Waging a counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq, fighting a war in Afghanistan, attempting to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and striving to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the United States, the pre-eminent world power, has its work cut out in the Middle East.
Two books published recently analyze Washington’s role in a turbulent region flush with oil and gas.
In A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East From the Cold War to the War on Terror (HarperCollins), Patrick Tyler examines how 10 U.S. presidents since the 1940s have engaged or confronted the Mideast and its leaders.
Tyler, a former foreign correspondent of the Washington Post and the New York Times, has written an accessible book that both laymen and specialists will likely appreciate.
Like the best of journalists, Tyler has a knack for blending first-class reportage with lucid writing.
The second book under review, A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East (Doubleday), is by Lawrence Freedman, a historian at King’s College in London.
Though more academic in tone, it also analyzes the role that American presidents have played in the Middle East. Freedman’s focus, however, is on five presidents from Jimmy Carter onward.
Since the topic at hand is so immense, the authors have been given free rein in terms of space. Tyler’s book weighs in at 628 pages, counting footnotes and an index, while Freedman’s tome is 601 pages long.
Readers, therefore, should be prepared for a long but useful slog.
In a bracing observation, Tyler reminds us that while the Middle East for much of the last century was not a crucial area for the United States, it assumed a new importance after Israel’s declaration of independence, the rise of Arab nationalism and the advent of oil politics and Islamic radicalism.
But he points out that the security of the United States and the West has eroded in the face of intensifying “enmities and grievances” emanating from the the Middle East.
Tyler, in his panoramic survey, ranges far and wide.
Harkening back to the 1950s, he recreates the tense atmosphere that prevailed as Israel tried to drive a wedge between the Eisenhower administration and Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic president of Egypt, and as the United States forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula after the Sinai War.
In addition, Tyler wades knee-deep into the debate that erupted in John F. Kennedy’s administration after Israel acquired a French nuclear reactor.
He retraces Lyndon Johnson’s futile efforts to avert the Six Day War, claiming that Johnson was remiss in not demanding an Israeli withdrawal from the territories.
In his judgment, Richard Nixon’s presidency marked the United States’ “full entry” into the Middle East by virtue of the fact that it armed Israel and Iran as major regional powers.
Saying that Washington’s friendship with Israel underwent a sea change after the Yom Kipper War, he writes,“The Jewish state had gone from being a tiny and troublesome power in the Middle East that the United States kept at arm’s length… to become a regional powerhouse equipped with American tanks and warplanes, and its own nuclear weapons.”
The 1973 war inaugurated a new era in U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. Jimmy Carter wanted to capitalize on this situation by convening a peace summit under the auspices of the United States and the Soviet Union.
Anwar Sadat, the visionary president of Egypt, sidelined the plan by forging a dramatic rapprochement with Israel.
Tyler’s explanation of Carter’s interest in resolving the Palestinian problem is rooted in U.S. domestic politics. Though the comparison may not have been exact, Carter saw “a rough symmetry” between racial injustice in the United States and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Tyler believes, not without merit, that Ronald Reagan’s failure to retaliate for the bombing of the U.S. Marines barrack in Beirut probably emboldened anti-American elements such as Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.
He suggests that the Reagan administration held its nose as it courted the serial human rights violator, Saddam Hussein, during Iraq’s war with Iran.
In a revelation regarding the 1991 Gulf War, Tyler reports that the then-U.S. secretary of defence, Dick Cheney, urged his boss, George Bush, to allow Israel to join the anti-Iraqi military coalition. While demurring, Bush offered Israel a compromise. It could fire ballistic missiles at Iraqi air bases. Israel was not interested, being convinced that such attacks would be of no value.
Tyler’s observations on Bill Clinton’s attempts to persuade Israel and Syria to sign a peace treaty are fascinating.
He argues that the 1998 Wye summit represented the final breakdown in trust between Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
Tyler has a dim view of Ehud Barak, Netanyahu’s successor. He describes Barak as arrogant, secretive and dismissive of different opinions.
Although Tyler rates the United States’ invasion of Iraq as “a model of military efficiency,” he comes down hard on Washington’s poor postwar planning.
Freedman has little good to say about the United States’ involvement in the Middle East.
Its presence in Iraq is unpopular at home. Its dispute with Iran remains unsolved. Its effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict has borne no fruit. Its war in Afghanistan, while having dislodged the Taliban from power and denying Al Qaeda a base, has generated further instability and embroiled neighbouring Pakistan in increasing chaos.
Covering a lot of ground in this erudite volume, Freedman segues from one subject to the next in seamless fashion.
He assesses the fall of Iran’s monarchy as a devastating blow to U.S. interests. He discusses Washington’s pro-Iraqi tilt in the 1980s. He offers a decent analysis of the Camp David summit in 2000 and of the breakdown of the Oslo peace process. Like Tyler, he is quite critical of Barak. He explains the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising.
In conclusion, Freedman says that the United States no longer enjoys the prestige and influence it enjoyed in the Middle East in the early 1990s.
Nonetheless, Washington will continue to dominate a region whose instability affects almost everyone on this globe.