The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East (Columbia/Hurst) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Unquestionably, the United States had to react to the events of 9/11..." (more)
Key Phrases: refusal front, nuclear programme, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Saddam Hussein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A concise and penetrating summation of the current scene." -- Dexter Filkins, New York Times Book Review

"Roy offers an ironic account worthy of Jonathan Swift." -- L. Carl Brown, Foreign Affairs

Review

"In this small but powerful book, Olivier Roy has discovered the Archimedean point from which all existing narratives of Muslim politics in the Middle East may be overthrown. This point is a simple one: that the Middle East has no political integrity of its own but is defined rather by its relationship with the West. Having dispensed with the old-fashioned narratives that still structure Leftist accounts of neo-colonialism (with their fetishism of Captain Cook-like moments of first contact between peoples), Roy is able to write a trenchant account showing how the Middle East has quite transformed the political categories of Left and Right, particularly in the United States. This has allowed him to write what is perhaps the first combined history of political thought in the West and the Middle East." -- Faisal Devji, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, and author of Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (March 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231700326
• ISBN-13: 978-0231700320
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #634,979 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brief and to the Point, June 11, 2008

By	Dennis J. Mcguckian (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a terrific book that summarizing the current political situation in the Middle East. It covers the effects of the war in Iraq on the key issues there, which need to addressed if we want to lessen the instability in that region.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a primer for the layperson, March 20, 2009

By	Julia Flyte - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This is an easy book to read in one sense (159 pages, doubled spaced) but it's hard going in many other senses. It's a scholarly read which tends to assume that the reader is already highly familiar with the Middle East and is comfortable with distinctions such as "Islamic Pan-Arabism" vs "Pan-Islamism". I had to spend a lot of time re-reading paragraphs until I understood them. It would have benefited from a glossary to explain terms such as irrendentism, millenaranism and ummah.

Essentially Roy's argument is that the Middle East is significantly more fractured than commonly thought and that Islam is not a uniting denominator. He believes that most countries in the region now accept the existence of Israel and that peace is more attainable than ever before. He also believes that the West should avoid focusing on Al Qaeda (which sources most of its personnel from outside the Middle East) and instead concentrate on Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood if we are to achieve political stability in the region.

The sections that I found most interesting were when he analyzes US foreign policy (bear in mind that the book was written in 2007) and also when he discusses Iran. (He writes: "the day the United States bombs Iran, all the Arab capitals will protest but more than one will be quietly jubilant".) However I wondered about the support for some of his statements - eg when he says that the Saudis don't have any real quarrels with Israel but feel duty-bound to pronounce anti-Zionist rhetoric to remain credible (also, if this is true, what practical significance does this distinction have?). Or when he says that Iran's Holocaust denial is not an expression of grassroots anti-Semitism (rather, he says, it is negating the justification for the existence of Israel).

I'm not sure what audience this book was intended for (presumably Academics and specialists in International Relations), but it's too scholarly in tone to be the primer on the Middle East than this reviewer was hoping for.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, February 7, 2009

By	Michael Rubin "Middle East Quarterly" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Roy, research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, is best known for his work on political Islam. In The Politics of Chaos, he transitions from scholarly research to policy advocacy and presents a sharp indictment of U.S. foreign policy in general and neoconservatives specifically. "While it is fitting to blame the arrogance and incompetence of the Bush administration" for instability in the Middle East, Roy argues, "the ideas that drove the American neoconservatives are still part of the current climate, muddying the traditional left/right divide."

Some of Roy's criticisms are valid: The Bush administration poorly described its adversary after 9-11, and postwar planning left much to be desired. Roy understands traditional neoconservatism better than most and explains the nuances of neoconservative views toward democratization, civil society, and free markets. He assesses the failure of U.S. democratization policy and suggests the problem underlying U.S. policy has been choosing wrong interlocutors. "Negotiation is always possible and, furthermore, it is desirable," he declares. There follows a plea to engage political Islam and groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Roy's arguments are nuanced. He separates terrorists from Islamists (who campaign for a political entity), from fundamentalists (who seek Islamic law), and from "cultural Muslims" who may promote the veil, for example, but also pave the way for the other two. He examines Arab state and Iranian concerns and grievances and argues that the West should "abandon" the global war on terror because it "leads to the wrong perceptions and policies."

However, Roy's polemic falls flat. He is sloppy, has a tendency to make straw-man arguments, and shows little understanding of how U.S. policy develops. Rather than use primary source documents to support his descriptions of U.S. policy and its practitioners' motivations, Roy provides vanity references to his own work. On occasion, he appears to embellish. He relates a November 2001 conversation with the "Deputy Secretary of State for Defense" in which Paul Wolfowitz confided that the "true objective" was "Iraq, of course!," comments both inconsistent with Wolfowitz's style and fact.

To advance his belief that the campaign against Iraq was preordained, he ignores the 2002 National Security Strategy that outlined the concept of preemption, Saddam's bluff with regard to his weapons capability, and the fact that presidents make decisions based on the intelligence they have, which is sometimes flawed. Nor is Roy's dismissal of Saddam's relationship with radical Islam justified. The official study of documents seized from Iraq demonstrates cooperation between Saddam's regime and Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's number two.[1]

Roy also gets wrong the discussions surrounding the decision to occupy Iraq. In contrast to his narrative, neoconservatives sought to transfer sovereignty and authority immediately to a new Iraqi council; they opposed occupation of Iraq until the president made the decision.

Exaggeration undercuts his analysis in other ways. He criticizes neoconservative "unconditional" support for Israel, an argument that may play well in Europe. Neoconservatives certainly argue that the United States should not force allies to make concessions to terrorism, but the same neoconservatives also condemned Israel for its earlier military dealings with China. This suggests that Israel is not the primary issue but rather U.S. national security.

Rather than provide a basis upon which U.S. policymakers might better approach the Middle East, as some of the book's endorsers have suggested, what Roy produces is an impassioned plea for surrender, and through sloppy methodology and logical somersaults, he provides yet more evidence of just how poor a resource so many professors are when it comes to formulating foreign and national security policies.

Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2009