Nasser's Gamble

Nasser's Gamble
Author: Jesse Ferris
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2013
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691155143

Nasser's Gamble draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as "my Vietnam." Jesse Ferris argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi-Egyptian struggle over Yemen, Ferris demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the "Arab Cold War" set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, Nasser's Gamble brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.

Ike's Gamble

Ike's Gamble
Author: Michael Doran
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2016-10-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1451697759

In a bold reinterpretation of history, Ike's Gamble shows how the 1956 Suez Crisis taught President Eisenhower that Israel, not Egypt, would have to be America's ally in the region. In 1956 President Nasser of Egypt moved to take possession of the Suez Canal, bringing the Middle East to the brink of war. Distinguished Middle East expert Michael Doran shows how Nasser played the United States, invoking America's opposition to European colonialism to his own benefit. At the same time Nasser made weapons deals with the USSR and destabilized other Arab countries that the United States had been courting. In time, Eisenhower would realize that Nasser had duped him and that the Arab countries were too fractious to anchor America's interests in the Middle East. Affording deep insight into Eisenhower and his foreign policy, this fascinating and provocative history provides a rich new understanding of the tangled path by which the United States became the power broker in the Middle East. -- Back cover.

Foxbats Over Dimona

Foxbats Over Dimona
Author: Isabella Ginor
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300135041

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez’s groundbreaking history of the Six-Day War in 1967 radically changes our understanding of that conflict, casting it as a crucial arena of Cold War intrigue that has shaped the Middle East to this day. The authors, award-winning Israeli journalists and historians, have investigated newly available documents and testimonies from the former Soviet Union, cross-checked them against Israeli and Western sources, and arrived at fresh and startling conclusions. Contrary to previous interpretations, Ginor and Remez’s book shows that the Six-Day War was the result of a joint Soviet-Arab gambit to provoke Israel into a preemptive attack. The authors reveal how the Soviets received a secret Israeli message indicating that Israel, despite its official ambiguity, was about to acquire nuclear weapons. Determined to destroy Israel’s nuclear program before it could produce an atomic bomb, the Soviets then began preparing for war--well before Moscow accused Israel of offensive intent, the overt trigger of the crisis. Ginor and Remez’s startling account details how the Soviet-Arab onslaught was to be unleashed once Israel had been drawn into action and was branded as the aggressor. The Soviets had submarine-based nuclear missiles poised for use against Israel in case it already possessed and tried to use an atomic device, and the USSR prepared and actually began a marine landing on Israel’s shores backed by strategic bombers and fighter squadrons. They sent their most advanced, still-secret aircraft, the MiG-25 Foxbat, on provocative sorties over Israel’s Dimona nuclear complex to prepare the planned attack on it, and to scare Israel into making the first strike. It was only the unpredicted devastation of Israel’s response that narrowly thwarted the Soviet design.

Pan-Arabism Before Nasser

Pan-Arabism Before Nasser
Author: Michael Scott Doran
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 241
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195123611

This book aims to alter profoundly the accepted version of the history of post-World War II Egyptian foreign policy. Michael Doran convincingly demonstrates the absence of any true pan-Arab front from the very beginning of the Arab League. Pan-Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question argues that, in the late 1940s, Cairo pursued a single-minded foreign policy designed to drive Great Britain, the enemy of Egyptian independence, out of the Middle East. This struggle generated the secondary goal of Egyptian foreign policy: undermining the Middle Eastern states working to sustain British influence in the region. While uncovering a significant dimension of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Doran also lays the foundation for a new understanding of Egyptian foreign policy. He argues persuasively that pan-Arabism, a policy that historians have traditionally associated with the rise of Gamal Abd al-Nasser in the middle 1950s, actually originated under the old regime.

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle Eastern and North African History

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle Eastern and North African History
Author: Jens Hanssen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2020-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191652792

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History critically examines the defining processes and structures of historical developments in North Africa and the Middle East over the past two centuries. The Handbook pays particular attention to countries that have leapt out of the political shadows of dominant and better-studied neighbours in the course of the unfolding uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. These dramatic and interconnected developments have exposed the dearth of informative analysis available in surveys and textbooks, particularly on Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.

Risk-Taking in International Politics

Risk-Taking in International Politics
Author: Rose McDermott
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2001
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780472087877

Discusses the way leaders deal with risk in making foreign policy decisions

Mao's China and the Cold War

Mao's China and the Cold War
Author: Jian Chen
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2010-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807898902

This comprehensive study of China's Cold War experience reveals the crucial role Beijing played in shaping the orientation of the global Cold War and the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The success of China's Communist revolution in 1949 set the stage, Chen says. The Korean War, the Taiwan Strait crises, and the Vietnam War--all of which involved China as a central actor--represented the only major "hot" conflicts during the Cold War period, making East Asia the main battlefield of the Cold War, while creating conditions to prevent the two superpowers from engaging in a direct military showdown. Beijing's split with Moscow and rapprochement with Washington fundamentally transformed the international balance of power, argues Chen, eventually leading to the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the decline of international communism. Based on sources that include recently declassified Chinese documents, the book offers pathbreaking insights into the course and outcome of the Cold War.

A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations

A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations
Author: Christopher R. W. Dietrich
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1542
Release: 2020-03-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1119459699

Covers the entire range of the history of U.S. foreign relations from the colonial period to the beginning of the 21st century. A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations is an authoritative guide to past and present scholarship on the history of American diplomacy and foreign relations from its seventeenth century origins to the modern day. This two-volume reference work presents a collection of historiographical essays by prominent scholars. The essays explore three centuries of America’s global interactions and the ways U.S. foreign policies have been analyzed and interpreted over time. Scholars offer fresh perspectives on the history of U.S. foreign relations; analyze the causes, influences, and consequences of major foreign policy decisions; and address contemporary debates surrounding the practice of American power. The Companion covers a wide variety of methodologies, integrating political, military, economic, social and cultural history to explore the ideas and events that shaped U.S. diplomacy and foreign relations and continue to influence national identity. The essays discuss topics such as the links between U.S. foreign relations and the study of ideology, race, gender, and religion; Native American history, expansion, and imperialism; industrialization and modernization; domestic and international politics; and the United States’ role in decolonization, globalization, and the Cold War. A comprehensive approach to understanding the history, influences, and drivers of U.S. foreign relation, this indispensable resource: Examines significant foreign policy events and their subsequent interpretations Places key figures and policies in their historical, national, and international contexts Provides background on recent and current debates in U.S. foreign policy Explores the historiography and primary sources for each topic Covers the development of diverse themes and methodologies in histories of U.S. foreign policy Offering scholars, teachers, and students unmatched chronological breadth and analytical depth, A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations: Colonial Era to the Present is an important contribution to scholarship on the history of America’s interactions with the world.

Betting on the Africans

Betting on the Africans
Author: Philip E. Muehlenbeck
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195396096

Betting on the Africans is a study of John F. Kennedy's strategy for improving U.S.-African relations through the use of personal diplomacy to court African nationalist leaders and the ramifications that policy had for U.S. relations with its more traditional allies.

Beer in the Snooker Club

Beer in the Snooker Club
Author: Waguih Ghali
Publisher: New Amsterdam Books
Total Pages: 220
Release: 1999-11-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1461663245

Waguih Ghali was raised in Cairo but spent much of his adult life studying and working in Europe. In Beer in the Snooker Club, Ghali chronicles the lives of Cairo's upper crust who, after the fall of King Farouk, are thoroughly unprepared to change its neo-feudal ways. Beer in the Snooker Club was the only book written by Ghali before his suicide in 1968. "Ghali's novel reproduces a cultural state of shock with great accuracy and great humor."–James Marcus of The Nation