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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Tar Baby": America in the Middle East, September 4, 2008
This review is from: A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East (Hardcover)
Take the case of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche: just about every college freshman has heard of him, most have an opinion of his work, a few have read (or attempted to read) his books and a very small number have an informed opinion, derived from careful study and consideration of his thoughts in context. Analogously to Nietzsche, most everyone, well at least political blog readers, media pundits and avid conspiracy theorists, have heard of Kenneth Michael Pollack. Also analogous to Nietzsche, most have an opinion, but, at least based on my impressions of the majority of internet postings, few have actually read and attempted to understand his thinking. Such is the case with Pollack's latest book, "A Path Out of the Desert: a Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East".
By way of introduction, Pollack, a former CIA Middle East Iran specialist, analyst and National Security Council member in the Clinton Administration, who is now Director of Middle East Research at Brookings, was launched into media attention with the publication of, "The Threatening Storm: the Case for Invading Iraq". That book presented detailed arguments which addressed the problems presented by the Saddam Hussein regime. After careful consideration of the various alternatives, Pollack favored invading Iraq, as this option, which appeared to be the best of those available at the time when considering the level of evidence, presented the most expedient and reasonable method for dealing with the geostrategic problems posed by Saddam's government. Note that nearly one third of "Storm" detailed the likely consequences of military action and gave recommendations for managing the aftermath, namely, the efforts required to stabilize and rebuild the country after the war.
While the administration of George W. Bush chose the military option (an action some attributed to Pollack's highly influential book), it ignored his "grand strategy" for rebuilding the country. The debacle Pollack predicted resulted, along with the expected barrage of public outrage. As a result of Bush Administration actions, now unfairly associated with Pollack, he was promptly tarred with the "neoconservative" epithet by Bush detractors as well as a myriad of anti-war activists. Pollack's commentaries on CNN and elsewhere confirmed his position as an authority on the Iraq War, but simultaneously solidified the public perception of him as a "war supporter". Once that polarizing linkage was established, few troubled to read his subsequent work ("Persian Puzzle" and now, "Path"), but strident opinions on his books abound.
Worse for Pollack, his area of interest, the Middle East, is like the proverbial "tar baby": once touched, you're sort of stuck to it. Of course, the main attraction to the area from a strategic perspective is oil. Despite the fact that the greatest wealth transfer in history is now in progress (presently amounting to around $475 billion/year from oil consuming nations to oil producers) with all it's political and strategic implications, many people, including some influential policy makers, focus on the region for emotional reasons derived from religion. It is indeed an unfortunate fact that the majority of the world's petroleum resources are located in this area and that it is the nexus of 3 major religions, as this incendiary and toxic combination is causing apparently endless troubles.
With that preamble, it is hardly surprising that Pollack's newest book, "A Path Out of the Desert", has generated divisive internet traffic. A highly critical and largely uninformed review of the book was published in "The New York Times" by a commentator for "The Economist" (Max Rodenbeck) on August 22 of this year. Numerous blogs have quoted approvingly of Rodenbeck's commentary but many have done so without evident knowledge of the book itself. This is especially true of the more ideologically oriented blog writers. While this is not surprising, it is unfortunate, as Pollack clearly intended this book for the general reader, many of whom will not now take the time or effort to read the book.
"Path" is written in a highly colloquial manner. The majority of the book consists of a clear and logical synopsis of the problems facing the Muslim countries. Pollack summarizes a vast amount of data, most all of it dismal: burgeoning populations, lack of foreign investment (outside petroleum), bad educational systems, despotic governments, rising frustration from lack of opportunities, under- and unemployment...the list goes on. The causes for the hatred garnered by foreign states that have trodden upon the Middle East (US, Britain) are explained and responsibilities acknowledged and assigned. None of the information Pollack summarizes is controversial: it is all open-source and, in many cases, was published by Arabic analysts, the UN and other international organizations. Lacking an understanding of the problems of the region and their context makes informed perspectives impossible; yet, that appears to be the unfortunate state of affairs for many media and blog critics.
Note that the previous paragraph mentions specifically "Muslim" Middle Eastern problems. By virtue of his tangential association with the present Bush Administration, Pollack has been labeled as an unfettered supporter of Israel by some critics. For this reason, his concentration on the Muslim Middle East might be viewed as prejudicial by some readers. Pollack concentrates on those countries, rather than on Israel as "the problem", as Muslim nations mostly comprise that region and, more particularly, because they have what we want: that, naturally, is oil. That commodity (and maybe a dose of religion) is the source of our involvement and it is this involvement that Pollack argues is the origin of the resentment that is directed against the US.
However, this book is not arguing a particular political position. The point of Pollack's careful exposition of the vast array of problems which invest the region, almost none of which involve Israel, is that foreign interest in the region will persist, tensions will increase and an overall solution will required if the world wants access to oil and economic stability. Despite this, Pollack is careful to acknowledge that US support for that country aggravates our problems in the region, but these problems would exist for us even if Israel did not exist. Pollack further notes that our reasons for supporting Israel do not devolve from an insidious "neo-conservative", manipulative cabal, nor are they derived from Zionist machinations. Rather, they stem from the general American strategy of supporting democratic ideals, worldwide and from US strategic interests. American religious traditions (see, for example, Walter Russell Mead's recent "Foreign Affairs" article on this subject) also figure prominently into our support for Israel. While this last is an important consideration, US support for democracy and support for a stable international order are the crucial issues here. Thus, political reform is the crux of the "grand strategy" Pollack describes later in the text.
Of course, any book which deals with the modern Middle East must address the issue of terrorism, an issue that directly and indirectly involves Islam or Islamism. Pollack makes the case that terrorism is a problem, but it is not the primary problem the US faces in the Middle East. Our interest is oil and our presence is the problem. Until and unless the reliance on petroleum vanishes, the US and (increasingly) other countries will have vital and competitive interests in accessing and protecting this resource and will incur problems as a result.
Pollack attributes the xenophobia encountered in the area to the constellation of social problems endemic in the Middle East: religion certainly plays a role, but, he contends, it is neither the necessary nor the sufficient determinant of the specific problem of terrorism nor of the general resentment toward the West experienced there. The only way to massage the matter to our benefit is to devise a "grand strategy" for dealing with the plethora of problems infecting the Middle East.
Note that Pollack does not place blame for terrorism on Islam. Islam clearly does have an important role, both directly and indirectly, as it provides the ideological framework and justification for many if not most of currently active terrorist factions of interest to us. However, it does not constitute an ideological or theological straight jacket. Within the Arab world there are widely divergent interpretations of Islam, which in turn correspond to very different patterns of behavior. Anthropologists continue to argue about whether the individual's interpretation of the religion shapes the behavior of the individual, or the individual's desired pattern of behavior shapes his interpretation of religion. Clifford Geertz, in his monumental work "Islam Observed" makes a compelling case that religion (in this case,Islam) is modified by communities to suit their culture much more than the introduction of the religion reshapes the culture.
Regardless of the role of religion and it's interplay with Arabic culture, Pollack favors an "operant" approach derived from B.F. Skinner, to wit, positively reinforce the desired "behavior", negatively reinforce those you don't like and you will correct the underlying "problem". It can, and has, also been argued that large populations of young, under- and unemployed men can (and do) foment political and social disorder, so conflicts between religious and ethnic groups can often be traced to more mundane and malleable factors. Pollack suggests this is the case in the Middle East; hence, the "grand strategy" he favors deals primarily with this aspect, rather than dealing...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Book, January 11, 2009
This review is from: A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East (Hardcover)
Since everyone else has posted their favorite review of Pollack's terrific book, here is LTG Dubik's from Army Magazine. Dubik was commander of MNSTC-I in Iraq when we finally turned the Iraqi Army around and built one that could fight.
Throwing Out a Challenge: A New Strategy for the Middle East
By Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik
U.S. Army retired
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A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East. Kenneth M. Pollack. Random House. 543 pages; tables; index; $30.
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If you're looking for a one-volume answer to the questions--"What is going on in the Middle East?", "Why should we care?" and "What should we do about it?"--then this is your book. Simply put, Kenneth Pollack's A Path Out of the Desert is a must-read for any serious strategist, military practitioner, student of the Middle East or informed citizen. Pollack starts with a clear description of America's vital interests in the Middle East, then presents a set of well-documented, cogent arguments demonstrating that those interests are threatened by the anger and frustration of the people in the region--anger and frustration caused by an interlocking set of crippling societal problems. Finally, Pollack recommends a grand strategy for the United States and its allies in which they "encourage and enable the countries of the Middle East to pursue a gradual process of political, economic and social reform--one that grows from within, rather than being imposed from without; one that reflects the values, traditions, history and aspirations of the people of the region themselves, not a Western guess at them; one that recognizes that reform and stability are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing--and ultimately mutually essential."
A Path is grandly written and argued, as is Pollack's vision for U.S. policy. His personal history--Persian Gulf military analyst at the CIA, director for Persian Gulf affairs in the Clinton National Security Council and now a director of research at the Brookings Institution--has come to bear in the pages of A Path. The dots connecting the twin threats facing countries in the Middle East--instability and terrorism--to American vital interests are clear in Pollack's mind: "Global economic dependence on oil has risen to the point where the United States and its trading partners simply cannot tolerate the kind of instability for which the Middle East has become famous. A major calamity there could bring down the entire international economic order." Oil, Pollack goes on to remind us, is the lifeblood of modern civilization. China, Japan, Northeast Asia, Europe, the Americas--all have interests in the production, distribution and pricing of oil. Pollack deals with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.
Clear, sober and complete might best describe the framework for this book: clear in describing U.S. vital interests in the Middle East and the threats to those interests; sober in acknowledging the difficulties in mitigating those threats as well as the commitment necessary to be successful; and complete in presenting a multi-decade, multifaceted grand strategy for the United States. Terrorism and instability are both symptoms of an underlying disease. "To be blunt," Pollack writes, "the countries of the Muslim Middle East are broken. Their political, economic and even social systems are stagnant. The people of the region feel that their culture is under assault. ... They feel powerless, angry, frustrated and frightened, and their leaders feed them a steady diet of lies, exaggeration and blame shifting. ... It is these powerful forces that have fed the rise of Islamic opposition groups and, at the extreme, vicious terrorists groups lashing out at a remarkable range of perceived enemies."
Curing the disease over the long term (acknowledged as a decades-long task requiring international cooperation with indigenous reformers) while treating its near-term symptoms (continued counterterrorist operations) is the tall order of Pollack's grand strategy.
Chapter 5, entitled "A Sea of Socio-economic Problems," and Chapters 7, 8 and 9, respectively entitled "Political Islam," "The Threat from Instability and Internal Strife" and "The Threat of Terrorism," all provide readers of A Path with a network of arguments and associated documentation leading to two major conclusions. First, the most immediate and direct threat is one of terrorist attack. September 11, 2001, and the series of attacks on America and Americans that led up to 9/11 "should not require any additional proof that this is a real threat that needs to be dealt with." Second, the most dangerous threat that the United States faces is "instability in the form of civil unrest, coups, insurgencies, civil wars and possibly even revolutions," all produced by the economic, political and social problems of the Muslim Middle East. This longer-term threat "has reduced oil exports ... affecting the price of oil and causing recessions in the United States, and it has also contributed meaningfully to the threat of proliferation."
Readers will experience the same rigor in Part Four: "The Core of a Grand Strategy for the Middle East," in which Pollack acknowledges "the simple but inescapable fact that there are no quick fixes to the problem of instability." Pollack explains, "The only approach known to mankind to eradicate, and not merely suppress, the kind of problems experienced by the Muslim Middle East is to embrace a long-term process of reform--toward more pluralist forms of government, toward the rule of law, toward a dynamic education system, toward a market-driven economy and toward a more `modern' pattern of social interaction."
Simply beginning such a path--or committing to it--may, in Pollack's view, start to alleviate many of the pressures that produce both instability and terrorism. "Humans," he reminds us, "have a remarkable capacity for hope." Pollack is not a blurry-eyed idealist, however. He confirms his understanding that "explaining how to turn theory into practical reality, how to overcome all of the potential problems, how to settle a spate of conundrums, how to encourage the people of the region to follow this course and enable them to do so--not to mention actually executing it over the course of the next several decades--is the hard part." Throughout the detailed description of the grand strategy that he proposes, Pollack again and again underscores the difficulties that execution will pose.
At the end of this excellent volume, I found myself ruminating on precisely this point of difficulty in execution. I have just finished 14 months in command of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, the command responsible for reforming Iraq's security sector as well as training and fielding its military and police forces. I had overseen the growth of Iraq's security forces by more than 125,000; led the efforts to improve the ministries of defense and interior, helping get them to the point of capability and confidence they have reached today; and supervised the attempts at structuring modern acquisition systems from antiquated methods--theirs and ours--resulting in almost $3 billion of Iraqi money being invested in procurement. As compelling as I found Pollack's vision, and as important as I believe adopting the grand strategy he presents is to our nation (and the world, for that matter), I found myself returning to execution. In the hopes of helping to sharpen the thinking about "how to do what we need to do," I offer several questions.
First, how can we attract the right people to this project, military and civilian? Senior people, military and civilian, with considerable experience and broad managerial skill sets will be necessary to operationalize the vision presented in A Path. Senior people like this are hard to attract and keep. In the military, for example, there are already insufficient numbers of senior officers and sergeants with the necessary work experience. Even in the retired ranks, a smaller force produces fewer retirees. Civilians who are experienced in banking, agriculture, labor and economic development will be in higher demand and even harder to hire. Making Pollack's vision operational will take some detailed thinking in the human resource department.
Second, how can we create, then sustain, the bipartisan consensus and consistent funding that such a grand strategy will require? Given the decades-
long time horizon that Pollack correctly identifies as necessary to see his grand strategy through, bipartisan support in Congress will be a sine qua non. The vision presented in A Path will span both Democratic and Republican administrations and congressional majorities. It will span good economic times and bad. Such a grand strategy, therefore, will require an equally grand political consensus.
Third, how can we add more emphasis on reduction of oil dependency as an element of this grand strategy? "Oil," Pollack acknowledges, "is the lifeblood of the international economic order and probably will be for some decades to come, try as we might (and should) to end that dependence." Initiating serious discussion among the major oil-dependent states that leads to a workable accord of some sort, it seems to me, will itself be helpful in motivating producing nations toward the kinds of change A Path suggests. Such discussions, and the actions that would follow, would not be sufficient by themselves, but are a necessary component of the set of actions Pollack outlines.
These are only three of many more questions that derive from serious...
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A policy that weds America's interests with its ideals, January 19, 2009
This review is from: A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East (Hardcover)
On the subject of what the US should do in the Middle East, Ken Pollack has written perhaps the most ambitious and memorable book in recent years. Pollack acknowldedges the magnitude of redirecting American policy and constantly reminds his audience that it will not be easy and that it cannot happen overnight, but that it is absolutely necessary. One of his main criticisms of US policy in the Middle East to date is that we've tried to do 'too much with too little resources, time, and effort.' Pollack then sets out to identify America's interests in the Middle East and how our policy can protect those interests without selling out America's ideals.
An important aspect of Pollack's discussion of America's interests in the Middle East is that he doesn't confuse them with the threats we face from the region, such as terrorism. He speaks of the concept of stability and while many of our interests are served by the preservation of stability, it does not mean stability itself is one of America's interests. On that subject, Pollack identifies oil, Israel, our Arab allies, and nonproliferation as America's interests. Pollack makes convincing arguments on each of these topics, but does so in a way that doesn't adhere to any singular ideological framework. For example, he recognizes that in the short term, the preventing the sudden loss of oil production is absolutely in America's (and the world's) interests, but that keeping the price of oil low is not. On the matter of Israel, Pollack makes a very convincing argument that while America's partnership does cause problems for the US, it's not nearly as problematic as it's commonly portrayed to be. For example, the relationship has zero impact on oil exports, it hasn't kept the US from having strong relationships with Arab governments, and there isn't much we want from Arab states that we aren't already getting that could be achieved by cutting ties to Israel.
Another intersting aspect of Pollack's argument is that he credits the Bush administration's intent in the region, and that at least on paper, the ideas behind these policies should be continued, it's the execution of the policies that need adjusting. Speaking to that topic, Pollack devotes chapters at the end of his book to Iraq, Iran, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A Path Out of the Desert is an accessible and compelling read. Pollack pulls no punches here....he lays out what America's long term interests in the region are, and how we can go about protecting them. He reminds his readers throughout the book that change is coming to the Middle East whether we want it to or not, and that the US can either sit back and hope that change benefits us, or we can engage the region in a more intelligent way.
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