Middle East Politics and International Relations
by Shahram Akbarzadeh and Kylie Baxter
The contemporary Middle East has been defined by political crises and conflict. The interplay of internal and external factors have set the region on a path of turmoil and crisis with devastating outcomes for its people. The absence of political accountability and representation, and policies pursued by the United States to keep US-friendly regimes in power have been two key factors that have contributed to the seemingly insoluble Middle East politics. This book provides a detailed exploration...
From the First World War to the Arab Spring (Middle East Today)
by M. E. McMillan
Offering a comprehensive, up-to-date examination of the complex web of wars and proxy wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions that are ripping the Middle East apart, this book puts these events in their historical context and leads readers through the labyrinth that is the new Middle East. This book seeks answers to pressing, contentious questions. Why are there so many hereditary heads of state in the Middle East when the Prophet Muhammad did not appoint a successor? Why do Western countri...
Latin American Relations with the Middle East (Routledge Studies in Latin American Politics)
Latin American Relations with the Middle East surveys the dealings of ten Latin American and Caribbean states - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, and Venezuela - with the Middle East. This volume examins these states' external behavior at both an empirical and conceptual level. Empirically, authors seek to examine Latin American and Caribbean foreign policies towards the Middle East in four dimensions: diplomatic attention; trade and investment (includ...
The shocking inside account that has outraged the Bush administration, Chain of Command gives the most revealing and terrifying picture yet of what really led to war in Iraq. Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose sensational reportage has revealed the stories the others can't - or won't - get, traces the chain of events that turned America from victim of terrorism on 9/11 to perpetrator of a dirty and disastrous war. Plumbing an unrivalled list of top military and CIA contac...
U.S. Policy and Strategy Toward Afghanistan After 2014
by U S Army War College Press and Strategic Studies Institute
This book offers a fascinating insider's perspective from one who happens to be a Muslim woman on U.S. foreign policy making during three Republican presidential administrations. Shirin Tahir-Kheli's life story is a testament to the promise and delivery of the American dream in another era and is a must read for scholars and policy makers.
Israel's Oriental Immigrants and Druzes
by Alfred Friendly and Eric Silver
Expert analysis of Yemen's social and political crisis, with profound implications for the fate of the Arab World The democratic promise of the 2011 Arab Spring has unraveled in Yemen, triggering a disastrous crisis of civil war, famine, militarization, and governmental collapse with serious implications for the future of the region. Yet as expert political researcher Helen Lackner argues, the catastrophe does not have to continue, and we can hope for and help build a different future in Yemen...
The Arabs is widely considered one of the essential books for understanding the Middle East and the peoples who live there. David Lamb, who spent years as a correspondent in Cairo, explores the Arabs’ religious, political, and cultural views, noting the differences and key similarities between the many segments of the Arab world. He explains Arab attitudes and actions toward the West, including the growth of terrorism, and situates current events in a larger historical backdrop that goes back m...
The European Union and the Middle East (Contemporary European Studies S., #12)
by Soren Zibrandt von Dosenrode-Lynge and Anders Stubkjaer
Covering the period from the early 1950s to the end of the 20th century, this book presents a concise yet thorough historical analysis of the relationship between the European Union (and its predecessors) and the Middle East. The authors provide a survey of the evolution of the foreign policy mechanisms of the EU and an outline of the relevant aspects of modern Middle East history. They examine the relationship between the two regions from 1950 to the end of the Cold War, with special emphasis o...
The nineteenth daughter of a local village leader in rural Afghanistan, Fawzia Koofi was left to die in the sun after birth by her mother. But she survived, and perseverance in the face of extreme hardship has defined her life ever since. Despite the abuse of her family, the exploitative Russian and Taliban regimes, the murders of her father, brother, and husband, and numerous attempts on her life, she rose to become the first Afghani woman Parliament speaker. Here, she shares her amazing story,...
This study of conspiracy theories in the Middle East reveals how they play a powerful role in the political life of the region. Placing conspiracy theories in their historical context, the author shows how the idea of the conspiracy has come to suffuse life in the Middle East, from the most private family conversations to the highest and most public levels of politics. Pipes then looks at conspiracies and their strength as a partial explanation for much of the region's problems, including its re...
A glut of oil, dropping prices, the threat of insolvency, a divided membership -- these developments in the early weeks of 1985 underline the cogency of Mohammed Ahrari's historical study of the OPEC oil cartel and his argument that economic forces, not politics, determine OPEC's action in the world arena. The impetus for the formation of OPEC in 1960 was the desire of the oil-producing states for greater income from their most valuable resource. The international oil corporations had secured lu...
The popular protests in early 2011 were once seen as a turning point in the history of the Arab world, raising hopes for democracy, freedom, and justice in the Middle East. A decade after the uprisings, these hopes are largely dashed in each country swept by popular protests with the exception of Tunisia. Tunisia became the only democracy in the entire region while Egypt saw its first freely elected president and government thrown out by the army in a bloody coup which resulted in a regime that...
A Marriage of Convenience (East European Monographs S., v.369)
by Laurance Weinbaum
The essential “on the ground” report on the fastest-growing new threat in the Middle East, from the winner of the 2014 Foreign Affairs Journalist of the Year Award Born of the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars, the Islamic State astonished the world in 2014 by creating a powerful new force in the Middle East. By combining religious fanaticism and military prowess, the new self-declared caliphate poses a threat to the political status quo of the whole region. In The Rise of Islamic State, Patrick Co...
The Iranian revolution of 1979 overhauled not only the foundations of Iranian society, religion and politics, but also our understanding of the role of religion in modern government. Here Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi takes us on an enlightening journey, showing that the revolution unintentionally opened up the public sphere to competing interpretations of Islam. Far from being the exclusive preserve of high-ranking seminarians as before, in contemporary Iran lay theologians, intellectuals, lawyers an...
Egypt in the Future Tense (Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa)
by Joska Samuli Schielke
Against the backdrop of the revolutionary uprisings of 2011-2013, Samuli Schielke asks how ordinary Egyptians confront the great promises and grand schemes of religious commitment, middle class respectability, romantic love, and political ideologies in their daily lives, and how they make sense of the existential anxieties and stalled expectations that inevitably accompany such hopes. Drawing on many years of study in Egypt and the life stories of rural, lower-middle-class men before and after t...
"The renowned blogger and Middle East expert Juan Cole illuminates the role of today's Arab youth--who they are, what they want, and how they will affect world politics. Beginning in January 2011, the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests, riots, and civil wars that comprised what many call "the Arab Spring" shook the world. These upheavals were spearheaded by youth movements, and yet the crucial role they played is relatively unknown. Middle East expert Juan Cole is here to share th...
Turkey S Public Diplomacy (Palgrave MacMillan Series in Global Public Diplomacy)
Authoritarian Populism and Liberal Democracy
This edited volume offers new insights into the populist wave that is affecting democratic politics in a large number of countries. The authoritarian populist turn that has developed in the US and various European countries in recent years both reflects and exacerbates the polarization of public opinion that increasingly characterizes democratic politics. The book seeks to explain how and why authoritarian populist opinion has developed and been mobilised in democratic countries. It also explore...
This book explains and elaborates the concept of alliance security dilemma through a case study of two similar countries caught in the same situation: Germany, which opposed the US decision to attack Iraq in 2003, and Japan, which supported it.