Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite [Paperback]

Robert D. Kaplan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0028740238 | ISBN-13: 978-0028740232 | Publication Date: July 1, 1995

A tight-knit group closely linked by intermarriage as well as class and old school ties, the "Arabists" were men and women who spent much of their lives living and working in the Arab world as diplomats, military attaches, intelligence agents, scholar-adventurers, and teachers. As such, the Arabists exerted considerable influence both as career diplomats and as bureaucrats within the State Department from the early 19th century to the present. But over time, as this work shows, the group increasingly lost touch with a rapidly changing American society, growing both more insular and headstrong and showing a marked tendency to assert the Arab point of view. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and other official and private sources, Kaplan reconstructs the 100-year history of the Arabist elite, demonstrating their profound influence on American attitudes toward the Middle East, and tracing their decline as an influx of ethnic and regional specialists has transformed the State Department and challenged the power of the old elite.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Blending history, reportage and sharp profiles of key players, this insightful study tells how American "Arabists"--diplomats, intelligence agents, scholar-adventurers, Protestant missionaries, military attaches--formed an elitist, expatriate professional caste in the 19th-century Middle East. The Arabists, in Kaplan's ( Balkan Ghosts ) view, carried on a "romance" with exotic Islamic cultures, and many supported pan-Arab nationalism. Blind to what Kaplan deems the inevitability of the birth of Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust, American Arabists today often see Israel "in only the simplest stereotype," he asserts. Kaplan charges that Arabists adapted to and promoted the Bush administration's appeasement of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, as exemplified by U.S. ambassador April Glaspie's wooing of Saddam right up to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Occupational hazards facing the latest crop of Arabists, warns Kaplan, include rampant shallowness, careerism and an insular, sterile embassy life divorced from local realities.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Kaplan supplies a secondary source of minibiographies sketching the lives of dozens of Protestant missionaries and U.S. State Department officials who worked in the Arab world over the past 200 years. Addressing current concerns, he shows that the opposition of missionaries and Foreign Service officers to Israel's creation--meant to appease the Arabs--led to the various wars in the Middle East and, ultimately, to the Gulf War of 1991. Since so many people are mentioned in this account, Kaplan ( Balkan Ghosts , LJ 2/15/93) can give only superficial treatment to each one (from a few paragraphs to a few pages). As a result, the text seems fragmented, and the introduction of each new character reads like an entry out of Who's Who. Recommended for specialized collections only.
- John D. Horton, MLS, Royal Saudi Navy, Jubail, Saudi Arabia
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (July 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0028740238
• ISBN-13: 978-0028740232
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #406,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great History of the Foreign Service and Middle East Policy, March 28, 2000

By 

Michael Kolodner (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (Paperback)

This is a fascinating history of one of the State Department's most oft-discussed branches. Particularly among American Jewish circles and those who study the Middle East, "Arabist" has a particular connotation of unjustified anti-Israel bias and a flavor of anti-Semitism. Kaplan's work identifies the origins of the Arabists and, more importantly, tests the level of their bias through analysis of their record on Middle East policy and diplomatic reporting.

Kaplan traces the development of American Arabists (those who learn Arabic and study Arabs, like Sinologists or Sovietologists) beginning with Protestant missionaries in the 19th Century through the development of the Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) Bureau at State. Kaplan, a journalist, tells his story with engaging portraits of the principal actors. He begins with the American view of the Middle East as fertile ground for missionary work and follows the missionaries' children and grandchildren who go on to develop American foreign policy towards the region. Kaplan's protagonists are the quintessential upper-crust (male, mostly) WASP diplomats who went to Deerfield Academy and Princeton and Amherst before returning to their childhood haunts in Lebanon and Syria as missionaries or diplomats. But Kaplan is not out to paint the Foreign Service in a negative light. Rather, he skillfully exposes how the clique of WASP missionary Arabists goes on to become the core of the NEA bureau and how their perspectives shape American foreign policy for good and ill throughout the 20th Century.

For obvious reasons, the majority of the book focuses on the past, when the Foreign Service was the purview of the Ivy League boys' club. But he also notes the State Department's efforts to modernize and the growing participation of a diverse middle-class America in the foreign policy debate. In fact, his synthesis of this process, beaurocratic maneuvers and the effects of the Gulf War lead to an analysis of the NEA bureau today and the direction of American foreign policy planning that is likely to be well regarded for years to come.

Being a Middle East hand myself (and an Amherst graduate), I was particularly interested in The Arabists, so perhaps my perspective is skewed. Nonetheless, this book is a must-read for anyone considering the Foreign Service as a career. Kaplan does a good job with the stories of some of State's big names. Their biographies as well as their career arcs are illustrative for FSO's today. As the book draws to a close, it is clear that the FSO's of today will be less area-focused than the old-school Arabists. This will be a mixed blessing, however, allowing us to avoid the "localitis" that leads to some missteps, but denying us the deep cultural insight that lead to some of the Arabists' greatest foreign policy triumphs.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kaplan paints with a broad brush -- too broad, June 15, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (Paperback)

Again Kaplan does what he does best -- he gets to the heart of a matter by talking to individuals who have experienced it. The flip side of that is as glaring here as in his other works -- he uses the experiences of a few individuals to draw broad conclusions which he presents as the unquestioned truth. The truth about the Arabists is that Kaplan presents a "truth" that is HIGHLY contested by many ex-state department officials who were not interviewed, but who were every bit as involved. I found Google searching the title of this book yielded some interesting refutations of it.

I found this book very informative both in what it said and what it left out. I learned a great deal reading it, not least of all because I was inspired to find out more about the issues he presents from other sources. I would definitely recommend this book, as it brings to light the history of our country's diplomatic dealings with the Middle East -- about which none of us can afford to be ignorant.

Read it, but read it as one man's side of a very complicated, politicised, and polarized story. Then start reading the books he cites.

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History of a State Department Clique, December 22, 2002

By 

S. Miska (Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (Paperback)

Kaplan strings together pearls of biography to create a historical review of an interesting segment of the State Department's Foreign Service. Beginning with T.E. Lawrence and several other well-known British, the author weaves together a story of diplomatic intrigue in the Middle East. I found two particular segments especially fascinating - the rescue of Jewish Falashas from Sudan and the history leading up to the Gulf War with Iraq, in light of a potential repeat in world affairs.

Although Kaplan does highlight the tensions between Arabists and those with pro-Israeli sympathies, the work serves to demonstrate through historical biography the evolution of western influence in the region. He makes the case that the Palestinian-Israeli issue has not strictly defined the Middle East. Kaplan doesn't write from personal recollection, however, as he did with Balkan Ghosts. This book is research based through reading and extensive interviews with many from the State Department and elsewhere.

The last portion of the book focuses on events in the State Department leading up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Kaplan blasts many of the Arabists, former ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie foremost among them, for attempting to appease Saddam. Although he qualifies his critique by portraying a lack of policy emphasis from Washington leaving the embassy staffs in the Middle East to find their own way forward, Kaplan claims the Arabists continued to view Iraq and other totalitarian regimes through rose colored glasses. Had they represented U.S. interests instead of romanticizing from within embassy walls, he argues that our diplomats could have sent Saddam the signal that the U.S. would respond to aggression.

Overall, I found the book provided an interesting historical background on the Middle East region through the eyes of the diplomats that have served there. Kaplan provides good background reading up to Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Given the current tension surrounding the Iraqi regime, I found much of the book relevant to contemporary affairs. Well worth the read!