American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Intro To American-Middle East Relations
Review: Douglas Little's historical survey of political, economic, and cultural relations between southwest asian countries and between these countries and the USA has been extremely beneficial to me. If you are interested in why some Americans are biased toward groups in the Mid East, Little focuses on this. If you want to understand Israel's creation as a state and the later problems between Israel and others in the region, Little provides an unbiased assessment of this. If you are interested in how US foreign policies have influenced the region, this is the book for you (as an introduction). In short, "American Orientalism" is well-written, objective, and extremely informative. If you think you understand the Middle East based only on news watching, or if you would like to know the historical dynamics at work in Middle Eastern countries, I urge you to read this book.

Rating:
Summary: very readable history of U.S. involvement in the mid-east
Review: I discovered this book when a chapter from it appeared in a collection of readings for a college class on national security. The chapter, "America and Israel: the making of a special relationship" impressed me with its account of the events involving the two countries from before Israel's statehood. I've now read the entire book and find that chapter and another, "Opportunities Lost and Found" dealing with the issue of the Palestinians and attempts to find a way to peace in the area are the best of the volume. To revisit events in a concise, chronological order gave me a new appreciation of the frustrations experienced there in the last 50 years.

Approaching the mid-east on different subjects, be it the oil issue, the Cold War, or the Arab nationalist movements, Little moves right along finding just the right amount of detail to relate. He is able to cover the same period repeatedly from different angles without repeating himself. Each chapter presented a new field of events to be tied into others already described. One comes away with a sense of the complexity of the mid-east. This is what Little is trying to convey.

I did not feel that the author portrayed the United States as "bad" by any means. What he is saying is that the U.S. desire to make things better combined with an often simplistic view of the Orient can easily get the U.S. into trouble. He points out the there is "occidentalism" in the view from the mid-east of the U.S. It's no accident that he discusses Mark Twain's book "Innocents Abroad" in the first chapter and returns to it in the last.

A second important point is that domestic politics can deflect the U.S. from a path it might otherwise follow, particularly in regard to Israel. Over the period covered, there has been no real Arab constituency in the United States, whereas pressure to support Israel has been constant, a fact acknowledged by every U.S. president from Truman on. There is no way the U.S. government can take an even-handed stand. Events described in the book provide evidence that momentary actions which are not interpreted as pro-Israel are all that can be taken by an American administration, because a groundswell of political opposition makes it's continuance impossible.

I've lived through the time period of most of the events described, but I was enlightened by the relationship between them that Little reveals. This is a solid book that will keep your interest throughout. As mentioned, it stood out among the 35 readings for the class I took and the book as a whole did not disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: Ultimately unsuccessful
Review: Nearly two decades ago, Douglas Little appeared on the diplomatic history scene with a monograph entitled "Malevolent Neutrality," about the United States, the United Kingdom and the origins of the Spanish Civil War. Although much of the book consisted of quarrels and squabbles between the US, the UK and Spain over foreign investors in Spain, the book nevertheless had a certain power. Here was the Spanish Republic desperately trying to preserve its democracy while the US and UK were whining over foreign investment rules, exaggerating Communist and Anarchist influence and imposing the malevolent neutrality of the title. Now Little has come up with a new book with the promising title "American Orientalism." The book consists of eight chapters which look at American images of the Middle East, America's relationship with Middle East Oil, the relationship between America and Israel, National Security and the Soviet Threat, the Nasserist "threat", the idea of modernization, "limited war" in the Gulf from the 1958 Lebanon intervention to the defeat of Afghanistan, and the Arab-Israeli peace process. The book has certain virtues. We certainly get more historical perspective than most discussions of the topic. We learn about the generally condescending and shallow American view of Arabs, usually seen as narrow-minded, backward frustrated fanatics. We learn about how the American government bent or ignored the anti-trust rules so that American oil companies wouldn't be inconvenienced in their exploitation of Arab oil. We learn about the long Arab-Israeli peace process, where Israeli recalcitrance and bad faith is as much a problem as Arab terrorism. We learn about the United States' trust in the "white revolution" in Iran, and the inevitably bad reputation that occurred when the Shah was overthrown by an angry population.

But ultimately this is an unsuccessful book. The first problem is one of evidence. Although Little has looked at around 50 collections of papers and oral histories, restrictive government policies ensures there is little primary evidence after the Johnson administration. A more serious problem is that Little can apparently neither speak nor read Arabic. Stylistically, the chapters themselves, about thirty to forty pages each, are too short for really profound or original discussion of the subject at hand. Yet at the same time various themes, such as the Suez crisis or the Yom Kippur war, keep recurring, so we get repetitive discussions of these matters which at the same time are incomplete. For example, he really doesn't discuss Raymond Garthoff and Richard Ned Lebow's stunning portrayal of Kissinger's irresponsibility in the latter conflict.

There is a larger problem with Little's perspective. He concentrates on government-government relations, about economics and security. There is little on the details about Arab society. We learn that when Ayatollah Khomeini first opposed the Shah in the early sixties, the Shah sharply cracked down and killed a thousand people, with American support. But we learn less about why the White Revolution failed and why the mullahs were the beneficiaries. Other areas do not get the discussion they deserve. The Vincennes affair only gets a paragraph, Little's discussion of Israel's attempts to get nuclear weapons peters out in the early seventies, when they almost certainly succeeded, while his discussion of the 1986 attacks on Libya and the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 are surprisingly superficial and conventional. The discussion of the Lebanese civil war and Israel and America's intervention there tell us appallingly little about its origins. We do not learn that two great democracies supported the squalid, vicious sectarianism of the Maronite Phalange for the most selfish and ignorant of reasons. Nor can one accept Little's view that the Americans were as even-handed in the Arab-Israeli conflict as he argues. For decades Israel has been the United States' main beneficiary of foreign aid, while the United States in the seventies and eighties did much to demonize the PLO as nothing but terrorists.

The most depressing aspect about Muslim societies from Pakistan to Morocco is the way that politics are polarized between corrupt authoritarian governments and religious bigots capable of appalling acts of viciousness. Little tells us little about how this problem arose, and even less how we should solve it. He only provides enough to tell us that our glorious leaders have helped to get us this into this mess, but have no idea of how to get us out of it.

Rating:
Summary: very readable history of U.S. involvement in the mid-east
Review: This book was billed as an inspection into American attitudes and the Middle east since the 1940s. But instead this book is polluted with the false idea that no matter that Americas roles was over the last 60 years it was always `wrong' and usually full of `racist' `stereotypes'. The false logic here goes so far as to say that America didn't understand middle eastern `culture' and therefore basically no matter what America did, whether it supported secularism as in the Shah or support militant Islam as in the Muhadeen in Afghanistan, America must be somehow `bad'.

This is the false foolish logic that permeates this political tripe of a text. Here we find the argument that somehow because America supported Israel's `right to exist' since 1960 that America deserves to be hated in the Middle east. OF course this ignores the fact that America under Eisenhower supported Nasser and Egypt. And it ignores the fact that America helped create and prop up half the regimes that exist in the middle east, from Saudi to Pakistan. There is very little to be gleaned here unless you are one of these people that believes with the analysis that America is evil, and racist and never does anything good or proper. In the end this book neither admits nor understands the very American policies it was supposed to tell the history of, thus making one wish they had an actual history book in front of them, rather then a political broad sheet.

Seth J. Frantzman

Rating:
Summary: False logic pervades
Review: This book was billed as an inspection into American attitudes and the Middle east since the 1940s. But instead this book is polluted with the false idea that no matter that Americas roles was over the last 60 years it was always 'wrong' and usually full of 'racist' 'stereotypes'. The false logic here goes so far as to say that America didn't understand middle eastern 'culture' and therefore basically no matter what America did, whether it supported secularism as in the Shah or support militant Islam as in the Muhadeen in Afghanistan, America must be somehow 'bad'.

This is the false foolish logic that permeates this political tripe of a text. Here we find the argument that somehow because America supported Israel's 'right to exist' since 1960 that America deserves to be hated in the Middle east. OF course this ignores the fact that America under Eisenhower supported Nasser and Egypt. And it ignores the fact that America helped create and prop up half the regimes that exist in the middle east, from Saudi to Pakistan. There is very little to be gleaned here unless you are one of these people that believes with the analysis that America is evil, and racist and never does anything good or proper. In the end this book neither admits nor understands the very American policies it was supposed to tell the history of, thus making one wish they had an actual history book in front of them, rather then a political broad sheet.

Seth J. Frantzman