Customer Reviews

Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This scholarly work by Prof. Khalidi offers a highly readable history of the Middle East by delving into the numerous historical events that shaped the current situation, presenting these events from the perspectives of the different protagonists and analysing their motives. The imperial aspirations of the big powers from the 19th century, their Cold War and post-Cold War rivalry, provide the background to their continuing influence in this region through their support for venal elites who run some of their client states. The imperial embrace of weak nations under various pretexts such as stability and democracy is often a kiss of death in the longer term. While countries in many other regions have been able to partially extricate themselves from big power politics, the Middle East remains an area big powers still control through client states governed mostly by the undemocratic rulers who rely on external support for their continuation in power. Western readers whose knowledge of the region is based on sanitised versions of world events by "TV experts" and political spin doctors will find this book disturbing.

This is an important book from the well known scholar Rashid Khalidi whose previosu writings have usually focused on the Arab-Israei conflict.(The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood). However he has, of late, expanded his interests to examine the entire Middle East and particularly the 'western' influence and meddling in the region.

In this work he seeks to examine the role of the Cold War in the Middle East. For a long time scholars have spoken of what is called an 'Arab Cold War', the internal struggle between Arab regimes who were allied with the U.S and Russia. Egypt was a lynchpin in this for the Egyptian Nationalist government of Nasser and Sadat flirted with he Soviets for some twenty years. Nasserism also influenced revolutions in Yemen and attempted coups in Jordan and Lebanon, as well as Baghdad. Syria under the Ba'ath and the Asad family was a close ally of the Soviets. So was Iraq under the Ba'ath. On the other side were the Saudis, the Gulf States, Egypt after 1980, Jordan's King Hussein, the Yemenite royalists, Baghdad before 1968 and Turkey. Lebanon was always problematic, torn by chaos after 1976 it had numerous influences. The Palestinians too curried favor with the Soviets, especially the PFLP and George Habash.

Islamism and its rise among the Brotherhood, Hamas, and particularly in Iran in 1979 placed a third counterbalance to this Cold War reivalry in the region. Herein lies the problem with the Khalidi analysis. Khalidi wants to show that the U.S and Soviet Union 'sowed crises' in the Middle East. This follows in the footsteps of the older idea that the carving up of the region in 1918 by Europeans also 'sowed' the problems of today. But both of these views neglect Arab agency. What of Mumar Qadafi of Libya, Nasser and the Saudis? What of the Shah and the Ayatollah. All of these men used the West and operated within the contexts they needed to and each in their own way also stood up to the West. This is not to mention Saddam Hussein whose 1991 Gulf War actually pitted him against the U.S and the Russians along with others.

Ibn Saud and the rise of Saudi predates both the 1918 carving up of the Ottoman empire and the Cold War. Hardly a tool of U.S policy the Saudis have worked with the U.S and extended their influence. The revolutionary regimes, such as Nasser, also played the West, sometimes using Western money to build the Aswan Dam and inviting Soviet advisors to help them fight the Israelis. Israel too, now seen as a close aly of the U.S, once coveted close relations with the Soviets.

To ascribe all that has happaned in the Middle East to 'the west' and blame it on the Cold War ignored the agency of the Arab, Persian, Turkish, Jewish and other peoples in the region. Far from always being puppets they had great agecny, their own reolutions and movements and they choose when and where to fight their wars, wars that forced the West into the region in many cases. The U.S in fact long ignored the Middle East between 1948 and 1956 until the Suez crises for Ike to take the side of Egypt against the UK, hardly an example of Cold War 'sowing crises'.

This book is important but places too much emphasis on the importance of the West and fails to see the important role that local rulers played in decision making. While the fad is to blame others for the problems of the Middle East this book doesn't give local people credit where credit is due for their innovations and political experiments.

Seth J. Frantzman

Khalidi takes a historical perspective on the Middle East and its crisis yet uses the lens of foreign involvement as the independent variable throughout. As a result he will leave some details in, others out, add a few interweaving points in order to claim that the U.S., Russia, France and Britain among others have 'sown' the seeds of crisis.

The argument holds water, especially in regards to the Cold War. However, this is not to ignore the fact that internal Arab disputes and their own 'cold war' and realism's hold on dictatorships have given them a few problems all their own. While the U.S. in the last decade has meddled greatly in Iraq and Afghanistan it cannot be said that all of the middle east is still a product of foreign meddling. The middle east is in the international economy and so is its oil. It was rudely introduced to realpolitik in the post WWI era and is becoming quite proficient in the skill today.

It is possible to 'help' too much. Khalidi's description of Lebanon's over-dependence on foreign sources is thought-provoking at best. I don't think world powers are the only pieces of leverage that could extract a tight fisted dictator... then again on this day in summer 2011 my words our hindsight, Khalidi didn't see this coming.

I enjoyed this book immensely. I found it to be logical in explaining the cold war era, as it also incorporated the effect it had on the Middle East. It was a great eye-opener showing the US and Soviet Unions struggle to gain dominance and power over the Middle East. I was actually thinking after I had read it `what would have been different if the US had not won the cold war with the Soviet Unions demise'?

A very good read! Left me thinking!

I am always interested in critical reviews of this subject. But I could not read very far into this book because of its initial premise, that the Cold War was like a division championship playoff between the Red Sox and the Yankees - people of good will could prefer either the Red Sox or the Yankees, it was just a playoff game with no moral principle at stake.

That is just wrong.

I don't see how any knowledgeable person could regard the Cold War as a simple contest between two morally equivalent "superpowers".

One of them - my side - made plenty of mistakes, as is common in human institutions.

The other side was consistently motivated by evil. Its mistakes were tactical, whereas those of my side were sometimes tactical, and sometimes involved a moral lapse. The latter failure was never present on the other side, since it never was governed by morality.

Perhaps there are some useful messages in this book. I probably won't ever find them. For me the book is unreadable - it is like a history of WW II that starts by stating that the Nazis and the Allies were just two contenders in a sporting match.