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building...

Abandoning the Iron Wall: Israel and "the Middle Eastern muck".(Essay)
September 22, 2008... Zionists arrived in Palestine in the 1880s, and within several decades the movement's leadership realized it faced a terrible predicament. To create a permanent Jewish political presence in the Middle East, Zionism needed peace. But day-to-day...

Two complementary views of peacemaking: the Palestinian-Israeli case.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... The Palestinian-Israeli dispute is an archetypical example of an intractable conflict: a protracted, violent, drawn-out struggle in which generation after generation is socially conditioned to continue fighting. The phenomenon perpetuates a...

Walling off Iraq: Israel's imprint on U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... Since the U.S. military's 2007 adoption of a new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, popularly known as "the surge," the most conspicuous development on the Iraqi political landscape has been a surge in walls. From Baghdad to Mosul, the U.S....

The Hariri tribunal: politics and international law.(Rafiq Hariri)(Essay)
September 22, 2008... On February 14, 2005, a car bomb shook Beirut, taking the life of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Soon afterward, a series of events unfolded leading to a near-total political paralysis in Lebanon (1): a vacant presidential seat, a...

Rethinking Hezbollah's disarmament.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... On May 9, 2008, following the orders of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanese Shia militiamen launched a series of armed assaults in Beirut and plunged parts of the country into sectarian confrontations reminiscent of the 1975-90 civil...

A new U.S. policy for Syria: fostering political change in a divided state.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... The American foreign-policy establishment seems deeply divided over how to deal with Syria. No one in Washington doubts that Damascus plays a pivotal role in the Middle East, helping to shape events in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine while...

The Russian-Libyan rapprochement: what has Moscow gained?
September 22, 2008... In mid-April 2008, outgoing President Vladimir Putin went to Libya. He was the highest-level Russian official ever to visit this petroleum-rich North African country. A number of agreements were reached then, including a resolution to Libya's...

America's early experience with the Muslim faith: the nation of Islam.(Essay)
September 22, 2008... It should come as no surprise that Islam informed various transformations of African-American movements before the rise of the Nation of Islam (NOI). Although it had quickly become the exclusive representative of African-American Islam, the NOI...

The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, by Aaron David Miller. Bantam Books, 2008. 407 pages. $26.00, hardcover. During the past four decades, the United States has been seriously involved in diplomatic...

Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East, by Daniel C. Kurtzer and Scott B. Lasensky. United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008. 191 pages. $13.00. In Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace, Daniel C. Kurtzer and...

The Arab-Israeli Conflict--A History.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... The Arab-Israeli Conflict--A History, by David W. Lesch. Oxford University Press, 2008. 495 pages. $38.95, paperback. Professor Lesch has tried, in his words, "to create a vehicle through which college students can more readily learn about...

A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance, by Mary Elizabeth King. Nation Books, 2007. 464 pages. $16.95, paperback. In A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance, Mary...

Hezbollah: A Short History.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Hezbollah: A Short History, by Augustus Richard Norton. Princeton University Press, 2007. 187 pages. $16.95, hardcover. Several years ago, the U.S. deputy secretary of state at the time, Richard L. Armitage claimed that "Hezbollah may be...

Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century, by Marc Sageman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 178 pages. $24.95. Careful analysis and well-articulated research is rare amid the onslaught of recent books devoted to...

Freedom's Unsteady March: America's Role in Building Arab Democracy.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Freedom's Unsteady March: America's Role in Building Arab Democracy, by Tamara Coffman Wittes. Brookings Institution Press, 2008. 176 pages with notes and index. $26.95. This compact, readable work of policy advocacy argues that, despite...

An Iraq of Its Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy?(Book review)
September 22, 2008... An Iraq of Its Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy? Reidar Vissar and Gareth Stansfield, eds. Columbia University Press, 2008. 274 pages. $27.50. Amidst the gains of the surge and the Sunni Arab "Awakening" since mid-2007, some...

A Political Economy of the Middle East.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... A Political Economy of the Middle East, Third Edition, by Alan Richards and John Waterbury. Westview Press, 2008. 474 pages. $50.00. Alan Richards and John Waterbury's A Political Economy of the Middle East has always been a bit hard to...

Arguing the Just War in Islam.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Arguing the Just War in Islam, by John Kelsay. Harvard University Press, 2007. 263 pages, including index, $24.95, hardcover. In a review of Arguing the Just War in Islam, Irshad Manji praised what she considers to be John Kelsay's attack...

Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Secular and Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, Edited by-mit Cizre. Routledge, 2008. 238 pages. $130, hardcover. Writing on the eve of Abdullah Gul's presidential election, -mit Cizre observed that...

Kurdish Scholarship Comes of Age.(Recommended readings)
September 22, 2008... Until recently, most books about the Kurds have simply stressed how they have been exploited victims and historic losers. Recently, however, Kurdish fortunes have begun to ascend. Turkey's candidacy for membership in the European Union (EU) has...