Scripting Middle East Leaders

Scripting Middle East Leaders
Author: Sir Lawrence Freedman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2012-12-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1441185720

Both the US and the UK seemed caught off-guard by the uprisings in Libya and Egypt and policymakers had to deal with leaders that switched from being allies to "pariahs." This collection of essays, written by leading scholars, examines the evolution of British and American perceptions of "adversaries" in the Middle East since the Cold War. It traces the evolution of how leaders have been perceived, what determined such perceptions, and how they can change over time. It shows that in many cases the beliefs held by policymakers have influenced their policies and the way they adapted during crisis. Each essay focuses on a Middle East leader, such as Nasser, Assad, Hussein, or Ahmadinejad, discussing what these leaders' objectives were perceived to be, the assessments of their willingness to take risks or negotiate, and how such assessments changed overtime and were evaluated in retrospect. This groundbreaking contribution to the literature on leadership attitudes and perceptions in policymaking toward the Middle East will appeal to anyone studying foreign policy, Middle East politics and political psychology.

Scripts of Terror

Scripts of Terror
Author: Benedict Wilkinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2020
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197521894

How do terrorists resolve the tension between their ambitions and their often limited resources?

We Are Your Soldiers: How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World

We Are Your Soldiers: How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World
Author: Alex Rowell
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2023-11-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1324021675

A searing exploration of authoritarianism in the Middle East through the legacy of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s years in power in Cold War–era Egypt. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the larger-than-life Egyptian president who ruled for eighteen years between the coup d’état he led in 1952 and his death in 1970, is best known for wresting the Suez Canal from the British and French empires and befriending such iconic revolutionaries as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Yet there is a darker side to Nasser’s regime. He was a brutal authoritarian, whose legacy, Alex Rowell argues, lies at the heart of the violent and repressive order that still prevails throughout the Arab world today. We Are Your Soldiers examines seven countries—Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and Libya—weaving the epic tale of Nasser’s dramatic encounters with each to reassess his impact in the Arab sphere. These engagements were often drenched in blood and destruction, leaving deep scars that endure to the present. Rowell shows how the Nasser years were crucial to the formation of regimes as varied as Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, Muammar al-Gaddafi’s Libya, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi’s Egypt. Crushing democracy at home while launching wars and slaying opponents abroad, Nasser ushered in the long political winter from which the region is still yet to emerge. Drawing on a deep reading of Arabic sources, extensive interviews, and material never before published in English, Rowell offers a necessary reexamination of Nasser’s rule and a new understanding of the politics of the Middle East.

Glubb Pasha and the Arab Legion

Glubb Pasha and the Arab Legion
Author: Graham Jevon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316833968

During the 1950s, John Glubb and the Arab Legion became the 'cornerstone' of Britain's imperial presence in the Middle East. Based on unprecedented access to the unofficial archive of the Arab Legion, including a major accession of Glubb's private papers, Graham Jevon examines and revises Britain's post-1945 retreat from empire in the Middle East. Jevon details how Glubb's command of the Arab Legion secured British and Jordanian interests during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, answering questions that have dogged historians of this conflict for decades. He reveals how the Arab Legion was transformed, by Cold War concerns, from an internal Jordanian security force to a quasi-division within the British Army. Jevon also sheds new light on the succession crisis following King Abdullah's assassination, and uses previously unseen documents to challenge accepted contentions concerning King Hussein's dismissal of Glubb, the 1956 Suez Crisis, and the nature of Britain's imperial decline.

Arab World and Western Intelligence

Arab World and Western Intelligence
Author: Dina Rezk
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2017-06-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474405061

The untold story of Western intelligence in the Middle East Have Western experts fundamentally failed to understand the dynamics, leaders and culture of the Middle East? Using the most recently declassified documents, interviews and Arabic sources, the book examines seminal case studies culminating in Sadats dramatic assassination and explores how the most knowledgeable and powerful intelligence agencies in the world have been so notoriously caught off guard in this region.

External Powers and the Arab Spring

External Powers and the Arab Spring
Author: Sverre Lodgaard
Publisher: Spartacus forlag
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2016-05-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 8230401985

Governance in the Middle East is a sad story, and the fate of the Arab Spring added to the misery. After the initial euphoria, much got worse. Except in Tunisia, where Islamic and secular political groups compete for power in a democratic political system. This book examines the role of external powers during the Arab Spring in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. How did the United States and the European Union react? What did Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran – regional states not directly affected by the revolutionary uprisings – do? All of them acted on the basis of their own values and interests, with scant regard for the preferences of the local actors. Some tried to promote democratic practice and human rights, but were hampered by their own inefficiencies and conflicting interests. In the end, none of them mattered very much: they were little more than bystanders. In this book, leading international experts in their respective fields offer perspectives and analyses that, hopefully, will be of use in shaping more effective support for better governance at critical junctures in the future. Contributors: Henri J. Barkey is Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington. Rosemary Hollis is Professor of Middle East Policy Studies and Director of the Olive Tree Scholarship Programme at City University London. Sverre Lodgaard is Senior Research Fellow and former Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). Saideh Lotfian is Professor of Political Science, University of Tehran. Michael Lüders is an expert on Middle East affairs, a regular commentator for German and Swiss media and an advisor to the German Foreign Ministry. Joachim Nahem is a leading governance expert with the International Law and Policy Institute (ILPI), Oslo. Selin Nasi is a columnist for Hurriyet Daily News and Şalom newspaper in Turkey. Amin Saikal is Professor of Political Science, Public Policy Fellow, Chair of the Middle East Reference Group, and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. Jean-François Seznec is Visiting Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Washington. Gerald Steinberg is Professor of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv. Knut S. Vikør is Professor of the History of the Middle East and Muslim Africa, University of Bergen.

Embassies in Crisis

Embassies in Crisis
Author: Rogelia Pastor-Castro
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351123491

Embassies are integral to international diplomacy, their staff instrumental to inter-governmental dialogue, strategic partnerships, trading relationships and cultural exchange. But Embassies are also discreet political spaces. Notionally sovereign territory ‘immune’ from local jurisdiction, in moments of crisis Embassies have often been targets of protest and sites of confrontation. It is this aspect of Embassy experience that this collection of essays explores and Embassies in Crisis revisits flashpoints in the recent lives of Embassies overseas at times of acute political crisis. Ranging across multiple British and other embassy crises, unusually, this book offers equal insights to international historians and members of the diplomatic community.

Palestinian Music in Exile

Palestinian Music in Exile
Author: Louis Brehony
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2023-10-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1649033052

A historical and contemporary study of Palestinian musicianship in exile in the Middle East, spanning half a century in disparate locations Palestinian Music in Exile is a historical and contemporary study of Palestinian musicianship in exile in the Middle East, spanning half a century in disparate and undocumented locations. The stories taking center stage show creatively divergent and revolutionary performance springing from conditions of colonialism, repression, and underdevelopment. What role does music play in the social spaces of Palestinian exile? How are the routes and roadblocks to musical success impacted by regional and international power structures? And how are questions of style, genre, or national tradition navigated by Palestinian musicians? Based on seven years of research in Europe and the Middle East, this timely and inspiring collection of musical ethnographies is the first oral history of contemporary Palestinian musicianship to appear in book form, and the only study to encompass such a broad range of experiences of the ghurba, or place of exile.

Religion and the Global Money Markets

Religion and the Global Money Markets
Author: James Simon Watkins
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2022-08-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3031044169

This book focuses on how religion—particularly Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and, to a lesser extent, Hinduism—is shaping the ethos and daily actions of market participants within the global money markets. The concepts inherent within Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism are making themselves felt within the global money markets. As Islamic finance led to the introduction of sharia compliant derivatives, for example, Christian investment funds are leading ethical initiatives on Wall Street, the City of London, and elsewhere such as divesting from fossil fuels in response to the climate change emergency. Jewish faith led funds are making significant strides with the further development of impact investments. The concept of Hindu economics is also beginning to shape the actions of some market participants which are tied to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. ​

Command

Command
Author: Lawrence Freedman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2022-09-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0197540678

Using examples from a wide variety of conflicts, Lawrence Freedman shows that successful military command depends on the ability not only to use armed forces effectively but also to understand the political context in which they are operating. Command in war is about forging effective strategies and implementing them, making sure that orders are appropriate, well-communicated, and then obeyed. But it is also an intensely political process. This is largely because how wars are fought depends to a large extent on how their aims are set. It is also because commanders in one realm must possess the ability to work with other command structures, including those of other branches of the armed forces and allies. In The Politics of Command, Lawrence Freedman explores the importance of political as well as operational considerations in command with a series of eleven vivid case studies, all taken from the period after 1945. Over this period, the risks of nuclear escalation led to a shift away from great power confrontations and towards civil wars, and advances in communication technologies made it easier for higher-level commanders to direct their subordinates. Freedman covers defeats as well as victories. Pakistani generals tried to avoid surrender as they were losing the eastern part of their country to India in 1971. Iraq's Saddam Hussein turned his defeats into triumphant narratives of victory. Osama bin Laden escaped the Americans in Afghanistan in 2001. The UK struggled as a junior partner to the US in Iraq after 2003. We come across insubordinate generals, such as Israel's Arik Sharon, and those in the French army in Algeria, so frustrated with their political leadership that they twice tried to change it. At the other end of the scale, Che Guevara in Congo in 1966 and Igor Girkin in Ukraine in 2014 both tried to spark local wars to suit their grandiose objectives. Freedman ends the book with a meditation on the future of command in a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technologies like artificial intelligence. A wide-ranging and insightful history of the changing nature of command in the postwar era, this will stand as a definitive account of a foundational concept in both military affairs and politics.