Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East
Author: Kenneth M Pollack
“A persuasive but painful solution for dealing with the mess in the Middle East.” –Kirkus
The greatest danger to America’s peace and prosperity, notes leading Middle East policy analyst Kenneth M. Pollack, lies in the political repression, economic stagnation, and cultural conflict running rampant in Arab and Muslim nations. By inflaming political unrest and empowering terrorists, these forces pose a direct threat to America’s economy and national security. The impulse for America might be to turn its back on the Middle East in frustration over the George W. Bush administration’s mishandling of the Iraq War and other engagements with Arab and Muslim countries. But such a move, Pollack asserts, will only exacerbate problems. He counters with the idea that we must continue to make the Middle East a priority in our policy, but in a humbler, more humane, more realistic, and more cohesive way.
Pollack argues that Washington’s greatest sin in its relations with the Middle East has been its persistent unwillingness to make the sustained and patient effort needed to help the people of the Middle East overcome the crippling societal problems facing their governments and societies. As a result, the United States has never had a workable comprehensive policy in the region, just a skein of half-measures intended either to avoid entanglement or to contain the influence of the Soviet Union.
Beyond identifying the stagnation of civic life in Arab and Muslim states and the cumulative effect of our misguided policies, Pollack offers a long-term strategy to ameliorate the political, economic, and social problems thatunderlie the region’s many crises. Through his suggested policies, America can engage directly with the governments of the Middle East and indirectly with its people by means of cultural exchange, commerce, and other “soft” approaches. He carefully examines each of the region’s most contested areas, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and explains how the United States can address each through mutually reinforcing policies.
At a time when the nation will be facing critical decisions about our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, A Path Out of the Desert is guaranteed to stimulate debate about America’s humanitarian, diplomatic, and military involvement in the Middle East.
The Washington Post - Greg Myre
Kenneth M. Pollack, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, has written an authoritative new book that spells out the full range of threats the United States faces in the region and offers prudent advice on how to defuse them.
Publishers Weekly
Former CIA analyst Pollack (The Threatening Storm) has devised an eloquent argument in favor of long-term American involvement in Middle East politics, arguing that American security and prosperity is contingent upon an orderly and democratic Middle East. A self-professed "liberal internationalist," the author advocates sustained engagement rather than a foreign policy that has been characterized by "reluctance" and is consistently "episodic, tried on the cheap, and shortsighted." Pollack keeps his sweeping survey lucid and readable and is refreshingly frank with the reader ("let's not kid ourselves: America's first and most important interest in the Middle East is the region's oil exports"). This book provides a thorough-if disheartening-diagnosis of the region's ailments-the burgeoning unemployment, poverty and population growth-and analyzes how repressive governments, a hidebound education system and a self-serving bureaucracy have destroyed the region's potential for foreign investment. Pollack's "grand strategy"-a decades-long commitment similar to the Marshall Plan to transform despotisms into democracies that promote economic expansion-should stimulate animated and necessary debate and a recasting of America's role in the Middle East. (July 22)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Kirkus Reviews
A former supporter of the Iraq invasion, former National Security Council director for Gulf Affairs Pollack (The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, 2004, etc.) now admits it was a terrible idea. Yet America must not only remain involved in the Middle East, he declares, it must bring harmony to that volatile region. Oil is our overwhelming interest in the area, the author states bluntly. Western economies are addicted to it, price increases provoke recessions (including the present one) and exhortations to reduce our dependence on foreign oil are mindless platitudes since it will be impossible for decades. Today's Middle Eastern leaders work responsibly to keep the supply stable, he adds. Unfortunately, all are autocrats, and their seething populations hate them no less than they hate the United States. Pollack emphasizes that America's greatest threat from the region is not terrorism or oil blackmail by current governments but revolutionary chaos that would disrupt oil supplies and skyrocket the price. Perhaps the most disturbing chapters describe Middle Eastern demographics. Despite oil wealth, most of the region's people are desperately poor, getting poorer and reproducing more rapidly than those in sub-Saharan Africa. Corrupt political systems discourage reform. Entrepreneurship is virtually absent. Tiny Israel exports more manufactured goods than 20 Islamic nations from Morocco to Iran. Readers may or may not agree with Pollack's remedies, but they will certainly wonder about their practicality. All mandate decades of involvement and no small expense as we patiently guide these countries toward democracy, the rule of law, free markets and honest government. Ourleaders must behave like statesmen instead of politicians (i.e., be willing to share unpleasant news with the public), and our citizens must be willing to sacrifice short-term benefits for long-term gains. Alas, readers may conclude that none of the current presidential candidates shows evidence of such statesmanship and it's doubtful the electorate would vote for any who did. A persuasive but painful solution for dealing with the mess in the Middle East.
Book about: New American Chef or Educating Peter
Founders on the Founders: Word Portraits from the American Revolutionary Era
Author: John P Kaminski
"I never indeed thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun, or other perverted machine, whose aim or stroke you could never be sure of."—Thomas Jefferson on Aaron Burr
"[A]lways an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses."—Benjamin Franklin on John Adams
"I do now know [Jefferson] to be one of the most artful, intriguing, industrious and double-faced politicians in all America."—John Nicholas to George Washington
"I shall really regret to leave Mr. Jefferson, he is one of the choice ones of the Earth."—Abigail Adams
More than two centuries after the ground-breaking events of the American struggle for independence, its key figures strike us more as players in a myth than as people who lived, worked, and interacted with one another. To recover the human dimension of the founders, we need look no further than their own words. Through a series of revealing quotations, historian John P. Kaminski profiles thirty of the era's best-known individuals, including Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry ("all tongue without either head or heart," according to Thomas Jefferson), as well as the early presidents and their first ladies.
The discourse is unfailingly respectful, and yet this is no mutual admiration society. The subjects are not afraid to be sharp about one another, but this only makes their words of praise more convincing and poignant. One could hardly ask for a more clear-eyed, and touching, tribute than Thomas Jefferson's appraisal of George Washington: "He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with thecalmest unconcern.... His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man."
Beginning with an introductory essay that provides an overview of the relationships between the founders, the book then presents each individual, providing a biographical sketch and a chronologically arranged series of quotations, clarifying not only each person's place within the independence movement but the contours of their character. The authors strike us with their candor, their insight, and their eloquence as they make their subjects come alive for us. As this book reveals, greatness is not only a matter of responding to the times; the people themselves were remarkable.
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