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July 27, 2008
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Amirs, Admirals and Desert Sailors
Bahrain, the U.S. Navy and the Arabian Gulf
by David F. Winkler
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2007. 244 pp. $34.95
Reviewed by Dale Eikmeier
U.S. Army War College
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1937 Written as a history of the U.S. Navy's relationship with Bahrain and aimed at naval historians, Winkler's book fills a void for scholars of U.S. Middle East policy. Winkler, director of programs and development at the Naval Historical Foundation in Washington, D.C., chronicles the history of the U.S. naval presence in the Persian Gulf from the mid-twentieth century's petroleum and shipping offices to the present-day headquarters of the Fifth Fleet. He reveals how a series of naval officers with scant foreign policy experience forged productive relationships with Bahrain's rulers based on mutual respect, the Navy's need for oil, and Bahrain's need for security. As Sheikh Essa is quoted saying to an American, "Your men and women, the ships and aircraft of the Fifth Fleet, are a mountain of fire that separates us from the Iranians, and that presence of naval forces is what has given us peace and prosperity." This mutually beneficial relationship became the foundation for the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf and helped shape U.S. policy in the region. Winkler also provides a glimpse into the occasional tensions between the Navy's strategic view of the region, driven by its need for secure access to fuel oil, and the U.S. government's more complex and bipolar Middle East policies. Readers will find many examples of how simple courtesies, honors, and personal relationships influenced strategic decisions and how something as seemingly inconsequential as a Department of Defense school for military and international children played a critical role in tough negotiations. The book offers an easy read and is well researched with primary-source interviews and reviews of original source material and documents, all footnoted. The organization is logical with well-titled chapters. Although Winkler's book is not a detailed history of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, it adds breadth and perspective to any collection on Middle East policy and history.

Arms Transfers to Israel
The Strategic Logic behind American Military Assistance
by David Rodman
Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2007. 129 pp. $45
Reviewed by David Schenker
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1938 Rodman's study of U.S. arms transfers to Israel provides important insight into this critical and oft-misunderstood element of the strategic relationship. Relying on extensive U.S. archival research, the book details the evolution of this relationship from Israel's early reliance on Western European equipment through the start of U.S. arms sales during the Johnson era to the end of the Reagan administration. Rodman's thesis is that arms sales have provided Washington with critical leverage over Israel, enabling the United States to "wring concessions out of Israel in order to advance American national interests," particularly during Middle East wars. For Israel's part, according to Rodman, weapons purchases from the United States constitute an acceptable sacrifice of autonomy for security. The slender volume is a quick and absorbing read and is full of well-footnoted examples illustrating the complicated dynamics of U.S. and Israeli decision-making related to weapons sales. The argument is convincing. Rodman points out that U.S. efforts to influence other Israeli policies via this lever, such as its pursuit of a nuclear weapons program, have proved decidedly less effective except during Middle East wars, when, as Rodman argues, U.S. influence on Israeli policy has been dramatic. In 1967, pressure from Washington forced Israeli restraint in the face of Egyptian provocations, such as the closure of the Straits of Tiran. When the United States recognized the futility of diplomacy, Rodman says, Washington gave the Jewish state a tacit "green light" to embark on war. The same held true, Rodman points out, during the 1969-70 War of Attrition when Israel was compelled to stop its bombing raids against Egypt after Washington threatened to withhold the military aid and diplomatic support necessary for the raids to continue. In perhaps the most striking example, in 1973 U.S. pressure appears to have dissuaded the government of Israel from taking preemptive military action against Syria and Egypt. "Caught between the Israel Defense Forces General Staff and the Nixon administration," Rodman says, "the Meir government chose to follow the position of Israel's patron rather than the advice of its own military experts." After the outbreak of hostilities, the Meir government accepted the Nixon administration's cease-fire proposal because, Rodman writes, Israel had no alternative but to "trade the postwar concessions desired by the United States for continued American [military] support." As Rodman deftly points out, Israel's conduct during the 1967-1973 period is "not comprehensible unless it is examined in the context of the American-Israeli patron-client relationship." Arms Transfers to Israel provides a comprehensive picture of the origins and development of the U.S.-Israeli military assistance relationship. In doing so, although not intentionally, Rodman's study goes a long way toward dispelling the now fashionable myth that the strategic relationship with Israel is driven primarily by domestic U.S. politics.

Bazaar and State in Iran
The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace
by Arang Keshavarzian
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 302 pp. $91
Reviewed by Patrick Clawson
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1939 At the time of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, two-thirds of Iran's wholesale trade and at least 30 percent of imports were transacted through Tehran's bazaar merchants. The merchandise did not necessarily physically pass through the bazaar, but the bazaaris controlled the trade. The bazaar was the national commercial emporium for the import of almost all consumer goods and for many intermediate goods used as inputs in manufacturing. The bazaar was also an important public forum; the exchange of information that took place as part of the hustle and bustle of trade was arguably the most important conduit for news for the key opinion-shapers in society. And the bazaar merchants were a powerhouse in Iranian politics through their financial and political support for traditional clerics. It is little exaggeration to say that the bazaar made the revolution. Based on many interviews in the bazaar as well as extensive research in original sources, Keshavarzian, assistant professor of government at Connecticut College, documents how the power of the pre-revolution bazaar was a product of the shah's modernizing and development approach that, paradoxically, had been intended to undercut the bazaar. The state's new, formal structures allowed little room for the social networks and personal contacts that defined bazaar culture; since such interpersonal relations were central to how Iranians approached business, the bazaar's power was magnified. To continue the paradox, today the Islamic Revolution has undercut the strength of the bazaar despite being sympathetic to bazaar merchants. Every aspect of life under the Islamic Republic is based on individual-level patronage, not on formal structures. The bazaar cannot compete in influence with the network of social relations formed through ties to influential clerics and to revolutionary institutions, such as the foundations that control much of the Islamic Republic's economy. Meanwhile, patronage via the revolutionary elite has exposed and inflamed internal divisions in the bazaar, undercutting group solidarity. As a result, the Islamic Republic has—without at all intending to do so—succeeded at forcing the transformation the shah desired but could not accomplish. Today the modernization of the bazaar has been accomplished through the imposition of contemporary transaction methods: contractually based exchanges, arm's-length exchanges, standardized goods, and fixed prices. The bazaar merchant's reputation is no longer the key to his business success. And the bazaar no longer maintains the kind of internal cohesion necessary to mobilize the business community for political ends. So much so, Keshavarzian convincingly shows, that Tehran's bazaar is no longer an important political force.

Between Foreigners and Shi‘is
by Daniel Tsadik
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. 295 pp. $60
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1940 There is often an inverse relationship between the policy importance of a country such as Iran and the seriousness of the books published about it. Most authors give short shrift to history; few add anything new to their discussion. Happily, Tsadik's study of the Jewish community in nineteenth-century Iran is an exception. Between Foreigners and Shi‘is incorporates Persian, Hebrew, Judeo-Persian, Arabic, and European-language documents. Tsadik is a traditional historian who has held a number of academic fellowships in the United States, Germany, and Israel. His prose is dense and detailed, yet readable. He footnotes prolifically and supports analysis with fact. He begins with an overview of Shi‘i law with regard to Jews and other minorities on issues such as cleanliness (May Muslims eat food touched by Jews?), intermarriage, inheritance, and punishment. He then follows the Jewish community through the nineteenth century and contextualizes the community in the broader sweep of Iranian state and society. The latter half of the nineteenth century was a period of rapid and formative change, but Tsadik makes Iran's complex politics and development accessible to the non-expert. Persecution and anti-Semitism occurred at all levels of Iranian society but was not uniform over time or place. Just because the shah advocated tolerance, for example, did not mean that local authorities took such sentiment to heart. And even if governors and district heads were lenient, the Shi‘i clergy might not be. Thus, in 1889, Jews in Isfahan faced prohibitions on wearing cloaks, going outside on wet days (when rainwater might transfer their impurity to others), touching food, speaking loudly, or purchasing any goods in the market. Jews in other areas of the country fared better. Between periods of relative tranquility, the Jewish community in Iran suffered blood libel, forced conversion, and pogroms. Iranian Jews often turned to their European co-religionists for help. Where once Iranian Jews had no recourse but to suffer in silence, by the mid-nineteenth century, the Jewish community in Iran was in contact with its European and Canadian counterparts to petition on their behalf for relief from persecution. Persecution became a barometer, if not engine, of globalization. Tsadik argues that Iran's treatment of minorities was a crucial facet of the country's identity. Was (and is) Iran a country for all Iranians, or for Muslim Iranians first and foremost? It is a question relevant to recent Iranian history—Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, first gained prominence for his opposition to the notion of equality under the law for all Iranians. Today, this remains a critical question for all of Iran's minorities, if not millions of Iranians who emphasize national identity over religion. Between Foreigners and Shi‘is is an important addition to the library of those interested in Iranian or Jewish history. Hopefully, Tsadik will produce a sequel continuing his narrative through the twentieth century to the present day.

Blood and Belief
The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence
by Aliza Marcus
New York: New York University Press, 2007. 349 pp. $35
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1941 Most writers on the Kurdistan Workers' Party, best known by its Kurdish language acronym, the PKK, substitute advocacy for accuracy, so their books about the PKK tend to have limited practical use for policymakers. But Marcus, a former international correspondent for The Boston Globe who spent several years covering the PKK, has done important work in Blood and Belief. While sympathetic to her subject—the substitution of "militant" for "terrorist" grates—she retains professional integrity and does not skip over inconvenient parts of the PKK narrative such as its predilection to target Kurdish and leftist competitors rather than the Turks; the patronage it has received from the Syrian government; and the important role of European states and the Kurdish diaspora in its funding. Blood and Belief has four sections: on PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan's life and the PKK's beginnings; the PKK's consolidation of power; the civil war; and the aftermath of Öcalan's 1999 capture. The Kurds inhabit a region that spans Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, and Marcus does not let national borders constrain her analysis. Events in Iraq—such as the squabbling between Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani and Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masoud Barzani—influenced Öcalan, who concluded that he should tolerate no dissent. "We believed in socialism, and it was a Stalin-type of socialism we believed in," one early PKK member relates. Steeped in Kurdish and Turkish history, Marcus provides better context than many other journalists who have tackled this subject. The PKK took hold, she shows, largely because of the weakness of the Turkish state in the 1970s. Between 1975 and 1980, the Turkish government barely functioned. After the 1980 coup, the Turkish military restored order. But when Barzani offered the PKK shelter in northern Iraq, the group remained beyond reach, allowing it to plan and launch a full-scale guerilla war against Turkey. Marcus concludes that the group's continued survival in Turkey is because, at some level and among some constituents, it remains popular; its support is not all driven by intimidation as some Turkish analysts claim. Marcus impressively covers the civil war years (1984-99), and her narrative, combining dialogue and context, is rich and accessible. While many journalists and authors satisfy themselves with a single round of interviews, Marcus concentrates not on active PKK members, who she realizes do not enjoy the freedom to speak, but rather on past members, villagers, and family members whose accounts she cross-checks. She also incorporates Turkish language press accounts and interviews with Turkish officials. It is unfortunate, though, that her coverage of PKK resurgence, between 1999 and 2007, is just thirteen pages long. An exploration of how Öcalan has retained control while in prison and where he and his henchmen might take the PKK has seldom been more relevant. One hopes that this new chapter of PKK history will become the basis for a sequel.

China and Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-Imperial World
by John W. Garver
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. 392 pp. $24.95
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1942 Between 2005 and 2007, Iranian trade with China doubled to US$20 billion. On September 30, 2007, the Chinese ambassador to Tehran said, "China will never do anything against Iran's interests."[1] With the increase of relations between Beijing and Tehran, so, too, have U.S. policy concerns grown. Despite that, the literature on Sino-Iranian relations has been sparse until now. To fill the gap, Garver, a China scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology, puts together an impressive exploration of Sino-Iranian relations in China and Iran. Unfortunately, he breezes through twenty centuries of pre-modern Sino-Iranian relations in just eight pages, depriving the reader of context for the recent flourishing. Garver may be too cynical when he suggests that the Chinese and Iranian emphasis on their earlier ties is convenient revisionism for there does exist a rich Persian literature—yet to be translated into any Western language—discussing earlier generations of ties with China.[2] Garver's focus begins in 1971 when the People's Republic of China established relations with Iran. He then traces the ebb and flow of contacts through China's liberalization and Iran's Islamic Revolution. Throughout much of the 1990s, Tehran and Beijing found common ground in an "anti-[U.S.] hegemony partnership." Separate chapters examine the Iranian approach to China's Muslim Uighur population; Chinese assistance to Iran's nuclear program; and Sino-Iranian energy cooperation. China and Iran is straightforward, well-indexed, and well-sourced, if a bit dry. Garver does not offer earthshaking analysis, but for any policy practitioner wishing to understand the context of the current Sino-Iranian embrace, China and Iran offers a handy, reliable resource. [1] Fars News Agency, Oct. 1, 2007 .
[2] See Ali Akbar Khata‘, Khataynameh [The Book of China], Iraj Afshar, ed. (Tehran: Center for Documents of Asian Culture, 1993).

Contemporary Politics in the Middle East
by Beverley Milton-Edwards
Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2007. 311 pp. $26.95
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1943 This second edition of a textbook incorporates changes that have occurred in the Middle East since Milton-Edwards, a reader at Queens University in Belfast, wrote its first edition in 1999. Alas, a mediocre work updated remains mediocre. Beginning with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Milton-Edwards arranges her study according to a set of themes. Her first chapter examines colonial rule, which "disrupted, fractured, and shattered" a way of life that had developed over four centuries of Ottoman rule. Certainly, the establishment of the British and French mandates changed the region, but did stability really mark 400 years of Ottoman rule in the Middle East? She dates the "capitalist adventure" in the region to the arrival of European merchants in the nineteenth century—but their trade with Egypt and the Levant predates that by centuries, as any cotton merchant in Alexandria could attest. Her antipathy to the colonial era leads to scapegoating. It is one thing to criticize the French and the British for not supporting Arab or Kurdish independence, but it is quite another to blame them for abortive Armenian statehood. In this, the Soviet Union was far more culpable. Perhaps some of this laziness is the result of her obsession with Edward Said's Orientalism, which prizes opinion over fact and the amplification of external grievance over internal accountability. While she addresses the debate over Orientalism, she only paraphrases Princeton historian Bernard Lewis's counterarguments, and even then, inaccurately. Sloppiness is pervasive in the textbook, whether in describing the length of Ottoman rule (far more than 400 years), showing ignorance of the concept of "Iraq," which predates establishment of that nation-state's borders, or ignorance of the fact that Mandatory Palestine initially included the territory that became Jordan. Other inaccuracies undercut her analysis. She assumes—falsely—that Palestinian Arab identity was consistent over time when it is very much a product of the 1920s and 1930s. She treats too uncritically Israeli historian Benny Morris's revisionism, which is currently in fashion among post-modern historians more concerned with politics than historical fact. Subsequent chapters address nationalism, political economy, war, politics, women, democratization, and "Pax Americana." Here, too, her bias is pervasive. Milton-Edwards condemns forced economic liberalization as a failure but does not address the crippling effect of corruption. Is Egypt's economy really the fault of outside powers, or might President Hosni Mubarak have had something to do with it? Arab-centrism undercuts other analyses. Has the Arab-Israeli conflict really dominated the political life of the entire Middle East for decades? Students assigned Contemporary Politics in the Middle East may become conversant in the latest academic theories, but they will not gain insight into the history or politics of the region. Perhaps if Milton-Edwards spent more time fact-checking than explaining the Orientalist villainy of Walt Disney's Aladdin, her textbook would be improved.

Cooperating Rivals: The Riparian Politics of the Jordan River Basin
by Jeffrey Sosland
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. 293 pp. $80
Reviewed by Patrick Clawson Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1944 Sosland, assistant professor of international business and trade at the American University, states that there is no record of any war any time in the last 4,000 years having been precipitated by water scarcity. So much for all that nonsense about "water wars," especially in the Israeli-Arab conflict. In fact, water in that context has proven to be more a subject for cooperation than for military conflict. Not that this cooperation has been smooth. Indeed, the heart of Sosland's account is the details of the tough bargaining stands, unilateral actions, and sneaky cheating on agreements in which all sides have engaged. A particularly entertaining chapter sets out the 1967-94 Jordanian-Israeli secret cooperation that involved periodic high-level meetings at a picnic table on the banks of the Yarmouk River near the spot where it feeds into the Jordan. That cooperation illustrates one of Sosland's main conclusions, namely, secret cooperation facilitated by a third party—usually the U.S. government—has worked best. It also undercuts the claim in his conclusions that multilateralism (that is, the involvement of many states in a broad negotiating process) has been useful. To the contrary, Sosland's account establishes that the multilateral water talks launched at the 1991 Madrid peace conference accomplished little, despite Washington's best efforts. Sosland's account is very much that of a political scientist concerned about governments, not that of an economist or hydrologist. He barely mentions how subsidized water prices have encouraged farming, which consumes the vast majority of water throughout the Jordan River basin. He only makes passing references to advances in technology that have allowed the basin's agricultural output to more than double in the last few decades without consuming more water. He hardly refers to the increasing use of recycled water in agriculture and industry, which saves fresh water for urban consumers. In short, Cooperating Rivals is strong at describing the cooperation of governments but weak on analyzing the overall water problems of the Jordan basin.

Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents
by Robert Irwin
New York: The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc., 2006. 410 pp. $35 ($16.95, paper)
Reviewed by Nathan Alexander
Troy University
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1945 Whatever specialists thought of Edward Said's Orientalism,[1] published in 1978, the book had major impact on Middle East studies. Its thesis was that "Orientalism" was a "hegemonic discourse of imperialism" that "constrains everything that can be written and thought in the West about the Orient, and particularly about Islam and the Arabs." Despite being panned by Arab and non-Arab critics, the book became a best-seller and its author a celebrity. Identifying himself as a Palestinian, Said launched vituperative attacks on his critics and demonized as "racist" those who opposed his views on the Middle East. Irwin, Middle East editor of the Times Literary Supplement, accomplishes two things in his book Dangerous Knowledge. First, the book is a history of "Orientalism," or Western scholarship of the Middle East, India, and the Far East. Irwin begins with the ancient Greeks and concludes with a survey of Arab scholars writing on the Orient today. This magnificent survey covers French, German, Russian, Dutch, English, Latin, and Arabic scholarship. Irwin argues that while interest in the Orient was often influenced by Western Christianity, Western interest in the Islamic world was, for the most part, of negligible cultural significance. When scholarship on the Orient increased in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the "Orientalists" tended to either exaggerate the virtues of the Orient or be overt anti-imperialists. Irwin's second purpose is to counter the "malignant charlatanry" that lies behind Said's Orientalism. It was unlikely, Irwin writes, that Said bothered to read many of the Orientalists who serve as his arch villains. In fact, Said knew so little of the field he was writing about that he spent much of his time insulting the scholar to whom he was unwittingly most indebted: Bernard Lewis. While Said frequently failed to properly attribute the sources of Orientalism, it is possible he was simply unaware of them. Said's work, Irwin writes, has the merits of a good novel. "It is exciting; it is packed with lots of sinister villains, as well as an outnumbered band of goodies, and the picture that it presents of the world is richly imagined but essentially false." The real question posed by Orientalism is how it ever received acclaim in the first place. It is "a scandal and damning comment on the quality of intellectual life in Britain," he concludes. The same scandal, sadly, exists in the rest of the Western world, and especially the United States, whence the study comes. [1] Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (New York: Pantheon, 1978).

The Development of Trans-Jordan, 1929-1939
A History of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
by Maan Abu Nowar
Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 2006. 392 pp. $64
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1946 Because the archives of many Arab countries are either sealed or highly restricted, writings by Arab government officials are often of rare value. Not so, however, in this study of Jordan's early development. Abu Nowar began his career in the Arab Legion, rose to become a major-general, and then served as the Hashemite Kingdom's ambassador to London and briefly as its deputy prime minister. His flawed earlier works focused on the Jordanian role in Israel's war of independence and Jordan's own efforts to free itself from British tutelage.[1] His latest work is based on a Oxford University doctoral thesis and argues that Trans-Jordan was a distinct geographic entity (rather than an arbitrary creation of European diplomats) and that "Zionist and pro-Zionist British officials keenly endeavoured to remove him [King Abdullah I] from the country and annex it to Palestine." The latter assertion reflects poorly not only on Abu Nowar's scholarship, but also on that of his Oxford tutors. Throughout his book, "Zionist and pro-Zionist British officials" are employed as useful straw men or foils against whom Abu Nowar can demonstrate Abdullah's independence and acumen. The problem is that Abu Nowar seldom names these bogeymen, and when he does, his labeling is inaccurate: Harry St. John Philby, for example, was a committed Arabist who subsequently became an advisor to the founder of Saudi Arabia. The founders of the State of Israel would be shocked to learn that he stood in their camp. Nor would the masters whom Abu Nowar once served necessarily agree with his revisionism: Jordanian leaders tended to take a far more pragmatic approach to Zionism, especially given the challenges they faced from within the Arab world. His treatment of the 1936-39 Arab Revolt makes little attempt at academic objectivity: He neither mentions Arab massacres of Jews nor the incitement campaign of Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, whose strategy included outreach to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. The Development of Trans-Jordan disappoints in other ways. Analysis of Arab Legion activity is drawn exclusively from British documents rather than Jordanian sources. Discussion of political meetings within Jordanian society is slightly more useful, as Abu Nowar incorporates contemporaneous Arabic newspaper accounts not readily available elsewhere. Overall, Abu Nowar's doctoral dissertation adds little to an understanding of Jordan's birth pangs and consolidation as a political entity—but it does demonstrate how far scholarship at Oxford University has declined. [1] The Jordanian-Israeli War, 1948-1951 (Reading: Ithaca, 2003); The Struggle for Independence, 1939-1947 (Reading: Ithaca, 2001). See Efraim Karsh review of the former, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2004 , p. 84-5.

For the Love of Zion
by Elwood McQuaid
Bellmawr, N.J.: The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, Inc., 2007. 294 pp. $12.95
Reviewed by David H. Wenkel
Wonder Lake, Ill.
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1947 McQuaid, editor-in-chief of Israel My Glory magazine, wrote For the Love of Zion from a self-avowed evangelical stance, and the book will interest journalists and researchers striving to understand Christian Zionism. While seeking "fair concessions from both sides," he staunchly supports the Jewish state and avers that it must use military power in order to survive. His intention is to locate Israel within a Middle Eastern narrative that goes beyond the headlines. Beyond sketching a broad story line, it is hard to identify whether McQuaid is writing for the church or the state. At times, he appears to be writing about political solutions such as "survival through strength," and other times, he appears to be writing about ecclesiastical solutions such as "liberation that comes through faith." The lack of a clear strand tying his meta-narrative together gives the reader the impression that McQuaid has written a string of pearls. Further, he does not cite any evangelical commentaries when he exposits biblical passages although he does have a firm understanding of relevant theological systems such as dispensationalism and replacement theology. Most of his biblical exposition is typical for classical dispensationalists. McQuaid refers to many primary sources, such as newspapers and speeches. His style is accessible to a wide audience, and he does not assume a technical knowledge on the part of the reader. The expert on the Middle East will probably not gain much factual knowledge but will benefit from how the narrative is portrayed. What is particularly interesting about his "evangelical" narrative of the Middle East is the shallowness of discussion about evangelizing. Whereas traditional evangelicals stress missionary activity among non-Christian populations, McQuaid does not. Nor does he sketch how it would relate to public policy. Again, this problem may be related to the way in which the obligations for the church and state are mixed together in For the Love of Zion. Seeking military and political justice is entirely compatible with the Christian message and his dispensational theology, e.g., Rom 13, but this should be carried out by the state. The church, on the other hand, privileges loving enemies, e.g., Matt 5:44. For trend watchers, such confusion may be this book's most important element.

From Africa to Afghanistan
With Richards and NATO to Kabul
by Greg Mills
Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 2007. 260 pp. $34.95
Reviewed by Christopher Coker
London School of Economics
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1948 The title of Mills' book has an imperial ring to it, for there is something intrepid about the author, who traveled from his native South Africa to Afghanistan to serve as a senior civilian advisor to General David Richards, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commander from May 2006 to February 2007. "I want to rub off my British habits and go off with Feisal for a bit. Amusing job and all new country." Mills here quotes T. E. Lawrence writing to a colleague in 1916. Mills is a South African academic although at times it seems he would like to have been a soldier. His memoir shows that he understands war better than most and saw it up close in his many journeys beyond International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul. Mills is a bold traveler, and like Lawrence, his interest flares. He projects a passionate commitment to the success of the mission. Taking a cue from Lawrence, Mills entitles one of his chapters "The Eighth Pillar of Wisdom" and offers an illuminating analysis of the problems facing the West, not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq, which he attributes to policymakers' inadequate knowledge of those countries' histories. His is some of the best writing on counterinsurgency from someone who witnessed it in the course of frequent visits into the field. It is an amusing read at times, as he offers us mini-vignettes of life in the cantonment — originally built as a British officers' mess in the second Afghan invasion of the 1870s — that ISAF calls headquarters. The ISAF staff, like Mills himself, worked incredibly hard, and as I witnessed myself on a visit in August 2007, the commitment of the senior officers is unqualified, even daunting. If NATO fails, it will not be for lack of hard work. Mills departed Afghanistan with few illusions and, perhaps, fewer hopes but with an unqualified commitment to the mission. In Richards, he served a remarkable commander; in the author of this book, Richards appointed an outstanding advisor who has an understanding of the limits of the possible. This is more than can be said for the politicians to whom Richards had to report.

From Patriarchy to Empowerment
Women's Participation, Movements, and Rights in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia
Edited by Valentine M. Moghadam. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007. 384 pp. $45.
Reviewed by Judith Colp Rubin
coauthor of Yassir Arafat: A Political Biography
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1949 The title of Moghadam's collection of essays promises stories of women's progression "from patriarchy to empowerment" but several entries indicate otherwise: Bedouin girls in Israel dropping out of high school; women in Nepal suffering from depression, and women across the Muslim world facing persecution and legal restrictions. Some of the more informative entries are "Mobilizing Women for Nationalist Agendas," a detailed account of the political status of women in the Palestinian Authority by Deborah J. Gerner, "Feminist Organizing in Tunisia," by Sarah E. Gilman focusing on women's struggles in the most liberated of all the Arab nations, and Nilufer Narli's "Women in Political Parties in Turkey," examining a country in which women have enjoyed a comparatively high level of political rights since the days of Kemal Atäturk. But because many of its essays deal with topics and rely on information at least a decade old, the book suffers from an anachronistic feel; its usefulness as a tool for understanding the current status of women in the region thus suffers. One of the most important essays in the book that attempts to fill this gap is Moghadam's own "Peace-Building and Reconstruction with Women," which describes the status today of women in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian Authority. But this chapter, as well as several others, has a political agenda: Ex-colonial powers are both to blame for many hardships of women in these regions and must improve their plight. In discussing Iraq, Moghadam writes that U.S. reconstruction efforts will not necessarily help women because "they entail the privatization of Iraqi assets and special deals for U.S. corporations." In "Education, Tradition, and Modernization," Sarab Abu-Rabia Queder puts the onus on Israel to prevent more Bedouin girls from dropping out of high school, rather than on the Bedouins themselves, whose culture does not value female education. The book pays little attention to the challenge of Islamism. Moghadam poses an interesting question: In South Africa, Namibia, and Rwanda, three countries whose repressive regimes have been replaced by democracies, women have become significantly more empowered than in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, regions with a much richer historic women's movement. Perhaps the development of democracy and political moderation and the absence of radical Islam are the key factors—points unfortunately not raised in From Patriarchy to Empowerment.

Iran Oil
The New Middle East Challenge to America
by Roger Howard
London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 182 pp. $39.95
Reviewed by Patrick Clawson Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1950 Intelligent, well-informed Europeans—especially but not only leftists—have an impressive ability to profoundly misunderstand the United States. And the problem is not ignorance. Howard, who writes for such respectable British organs as the Guardian, the Spectator, and Jane's Intelligence Review, cites all the right sources and correctly characterizes U.S. interests and policies—only to dismiss them as laughably naive or profoundly stupid. A nontrivial example is the way Howard views the Arab-Israeli dispute. He simply cannot understand why the United States cares about Israel's security. And he regards as axiomatic that Iran's material support to terrorist groups, "if it has ever really assumed such a role at all, is of highly peripheral importance to the Arab-Israeli dispute." Given that Hamas—which both the European Union and the United States list as a terrorist group—proclaims Iran as its principal funder and that the thousands of Katyusha and other rockets fired into Israel by Hezbollah were manufactured in and paid for by Iran, Howard's is quite a remarkable view. Howard also gets his main argument wrong. He claims that U.S. policy toward Iran is driven by that country's oil resources rather than revolutionary Iran's threat to regional peace and international security. Never mind the minor detail that the United States has for more than a decade maintained economic sanctions that forbid American firms from taking up Tehran's offer to invest there. Nor does Howard understand why government control over oil in countries around the world represents a problem for U.S. interests: The difficulty is from artificially-induced shortages that drive up prices and create panics, not from the revenue governments take in by owning oil resources (the record suggests such governments could actually generate more revenue by collecting taxes from freely-operating international oil companies). Also troubling is the readiness of people like Howard to dismiss anything the U.S. government supports even if it is something near and dear to their own value systems. Howard writes, "[P]olicymakers in Washington need to recognize that another government's domestic track record has no necessary bearing on the outside world, and that its behavior within its own borders is ultimately a matter on which only the nationals of that country are in a position to pass judgement." Never mind a raft of international human rights treaties; Howard is ready to proclaim a right to commit genocide if it allows him to criticize the U.S. government. If only Iran Oil were an isolated example of determined ignorance and spiteful anti-Americanism. Unfortunately, it is representative of many such works, though better written and organized than most—characteristics which make its deep flaws all the more obvious.

Iran on the Brink
Rising Workers and Threats of War
by Andreas Malm and Shora Esmailian
London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2007. 262 pp. $90 ($28.95, paper)
Reviewed by Patrick Clawson Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1951 The dramatic polarization of American politics has led leftist critics of the Bush administration to assume that Iran's Islamic Republic cannot be all that bad if President George W. Bush describes it as part of an "axis of evil." Feeding this attitude are suspicions that the crisis over Iran's nuclear program is a tawdry rehash of the dubious intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that helped instigate the Iraq war, or the belief that displaying any concern for the Iranian people plays into the hands of Bush administration warmongers. This narrative leaves little room for concern about what is happening to the people of Iran—even the left-wing Iranian workers' movements that should be natural objects of leftist sympathy. As reporters for the Swedish left-wing weekly Arbetaren (The worker), Malm and Esmailian approach Iran from a position of traditional left-wing concern about workers, human rights, and despotism. They spent much of 2004 traveling around Iran, meeting with those facing the growing repression to which the reform movement was subjected as it was being shut down. Their focus is on ordinary Iranian workers, not on the Westernized intellectuals who usually win foreigners' attention. Malm and Esmailian provide graphic accounts of those workers' suffering under the cruel tyranny of the Islamic Republic and of the vicious repression to which they are subject. Make no mistake: This book is situated firmly in the camp of the hard Left, which sees Israel's evil hand everywhere and cannot imagine Bush ever doing anything good. Malm and Esmailian's discussion of nuclear issues is a mélange of conspiracy theories, ill-informed speculation, and plain error. Iran on the Brink can hardly be recommended as a guide to Iran and the challenges it poses to the region and to world peace. That said, it is nice to see some leftists who are willing to highlight the Islamic Republic's brutal treatment of the poor people of Iran. Malm and Esmailian spend a great deal of time on Iranian history, primarily to highlight the evils inflicted on the country by Western imperialism—disregarding that the development of the country's oil resources is what allowed Iran to modernize under the shah. However, their historical account also brings out in detail what the Islamic Republic works so hard to suppress—namely, that the 1978-79 anti-shah revolution was a broad social movement that was hijacked by Islamists who were distinctly in the minority among the revolutionaries.

Islam and the Everyday World
Public Policy Dilemmas
Edited by Sohrab Behdad and Farhad Nomani. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. 240 pp. $150 ($45.95, paper)
Reviewed by Khaleel Mohammed
San Diego State University
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1952 Jurists in most Muslim countries continue in their rulings to hew to antiquated formulations of Islam, enforcing a crippling separation of the Muslim world from modern, globalized states that rely on secular law to guide their relations with the outside world. Islam and the Everyday World, consisting of eight chapters written by an array of specialists, attempts to discuss the problems that this dynamic creates over a spectrum of policy areas such as economics, banking, human rights, taxation, family, labor, and commercial law. Behind the diversity of the book's subject material is a common theme of Islamic atavism as the source of the problem in relations between the West and the Muslim world. Behdad's article, "Islam, Revivalism and Public Policy," aptly summarizes the Islamic approach: Rather than endeavor to come to grips with modernity and Western industrialism, Islamic thought instead looks to the golden age of Islam to animate its understanding of the world. Even during the caliphate period, however, the various interpretations of Shari‘a made consistency a problem. In many cases, litigants had the choice of selecting a judge based upon the madhab (school of law) system. This problem has continued into modernity, and as Karen Pfeiffer shows, the competing interpretations of Islamic law regarding labor are a severe hindrance to any successful application of labor law. While the general tone of the book is critical of the classical Islamic approach, there is some hope to be gained from Volker Neinhaus, who observes that the erstwhile monopoly that traditional jurists have had on guidance and interpretation is being challenged by Muslim social scientists and economists. Ann Mayer's observation that the 1979 Iranian constitution was basically an attempt to Islamize Western ideas of constitutionalism evidences that, despite their professed "occidentophobia," even the most fanatic Islamist thinkers realize that progress can only be achieved by adopting Western law. Given the foregoing observations and William Ballantyne's astute summation that there ought to be a new ijtihad (interpretation) to address the interaction between Shari‘a and Western law, it is rather strange that the book contains chapters from only Western-based academics. The book would be markedly more beneficial if it featured contributions from thinkers within the Muslim world.

Kurdish Identity
Human Rights and Political Status
Edited by Charles G. MacDonald and Carole A. O'Leary. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. 336 pp. $65
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1953 The reader of Kurdish Identity, published in 2007, will find himself reading such timely insights as former State Department Iraq coordinator Francis Ricciardone explaining that, "Of course, we have no relations at all with [Baghdad]," and former deputy assistant secretary of state David Mack writing that he understands both Kurdish aspirations and "the potential danger that a ruthless regime in Baghdad poses," as though Saddam Hussein's regime had not ceased to exist in 2003. The collection of articles published by MacDonald and O'Leary, Kurdish experts at, respectively, Florida International University and American University, might have been useful to practitioners in April 2000, the date of the conference for which they were written, but the articles are now out-of-date. Some chapters are useful to historians. Robert W. Olson's essay on Turkish-Iranian relations between 1997 and 2001 capably reviews that period. Kurdistan Regional Government financial advisor Stafford Clarry's analysis of the U.N.'s humanitarian program retains value because of his precision and attention to detail, all the more so in the wake of the Oil-for-Food program scandal, which he helped expose. Michael Gunter's apt analysis of how the capture of Kurdish terrorist leader Abdullah Öcalan catalyzed Turkey's EU accession drive stands the test of time. The editors conclude with an essay updating the reader on world events. Both are academics well worth reading, but they provide no insights in this collection not already published elsewhere. Their comments in passing on the dire situation of Syrian Kurds, who do not enjoy equal protection under the law, raises the question why Kurdish Identity does not address this subject. Had MacDonald and O'Leary reassembled their April 2000 conference participants to reconsider their contributions seven years later and analyze where they were right and wrong, Kurdish Identity would have advanced scholarship in a novel way. As it stands, however, their book offers too little and much too late, suggesting that academics live in a world of publish or perish with the content of those publications sometimes a secondary consideration.

My Life as a Traitor
by Zarah Ghahramani with Robert Hillman
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. 243 pp. $23
Reviewed by Patrick Clawson Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1954 This searing, moving account of torture and imprisonment could come from any totalitarian country where secret police meticulously record the activities of even the most innocent dissidents, apolitical people who simply want a little free space in their lives. Ghahramani's account of her interrogation in Tehran's Evin Prison is deeply personal and not particularly political in a grand philosophical sense. She comes across as someone who wants to be able to live her life to the fullest, not as a determined democrat burning to overthrow the tyrannical rule of the Islamist thugs who control Iran. Indeed, in her approach to life she seems very much like an average American university student. The contrast between Ghahramani and her prison interrogators could not be more extreme. She is thoroughly Westernized, fully committed to such Enlightenment values as individual self-worth and the inalienability of human freedom. Her interrogators are traditional Middle Easterners, valuing faith above reason, blind devotion above thought, conspiracy theories above facts, personal ties above the law, and groveling before authority figures above asserting their individuality. My Life as a Traitor lays bare the deep cultural divide running through Iranian society. The book also fleshes out why "totalitarian" is such an apt adjective for Iran's Islamic Republic. Ghahramani shows how the regime is determined to control even the smallest aspects of each person's life. She is shown pictures of her entering and leaving a male student's apartment—a grave offense against the state even though they were simply friends studying together. Comments she made in class that were implicitly critical of the regime were carefully recorded. And of course, partying is an unpardonable crime: Western music would be sin enough, let alone that the women may have been unveiled; people may have danced (even worse, possibly even as couples), and alcohol may have been served. In such a society, the very concept of liberty is subversive. Ghahramani's account makes clear the striking similarities between Iran's Islamic Republic and fascist Germany or the communist Soviet Union. The obvious differences in the ruling ideology in these three cases is in many ways less what makes them different from the West than the totalitarian control that the three share.

National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency
Report of an Independent Task Force
Chaired by John Deutch and James R. Schlesinger, directed by David G. Victor. Washington, D.C.: Council on Foreign Relations, 2006. 80 pp. $15
Reviewed by Gal Luft
Institute for the Analysis of Global Security
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1955 One need not be a policy expert to understand how America's dependence on oil undermines so many of its foreign policy objectives, from prosecuting the war on terror, to democracy-promotion, to preventing rogue countries such as Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) created a task force to examine what could be done to address these difficulties. The task force's report correctly identifies many of the security and economic reasons why oil dependence is a serious problem, but, curiously, there is not a word about the close link between petro-dollars and radical Islam. Any observer of Islamism realizes that it is no coincidence that so much of the cash filling terrorist coffers originates in Persian Gulf oil monarchies, particularly Saudi Arabia. While the task force has no problem criticizing Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, it gives a free pass to Saudi Arabia, which remains, years after 9-11, the financial hub of global jihad. Adding to the problem of its misidentification of a key part of the problem, the report delivers little on the solutions front. It is unanimous in recommending the adoption of proposals to reduce the consumption of petroleum, but instead of focusing on politically feasible measures such as fuel choice, electrification of transportation, technological innovation, and telecommuting, the policies proposed—increasing the gasoline tax, dramatically increasing fuel efficiency standards, and imposing a cap on gasoline use—are unlikely to be politically viable and rely exclusively on government-imposed regulations. Which is perhaps why the task force, while criticizing political paralysis in Congress, admitted that its own members could not agree on the policies that would best achieve the objective of reducing America's dependence on oil. The CFR's desire to highlight our energy predicament is commendable, but one would have expected from its luminaries much more vision than is displayed in a report that starts with the premise that it is "infeasible to eliminate the nation's dependence on foreign energy sources" and which contends that "the voices that espouse ‘energy independence' are doing the nation a disservice."

Palestine and Transjordan: Geographical Handbook
by The Naval Intelligence Division
New York: Kegan Paul, 2006. 621 pp. $425
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1956 In 1915, the British admiralty established a geographical section within its Naval Intelligence Division to compile comprehensive handbooks to various countries and territories across the globe. Palestine and Transjordan is a facsimile reproduction of the 1942 edition. Rich in maps and sketches, chapters cover physical geography; the coast; climate, vegetation, and fauna; history; people; population distribution; administration; public health; agriculture and industries; banking and commerce; ports and inland towns; and communication. The manual's dispassionate narrative—written before Israel's creation—peels back layers of subsequent dispute and recrimination that have characterized Arab-Israeli history to reassert facts basic but often ignored. Sections on demography remind the reader that not only did many Jews immigrate to Palestine but that many Arabs also fled because of nineteenth-century oppression there. Ottoman misrule led many Arabs to leave Palestine for places as far away as South America. Whereas political leaders such as Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser later sought to impose a single, inflexible definition of Arab, the Naval Intelligence Division describes in society a heterogeneity no longer appreciated by many policymakers. Bedouins were "pure Arabs," but Egyptians and other North Africans enjoyed their own distinct identity. Muslims fleeing Russian advances in the Caucasus and Turks employed in Ottoman administration added to the demographic complexity. While it is fashionable to blame Israel's creation for many Arab woes, British analysts in 1942 located the kernel of such problems elsewhere: in the difficulties of Palestinian Arabs in facing modernity. They placed blame for the disruption in Arab society not on Jewish immigration but on Arab birth rates, burgeoning since the late 1920s, which traditional agriculture methods could not accommodate. Because most Jews were urban, the two communities' conflict was limited. Indeed, the British hoped that Palestinian Jews and Arabs might strike a symbiotic relationship: "It does not appear impossible … that the development of industries by the Jews, if it would give additional employment to the Arabs, might lead the two peoples to live side by side in mutual benefit, and so settle the outstanding political problems of both." Unfortunately, though, the British analysts noted that "the Arabs object to industrialization." The value of Palestine and Transjordan justifies its presence in any serious library on Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian history, but the price of this public-domain reprint is patently absurd.

A Police Force without a State
A History of the Palestinian Security Forces in the West Bank and Gaza
by Brynjar Lia
Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 2007. 477 pp. $54.50
Also:
Building Arafat's Police: The Politics of International Police Assistance in the Palestinian Territories after the Oslo
by Brynjar Lia
Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 2007. 362 pp. $54.50
Reviewed by David Schenker Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1957 Recent years have been unkind to the Fatah party. Its leader, Yasser Arafat, died in 2004; the organization was roundly defeated by Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, and in 2007, it was violently expelled from Gaza. Despite wide foreign support, Fatah largely finds itself on the defensive today against its Islamist rival. Fatah's decline was in many ways inevitable given the party's sordid history of misrule, a large part of which involved the Palestinian security services, and particularly the police—which are the topic of two impressively researched new books by Lia, a research professor at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment. A Police Force without a State covers the pre-Oslo days of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) "self-policing" in the Middle East, including the presence of endemic levels of corruption, vigilantism, and collaborator killings in the West Bank and Gaza—problems that were central to the unraveling of Oslo. One of the early justifications for self-policing was the concern among Palestinians that the police "would be used to squelch the intifada." "By accepting that role for their police force," Lia writes, "the Palestinians would be acknowledging the end of the armed struggle." This was a step that many, apparently, were loathe to take. The book includes extensive discussion of police recruitment, which included a "strong preference for Fatah paramilitaries and activists to the exclusion of other factions" and a focus on bringing Palestinian prisoners, jailed by Israel for security and political offenses, into the force. As Lia writes, the "deliberate use of police recruitment for repatriation purposes further undermined efforts at building a professional police force." The companion volume, Building Arafat's Police, is another detail-packed study, this one describing the contributions of the donor community in getting the Palestinian Authority (PA) police up and running and some of the hesitations that the community had in contributing to what the PLO initially envisioned as a paramilitary force. Lia's study provides a wealth of information on the nuts and bolts of fundraising, as well as some gems about the snags in securing donations, such as the humorous revelation that 9,000 new police uniforms provided by Japan were so tiny that they ended up being "handed out to children in Gaza." More problematic, however, were the donations of vehicles to the police force. Despite technical problems—Palestinians could not maintain the vehicles, many of which were cannibalized for parts—few of the automobiles were equipped with appropriate radios for patrolling. Palestinian financial accounting, not surprisingly, also proved less than satisfactory. Help from Arab quarters was either insignificant or counterproductive. Arab funding for the PA was notoriously low, accounting for less than 9 percent of total donor spending between 1994 and 1998, and such aid was complicated by a lack of Arab enthusiasm for Oslo and by the routine channeling of funds by states such as Saudi Arabia through the PLO and other opaque organizations. Building Arafat's Police also touches on the important question of how many police Arafat actually had. According to Lia, by September 1994, the number of policemen already exceeded the 9,000 stipulated in the Oslo accords. By 1995, some 17,000 police had been assembled. Lia notes correctly that Israel is hardly blameless for its handling of the Palestinian police. Indeed, Israel did not object to this gross violation of the agreement, especially, when it came to recruitment into the Preventive Security Agency (PSA), which was supposed to undertake counterterrorism initiatives. It was the Israeli-backed PSA that later became a primary engine of PA corruption and the lead Palestinian agency hunting collaborators and, subsequently, the organization that generated much of the backlash against Fatah and fueled the rise of Hamas. Lia mentions that, as early as 1995, the Coordinating Committee for the International Assistance to the Police Force described the PSA as "illegal" and as "the most significant problem in the security field today." The two volumes are important and comprehensive, but they have their problems. The author's uncritical sympathy for the Palestinian cause at times gets in the way. In A Police Force without a State, for example, Lia argues that Israel's arrest warrant for a Palestinian police chief "soured the atmosphere for joint police cooperation in car thefts." Only later do we learn that the officer was wanted for his role in coordinating police attacks against Israelis. Lia leaves the impression that the Palestinians were to blame neither for their frequent disregard for agreements with Israel nor for the corrupt, brutal, crony-filled, and inept security apparatus that evolved under PA auspices. To be sure, Lia's works are somber academic publications, but his detached tone is disconcerting. Given continued Palestinian and Israeli suffering—in large part due to the failure of the Palestinian security apparatus—he should have adopted a more critical view of Fatah's role.

Taking on Tehran
Strategies for Confronting the Islamic Republic
Edited by Ilan Berman. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. 118 pp. $75 ($24.95, paper)
Reviewed by Patrick Clawson Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1958 With the aim of stretching our imaginations about the steps the United States could take to counter the threats from Iran, Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council has assembled essays, mostly by conservative authors, on exploiting economic vulnerabilities (Berman), activating human rights concerns about Iran (Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.), reaching out to ordinary Iranians (Robert Schadler, Bijan Kian, and Berman), relying on deterrence despite the many dangers that would represent (James Robbins), working with allies who will not do much (Stephen Blank), planning for conflict (John Sigler), countering further proliferation if Iran goes nuclear (Robert Pfaltzgraff, Jr.), and acquiring better intelligence (John Wobensmith). Several authors emphasize that the United States faces hard choices about Iran. Unfortunately, the essays are weakest at explaining what those hard choices might be. In particular, the authors do not spell out the implications of Iran's multifaceted challenge to U.S. interests; indeed, they rarely discuss Iran's support for the insurgency in Iraq, the hundreds of millions of dollars it spends each year arming those fighting to wipe out Israel (especially, but not limited to, Hamas and Hezbollah), and its subversion of Persian Gulf monarchies. They barely confront the difficult issue of whether U.S. interests would be well served by a deal ending Iran's nuclear program if it left untouched all the other Iranian threats to regional peace, especially if that deal also was seen by ordinary Iranians as abandoning their hopes for a democratic, secular regime. At the very least, the authors could have given the readers some guidance about how to think through these trade-offs. The authors present many ideas about how to pressure Iran. Unfortunately, the narrative generally stops there without consideration of what would happen next. Several of the measures discussed could trigger Iranian reactions that would be a real challenge for U.S. interests. For example, if the United States impeded Iranian oil exports, Iran might choose to harass shipping in the Persian Gulf. And even if Iran did nothing, the decreased Iranian oil exports would drive up world oil prices, enrich several unfriendly powers (Russia and Venezuela come to mind), and burden U.S. consumers. The problem of how to apply pressure on Iran is not so much the lack of imagination that is the authors' favorite complaint. More important is an overly cautious stance borne of an awareness that each measure could create new problems. The way to counter such policy paralysis is to show how to think through the action-reaction process. And on that point, this volume is not particularly strong.

Things Fall Apart
by Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack
Washington: Brookings, 2007. 239 pp. $19.95
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1959 In Things Fall Apart, Byman and Pollack, both Washington policymakers now affiliated with the Brookings Institution, provide informed speculation on the local and regional fallout from an Iraqi civil war. Their approach, while theoretical, is grounded in a sound knowledge of history. The authors first explore patterns of past civil wars, consequences of spillover, and policy options the U.S. government might have adopted to counter such trends. Then, they offer well-referenced case studies of other civil wars: Afghanistan, Congo, Lebanon, Somalia, and Yugoslavia, examining many of the same patterns and consequences. For policymakers, the relevance of Things Fall Apart is in its recommendations should Iraq descend into civil war. Byman and Pollack advocate neither the picking of winners nor dumping the problem on the United Nations, which is ill-equipped to handle violent conflicts. Nor, the authors argue, should Washington support the partition advocated by Senator Joseph Biden and former ambassador Peter Galbraith. Despite the sectarian and ethnic violence, the authors argue, Iraq's population remains sufficiently mixed that any partition would precipitate rather than resolve violence. In the event of all-out civil war, the authors recommend that Washington resist the temptation to intervene on humanitarian grounds in Iraq's population centers. Protecting cities takes a massive investment of troops, and as the U.N.'s Bosnia safe-haven experiment demonstrated, halfhearted interventions can tragically backfire. Rather, the authors suggest that Washington should endeavor to stabilize the region in order to prevent spillover. This means making clear to Tehran what behavior it is unwilling to tolerate and persuading the Kurds that they should not declare independence, since secessionism can be infectious. The U.S. government might also offer incentives to neighboring states to prevent their intervention and impose sanctions on those who do. To facilitate diplomacy and better manage crises, Byman and Pollack recommend the establishment of a permanent contact group with officials from neighboring states. They acknowledge that the Pentagon will need to remain poised to strike at terrorist centers and might assist in creating refugee "spill basins," or safe havens, along Iraq's borders to contain refugee flow. Well-researched and written, Things Fall Apart is a useful exercise in thinking one step ahead. Not all of the authors' suggestions may be realistic: Their attitudes toward diplomacy can be Pollyannaish at times; they acknowledge that U.S. forces may need to undertake military action against Iranian meddling, but they do not explore what might happen if the Iranian government refuses to be intimidated. Nevertheless, Things Fall Apart provides an invaluable framework from which policymakers across the political spectrum might begin to develop strategies to contain a collapsing Iraqi state.

Unconquerable Nation
Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves
by Brian Michael Jenkins
Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2006. 236 pp. $19.95, paper
Reviewed by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1960 In a glutted marketplace, discerning readers will scrutinize each new book about terrorism by asking why this specific volume has been written and what unique contribution it makes. Sadly, Jenkins's book fails to offer satisfactory answers to these questions. This is unfortunate because he is an experienced student of terrorism who over the years has made important contributions to the field. The first chapter sheds light on the volume's disjointed feel, explaining that the book is a collection of the briefings, memoranda, and essays that Jenkins, senior advisor to the president of the RAND Corporation, has written since 9-11. "Reviewing my own work," Jenkins states, "I find that certain basic themes recur." But the ten themes he lists are largely unrelated and do not comprise a coherent idea or theory. Jenkins does manage to organize the book loosely around the idea of how the United States can be an "unconquerable nation" in its battle against terrorism (the term is taken from a saying of Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who argued that "being unconquerable lies with yourself"). Jenkins' main prescriptions are inner resolve or "stoicism in the face of threats," preservation of such American values as the prohibition of torture, and smarter, more effective counterterrorism. Although Jenkins's argumentation is overly sparse (the reader is frequently forced to take his word on assertions that are made without supporting evidence), his writing is lucid, and he makes many intelligent points. One of his more interesting observations involves the current threat "feedback loop" wherein analysts trumpet America's vulnerabilities in testimony and reports, and in turn, terrorists—who "do not live on another planet"—incorporate these vulnerabilities into strategic discussions. "When our intelligence in turn learns what terrorists are talking about," Jenkins observes, "the feedback loop is completed, seeming to confirm our own worst fears." Other interesting passages include an analysis of President George W. Bush's failure to mobilize the American citizenry to play a role in homeland security after 9-11, a counter-intuitive defense of the pervasive official press conferences about possible terrorist threats, and an explanation of advantages that could be gained by persuading detainees to publicly turn against Al-Qaeda. Yet such smart arguments should have been presented in shorter form: The book's desultory feel will disappoint all but the most dedicated readers.

Yemen into the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Kamil A. Mahdi, Anna Würth, and Helen Lackner. Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 2007. 464 pp. $54.50
Reviewed by Michael Rubin Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1961 In recent years, Yemen, a backwater for centuries, is in the news as Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland and an important battlefield in the war on terrorism. But don't expect this volume, assembled by researchers and lecturers at Exeter University (Mahdi and Lackner) and the Free University of Berlin (Würth), to touch these subjects as this collection of papers dates from a conference that took place in 1998. Rather, subjects covered include political economy, the legal system, environment, and social and regional issues. Left unaddressed—by the editors' own admission—are foreign relations, military affairs, and party politics. Many articles show their age. Charles Schmitz, an associate professor at Towson University, for example, seeks to extrapolate future challenges to the Yemeni society based on economic indicators from the early 1990s. What once may have been timely becomes silly when delayed publication means, in effect, skipping over a decade of more recent statistics. Drew University professor Nora Ann Colton's section on labor migration raises eyebrows because it addresses "the Gulf crisis" without reference to the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. Such datedness is a pity. Scholarly literature on Yemen is sparse, and many of the chapters are serious. The contributors have not substituted theory for research, and the analysis of the judiciary and its machinations is useful. Updating former presidential legal advisor Hussein al-Hubaishi's chapter on commercial litigation would be especially valuable given growing U.S., European, and Chinese interest in investment in the region. Also in need of expansion are the articles on medical care and health. Given its potential, how frustrating it is that Yemen into the Twenty-First Century remains stubbornly in the twentieth.
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