Customer Reviews

Divide And Perish: The Geopolitics Of The Middle East

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Curtis Jones' book is indispensable reading for anyone serious about understanding the underlying causes of the Middle East conflicts. It provides the modern reader with the necessary foundation for understanding the modern struggles, rivalries, and conflicts in that region. The 16 chapters and two tables, provide little known relevant facts and statistics in an engaging and lucid manner. The book starts by providing the reader with a good overview of the events in the past millennia, and breaks up the land area into seven distinct geographic zones in a way that helps us connect historical events with the particular geography.

The book details the strategic importance of this area to West--because of the abundance of petroleum reserves. The reader will find details about the corporate battle for control of the Middle East oil fields at the start of the 20th Century, and the effect of broken promises made by Western countries on the stability, development, and politics of the region. The Middle East was a major theater of military operations during World War I, and Arab contributions to the Allied war effort was extremely important in defining the outcome of that war.

There is a chapter on the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts. There are lessons to be learned from reading this book. For, example, a U.S policy - decision to punish Egypt in 1956, by withdrawing funds essential for its development, led to the nationalization of the Suez Canal, the Suez war, intervention by U.S to stop the invading countries. However, the way that war was resolved led to three other wars.

Finally, Curtis Jones is the product of a generation that still believes in a universal standard of justice, where terror "suspects" are not disenfranchised of their human rights, and where the U.S. is not disinterested in counting civilian casualties inflicted in Afghanistan, and Iraq. I recommend this book without reservation. A must read!