Avi Shlaim’s book, “War and Peace in the Middle East” is a short historical analysis of crucial international political relations that shaped the Middle East from the end of the Ottoman empire to the immediate aftermath of Operation Desert Storm. He roughly divides these relations into four parts: the Ottoman, the European, the superpower and the American. There are two central points to this book: 1) that the international politics of the Middle East are best understood by looking at the relations between local powers and the larger global powers of the time; and 2) that despite the change in external powers, nothing fundamental has actually changed regarding the Middle East’s political relationship to dominant external powers, despite the changes in dominant powers. While Shlaim’s historical analysis conveys the progression of the dominant external powers in the Middle East accurately, his conclusion about what should be done, while it is valid, is unrealistic.
The post-Ottoman syndrome, the structuring of arbitrary nation-states in European fashion, is a crucial action that produces so much hostility in the Middle East still today. This is taken up in the first chapter. In 1916, Britain and France agreed to the Skyes-Picot agreement, which determined how they would split up the region from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf between each other. Shlaim notes how this agreement was a disaster for people living in all different areas of the Middle East. One of Shlaim’s examples illustrates the poor border choices for Iraq that were unscrupulously decided in the Skyes-Picot agreement. Shlaim quotes two journalists who understood Churchill’s goals for establishing Iraq: “ Iraq was created by Churchill, who had the mad idea of joining two widely separated oil wells, Kirkuk and Mosul, by uniting three widely separated peoples: the Kurds, the Sunnis, and the Shiites.” The merging of oil wells was of primary concern, while reconciling very different peoples was secondary at best.
The Belfour Declaration, which in 1917 pledged a national Jewish homeland in Palestine, was intended to gain support for the war from European and American Jews. The longer term consequences, however, did not anticipate the clash between Arab and Israeli nationalism. Shlaim aptly points out that Britain obliged themselves to aid the new Jewish state, while simultaneously setting themselves up for Palestinian refusal in recognizing their authority. Shlaim states that one of the few honest things that were ever said about the situation for Palestinians came from Beflour himself: “In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.” Clearly, from the beginning of their dominance, Britain had no intention to accommodate Palestinians.
Shlaim also shows how, during the Cold War years, the influence of the Soviet threat determined the majority of American foreign policy in the Middle East. This happened to be a relatively quieter period for the Middle East with less explicit imperialism due to the fear that Arab states would side with the Soviets if the United States pushed them too far. This new superpower struggle marked the end of Britain’s dominance in the Middle East and ushered in new global tension between the United States and the Soviet Union superpowers.
During this time the U.S. had differing perspectives on how to deal with the Arabs and the Israelis. Shlaim describes two types of perspective: 1) the regionalist approach, where concern focused on the problems that occurred in the middle east and how to solve them; and 2) the globalist approach, which focused on the the Cold War issues, i.e., pursuing interesting that would better suite the West in the global battle of East versus West. Israel was always considered be an important player on the globalist view, since it was thought, apparently based on xenophobia, that they are more trustworthy then the hostile Arabs. Shlaim notes that proponents of taking an Israel-first policy stemmed largely from “psychological hang-ups” about Arab hostility and backwardness.
The regionalist approach was quick to point out that unbalanced consideration to Israel only intensifies the hostility of Arabs toward the U.S. By siding with Israeli, they offered more incentive from radical regimes and others to side with Moscow, which for the U.S. was the ultimate danger.
Now, jumping ahead to the phase in Middle East history after the Cold War ended and U.S. became the sole global superpower. Shlaim points out when Saddam was preparing to invade Kuwait, he explicitly described his taking-back of Kuwait as analogous to the Palestinians taking back their land from Israel. This was a clever move because it made Saddam appear like, as Shlaim puts it, “the champion of Palestinian rights.” This gained Saddam support from the Arab masses. Saddam also attacked Israel with two objectives in mind. The first, attempted to turn an Arab-Arab conflict into an Arab-Israeli conflict. The second objective was to divide Arabs from America by showcasing America’s commitments to Israel.
Saddam was successful in exposing the double standard that president Bush held against Saddam but allowed for Israel. Bush could not insist that Saddam comply with U.N. orders to withdraw from Kuwait without also insisting, as Shlaim writes, that Israel comply “with the strikingly similar demands of security Council Resolution 248, on the table since 1967.” There is no doubt that Saddam had no trouble exposing America’s intimate relationship with Israel. Shlaim clearly notes the fact that “America had given Israel aid totaling $77 billion between 1948 and 1992,” and continuing even to this day. More recently, Obama has planned on funneling billions more to the Jewish state. But back then, the first Bush’s presidency recognized that all this aid to Israel was only getting him 5% of the Jewish vote. Naturally, he did not see why his administration should be so committed to Israel. This opened up the idea to place economic restraints on Israel and coerce them into peace negotiations.
Shlaim then describes the sorry attempt to negotiate peace in Madrid. The ridiculousness of negotiating was illustrated by the corridor diplomacy that took place. Israel absolutely would not negotiate with a Palestinian state, they considered Palestine to be a part of the Jordanian committee. Their refusal to negotiate led them to linger in the corridors, since they refused even to walk into the negotiation room under such conditions. The term “corridor diplomacy” derived from this behavior. Finally, negotiations began only because the two committees of Palestine and Jordan were labeled subcommittees; one with 9 Palestinians and 2 Jordanians that dealt with Palestinian issues, and the other subcommittee consisting of 9 Jordanians and 2 Palestinians that dealt with Jordanian issues.
When Clinton was admitted to office he took a stronger Israel-first stance than Bush had taken. Shlaim tells us that Clinton basically let peace discussions be decided by Israel while economically aiding them for large-scale housing projects on the West Bank.
Now that the Soviet threat had collapsed, Shlaim notes that it had become fashionable but simplistic to replace the great Soviet fear with a fear for Islamic fundamentalism. This replacement has a functional purpose in that it attempted to legitimize Israel as still remaining an American asset in the Middle East, despite how ties to Israel caused America more problems than help during the Gulf war.
Shlaim concludes by stating that America, being the sole super power, should not “bolster Israel as a strategic partner in an unwinnable war against an imaginary Islamic threat but to encourage Israel to contribute to stability, democracy, and economic development throughout the region.” Shlaim’s conclusion is a good idea, but how would this work out in practice? Throughout Shlaim’s book itself we have seen again and again that Israel is hungry for more land and power, not cooperation with it’s neighbors. A more reasonable solution, that also addresses the arbitrary border problems in the Middle East, is that a political movement based on working-class similarities throughout the states in the Middle East organize and take power for their own interests. This movement is not right around the corner, but it is much more of a real possibility than to depend on Israel’s cooperation. This is also the only political solution that can permanently rectify the problem of nationalism in the Middle East, which is the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And it is also crucial that such a movement develops in the more economically developed countries, especially America.
