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| Volume IX, September 2002, Number 3 |
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| Book Review Excerpts |
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Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles, and the Search for Consensus, Lawrence G. Potter and Gary G. Sick, eds. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 284 pages, including appendix of contributors and index. $18.95, paperback.
Brooks Wrampelmeier
U.S. Foreign Service officer (ret.) – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE
The causes of insecurity in the Gulf and problems the United States faces in developing a long-term strategy in the region are the focus of Security in the Persian Gulf. As the editors explain in their introduction, "There is a widespread feeling [in the region] of vulnerability and a sense that local actors are not in control of their own destiny . . . . Although the United States and other outside powers will continue to play an important role in Gulf security . . . , if only because of their interest in guaranteeing oil exports, it is likely that the regional states will increasingly take charge of their own destiny." An important feature of this book is that it identifies developments that could lead to a new era of improved relations among the Gulf states. Indeed, with or without the participation and encouragement of the United States, there are signs that long-troubled relations are easing between the Gulf monarchies and their two larger neighbors and that economic and even political cooperation among the Gulf littoral states is growing. This trend toward reconciliation among the Gulf states will, if it continues, complicate U.S. policy making for the region, especially as it affects our efforts to contain the serious threats we perceive to our interests from Iraq and Iran.
Security in the Persian Gulf consists of twelve chapters, most of which originated as papers presented at a conference on "Mutual Security in the Gulf: Tradition and Transformation," held at Castelgandalfo, Italy, in July 1998 under the auspices of Columbia University's Gulf/2000 Project. A number of the papers were subsequently updated prior to publication in January 2002 but before the events of 9/11. The editors stress that, unlike a volume of papers they published in 1997, most contributors to this present volume are themselves from the Gulf states and reflect their ongoing academic research on the societies and peoples of the region.
Harnessing Trade for Development and Growth in the Middle East, Bernard Hoekman and Patrick Messerlin. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2002. Available online at http://www.cfr.org/public/resource.cgi?pub!4342.
Richard P. Holmes
Executive director, U.S.-Algeria Business Council
In the introduction to this study, Peter Sutherland, chair of the Study Group on Middle East Trade Options and chairman of Goldman Sachs International, observed that one of the primary reasons for the region's disappointing economic development progress was the failure of Middle East governments to reduce the interventionist role of the state in their economies. Furthermore, the region has failed to develop trade links (other than through oil and gas) with the global economy.
In spite of the poor economic report card, the message of the study is positive, providing a clear policy blueprint for Arab governments in search of better economic conditions and job creation. The authors of the study, Bernard Hoekman, manager of the Development Research Group on International Trade at the World Bank; Patrick Messerlin, professor of economics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris; and Jamal Zarrouk, senior economist at the Arab Monetary Fund, clearly brought balance, diversity and flexibility to their efforts. Initially, the study team assumed that only certain changes in MENA's external environment, such as the development of an effective free-trade area in the region, combined with more advanced agreements with the European Union and other global free-trade organizations, were necessary to stimulate regional economic growth. In the end, however, the authors came to the inescapable conclusion that the heavy lifting needed to take place not at the border, but behind the border, and that new policies were needed to govern the internal economies of this politically and economically fragmented market.
Kazakhstan, Unfulfilled Promise, Martha Brill Olcott. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brookings Institution Press, 2002. 321 pages, with appendices, notes, bibliography and map. $24.95, paperback.
David Nalle
Editor (ret.), Central Asia Monitor
Kazakhstan, if only because it is so big (five times the size of France), calls attention to itself as a country that the world should be watching. This book provides a detailed examination of the political, economic and social condition of Kazakhstan ten years after independence. The author, Martha Brill Olcott, is one of the most active and sought-after American scholars working on Central Asia, and she notes that here she is building on more than a quarter century's study of Kazakhstan specifically. Her earlier book, The Kazakhs, came out in 1987, with a second edition issued in 1995.
There is one recurring, almost insistent, theme in this book: the early promise of an independent, resource-rich Kazakhstan has not been fulfilled – primarily because of the unrelenting avarice of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, his family and a small coterie of anointed elite. Greed has placed an added premium on staying in power, which has in turn distorted the nature of the state.
From the outset, the bright promise of a Kazakhstan freed from a collapsing Soviet Union captivated many observers, particularly those at a distance. Predictions of abundant oil reserves were readily translated into assumptions of economic security for the new state. A well-educated population and a relatively healthy and diversified economy were also positive indicators for Kazakhstan's future. However, the arrival of independence was clouded by the country's divided ethnic composition – almost equal populations of Russians and Kazakhs, as well as many lesser groups – and the deep ambivalence of Nazarbayev himself toward separation from Russia. This period is particularly well-covered by Olcott in her second chapter, "Reluctantly Accepting Independence." She reviews Nazarbayev's evolving, conflicted vision of the kind of status and relationship to Russia that would be most advantageous for Kazakhstan – and for Nazarbayev and his family.
The Politics of Caspian Oil, Bulent Gokay, ed. New York: Palgrave and St. Martin's Press, 2002. 232 pages. $65.00, hardcover.
Oil and Geopolitics in the Caspian Sea Region, Michael P. Croissant and Bulent Aras, eds. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. 305 pages. $74.95, hardcover.
Bill S. Mikhail
Department of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
These two books investigate in a comprehensive fashion the politics, strategy and security stakes in the Caspian Sea pipeline. Each is a collection of articles edited by American and Turkish scholars to inform the reader about the significance of this trans-national energy project, which has the potential to change the economic and political ventures of the oil industry. They estimate the size of the energy fortune at 200 billion barrels of oil and trillions of cubic meters of natural gas. The authors attempt to forecast the course of national and global politics in an area of vital concern to Eurasian politics. They define the dilemma of the Caspian Sea pipeline in terms of promoting the contradictory goals of extending foreign power, on the one hand, and enhancing the sovereignty of the new nations in the Caucasus, on the other.
The Politics of Caspian Oil applies a functional analysis to the problems of resource management in the Caucasus. It portrays the minimalist approach of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey to the prospects of exploration and exploitation of oil resources. There are no feasible plans to create a supra-national authority to supervise the new oil economies of the Caucasus; the maximum indication of collaboration is the gradual promotion of regional stability. Hence, there is a consensus among the authors of the need to resolve territorial disputes in the Caucasus and its adjacent areas, especially the conflict in Chechnya and the disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan and Iran.
Oil and Geopolitics in the Caspian Sea Region tracks the historical development of the Caspian Basin. It traces the roots of both Russian and British imperialism in the Caucasus and the carving up of Persia in 1828 in the Treaty of Turkmanchi, which granted parts of Azerbaijani (Azeri) Iran to the current state of Azerbaijan. It refers to many Russian Foreign Ministry documents that affirm Russia's right to regain prestige in the Caucasus. It also consults the 1982 U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea concerning the delimitation of a country's continental shelf.
Ivory Towers On Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, Martin Kramer. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy Publication, 2001. 130 pages, with an appendix, page 131, an index to page 137. $19.95, paperback.
Lawrence Davidson
Professor of history, West Chester University
Martin Kramer's political orientation can be read in the title of his book, Ivory Towers on Sand. "Ivory tower" is a term for the allegedly isolated environment of the university, implying that this environment is somehow disconnected from the "real world." Sand is a word used by Zionists to denigrate Arab societies (for pre-1948 Palestine they sometimes use "land of dust" instead of sand). It suggests inherently unstable, shifting, disintegrative, primitive societies that are the antithesis of the "progressive" West. Kramer is an Israeli American who has transferred himself from the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University to a pro-Israel "think tank," the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (which published the book). Most recently he has become editor of the Zionist-oriented Middle East Quarterly. His book title suggests that American academics who study Arab and Muslim societies are out of touch and, as a group, suspect.
Kramer's evidence for all this is often thin and contradictory. However, this does not prevent him from getting overwrought and emotional. Indeed, the terms he uses throughout the work to describe America's Middle East scholars and their research centers are nearly libelous. Here is a sampler: most of these scholars are "tenured incompetents" (p. 19), "neo-Marxists, and members of the ‘leftover left'" (p. 124). They are also "intellectually corrupt" (p. 21) and only interested in self-promotion (pp. 55, 68) and money (p. 99). The environment that they work in is "Hobbesian" and "corrupt" (p. 78). Said and other "post-Orientalist Mandarins" use "McCarthy" style tactics (p. 38) to "blacklist" (p. 38) and punish those who disagree with them. Finally, he accuses American scholars of the Middle East of not calling attention to Muslim radicalism as a potent danger, at one point going so far as to charge that Edward Said's work has actually encouraged Muslim violence (p. 46).
How Israel was Won: A Concise History of the Arab-Israel Conflict, Baylis Thomas. Boston: Lexington Books, 1999. xviii plus 326 pages. $19.95, paperback.
Robert Brenton Betts
Visiting professor of history, The University of Balamand, Tripoli, Lebanon
"This is the only book you need in order to comprehend the complexities of the modern Middle East," trumpets the back cover of Baylis Thomas's "concise history," and for once the publisher's claims are right on the mark. Certainly for the interested reader wanting a single sourcebook on the rise and expansion of Israel at the expense of its neighbors, this one delivers the goods with well-organized and clearly presented material backed up by all the documentation one could ask for. Many of the facts presented will come as a surprise to the average American who has been steeped in AIPAC propaganda. There are also ten excellent maps that augment and illustrate the author's narrative.
The first five chapters tell the story from the founding of the Zionist movement in 1897 through the British withdrawal from the Palestine Mandate in 1948. Chapters 6-9 cover the U.N. Partition plan and the subsequent fighting that resulted in Israel's independence. Chapters 10-16 relate the saga of Israeli wars of expansion over the next 25 years up to and including the Yom Kippur War, while the final three chapters deal with the rise of the PLO, the Lebanon invasion of 1982, the Likud's "Greater-Israel dream" still being pursued today by Ariel Sharon and his government, and the ill-fated Oslo accords.
Throughout the book, Thomas does not shrink from telling the unvarnished truth. In the 1948-49 fighting, "the Israelis were not outnumbered": the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time observed that "intervention by any Arab state other than Transjordan [with whom the Israelis had a non-agression pact] would be of ‘neglible importance'" (p. 81). In the rout that followed, Israel ignored boundaries set by the United Nations when it "was militarily able to expand its boundaries at will," knowing full well that "the U.N. was unprepared to dispatch forces to Palestine to prevent Israel's expansion." Sound familiar? Read on. When U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte objected to the Israeli occupation of the Negev, Yitzhak Shamir and his LEHI partisans "assassinated Bernadotte to show the world that Israel would not tolerate U.N. dictation of its borders" (p. 86). The subsequent mass exodus of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes was clearly orchestrated by the various Israeli military and paramilitary forces (p. 99).
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