Selected by Fred Rhodes

DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES AND THEIR ARMED FORCES

Israel in Comparative Context

Edited by Stuart A. Cohen published by Frank Cass

07146 5038 2 £45.00 hardback

07146 8092 3 £17.50 paperback

Throughout the democratic world, armed forces are having to adapt to sweeping shifts in their domestic status. This new book constitutes the first sustained attempt to explore the possible implications of that situation for Israel — a state long considered a paradigmatic ‘nation of arms’.

Containing an edited selection of papers presented at an international Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies conference held in 1998, this book presents an overview of current transformations in societal-military relations in the western world. The first three sections explore the overall nature and consequences of current transformations in relations between western democracies and their armed forces. Within the context of that analytical framework, it then goes on to explore the specific manifestations in Israel. The result is an authoritative and comprehensive study of a process, which in Israel as elsewhere, already affects the very fabric of a vital sphere of public life.

STORIES OF DEMOCRACY

Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait

By Mary Ann Tetreault

published by COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

ISBN 0 231 11489 3

A sophisticated investigation of the shifting tides of democratic governance in modern Kuwait from 1921 to the present, based on interviews both with political activists and members of the political elite, this book sheds light on a wide array of issues concerning Middle Eastern politics and democratic institutions in general. Mary Ann Tetreault explores how various political factions have sought to advance their own notions of Kuwaiti history and politics through distinctive popular appeals: pro-democracy forces focusing on Kuwait’s relationship to the universal values of the democratic world around them; and anti-democrats proffering Arab and Muslim religious and cultural traditions.

She explores how such dramatic events as the suspension of the Kuwaiti constitution in 1986 and the invasion by Iraq in 1990 occasioned major shifts in the course of the democracy movement. The current running through virtually all of the nation’s political drama is the monolithic Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), used by the government as an instrument of economic strength to safeguard sovereignty in the absence of military might.

MUSADDIQ AND THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER IN IRAN

By Homa Katouzian published by IB Tauris

ISBN 1 86064 290 x price £14.95 hardback

Mohammed Musaddiq was the first of the great charismatic anti-colonial campaigners of the post-war era. As prime minister of Iran in the early 1950s, he was often in direct conflict with the West and, in 1953, the CIA removed him from office in a coup d’etat that restored the shah’s absolute powers.

This full-scale biography of Musaddiq sets his life and career against the genesis and development of the Popular Movement of Iran. Drawing upon the considerable amount of new material about Musaddiq published in Iran since the 1978-9 revolution, Homa Katouzian conveys a powerful sense of his subject and of the significance of the political issues that confronted him.

It presents a detailed account of Musaddiq’s background and political formation and examines the history of the popular movement from Musaddiq’s downfall in 1953 to his death in 1967.

THE ALGERIAN CIVIL WAR, 1990-1998

By Luis Martinez published by C Hurst and Co

ISBN 1 85065 517 0 price £16.50 paperback

ISBN 1 85065 515 4 price £35.00 hardback

Algeria was formerly a beacon for the third world under Boumedienne’s leadership and a testing-ground for democratic transition after the 1988 riots. Then it descended into civil war following the annulment of the December 1991 parliamentary elections.

The Islamist radicals of FIS and GIA bear the main responsibility for this tragedy since their main aim was to win power and enrich themselves. The army, on the other hand, took advantage of the violence to maintain its hegemony and reinforce its increasingly spurious claim to legitimacy. This was especially the case in the international arena, where it posed as the guarantor of ‘secular values’ against the ‘fundamentalist terror’ of radical Islam.

The principal focus of this book is the political economy of the war, as manifested in the lives of the many ordinary Algerians whom the author interviewed and whose experiences and thoughts on their country’s predicament give this book its extraordinary immediacy.

This is an original and provocative study of war and violence in Algeria from the competing yet overlapping viewpoints of incumbents and insurgents.

OUT OF PLACE

A Memoir

By Edward Said published by Granta Books

ISBN 1 86207 370 8 price Paperback £8.99

One of the most celebrated and influential Palestinian critics, intellectual Edward Said caused controversy over his right to speak for Palestine when these memoirs were published last year.

Out of Place highlights the unique position of a child who grew up in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and witnessed the collapse of the old Arab order, in the midst of both British and American imperialism. Edward Said was born in Jerusalem, but he was brought up in Cairo and spent summers in the Lebanese mountain village of Dhour el Shweir, until he was banished to America in 1951. His memoirs provide a particularly compelling insight into the politics and personal experience of the time.

This book combines a deeply personal history with an extraordinary political account. Said reveals the origins that informed his writing of such groundbreaking texts as Orientalism, and Culture and Imperialism. As ill health sets him thinking about endings, he returns to his beginnings. The memoirs maintain a striking balance between one man’s exploration of his memory and emotional response to his life; his family, a demanding ‘Victorian’ father and his adored mother, and the excavation of an essentially irrecoverable past, recreating the sights and sounds, the smells and shouts of a lost world..

DOMESTIC CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

By Jennifer Scarce published by NSM

ISBN 0 7007 0460 4 Price £12.99 Paperback

Domestic Culture in the Middle East invites the reader to enter and enjoy wealthy urban homes in Turkey, Egypt and Iran between the 16th and 19th centuries. This was a period of flourishing traditional culture and also of change. Decoration and furnishing of the home was increasingly influenced by ideas imported from Europe. This led to a lively fusion of styles, but the Middle Eastern household itself, the extended family and its dependents, remained essentially unchanged, with the traditional relationships, daily routines and domestic celebrations continuing.

The distinctive features of an affluent domestic interior were textiles which provided household furnishing and clothing, which functioned as a symbol of power and social status and played a vital economic role in industry and trade. Delight in brilliant colour and an imaginative treatment of surface and texture are striking aspects of Middle Eastern textiles. These distinctive features also influenced architectural decoration, manuscript illustration and the ornament of ceramics, metalwork, leather and wood.

This book focuses on three major cities of the Middle East, looking at domestic and social patterns of life and the material culture that expressed them.

ONTHE STRUGGLE FOR THE STRUGGLE FOR LEBANON

A Modern History of Lebanese-Egyptian Relations

by Nasser M Kalawoun published by IB TAURIS

ISBN 1 86064 423 6 price £39.50 hardback

Lebanon has occupied a pivotal position in Middle East politics since the Second World War viewed as the ‘Pearl of the Orient’ by western governments and others with whom it had close relationships. Faced with Egyptian hegemony and the tide of pan-Arab nationalism during Nasser’s rule in Cairo during the late 1950s and 1960s, Lebanese leaders of all persuasions faced the constant fear of being swallowed into an Arab-Muslim superstate after the union of Syria and Egypt in 1958 which formed the United Arab Republic.

Lebanese-Egyptian relations during the period 1952-70 passed through several phases but the main theme was uneasy cooperation, with Lebanon holding on to an independent role with the strong support of the US before Lebanese politics became engulfed in civil war in the 1970s.

Nasser Kalawoun shows how the politics of the western powers added to Lebanon’s problems; the Baghdad Pact placed Lebanon in opposition to Egypt and other Arab states, while the Suez War caused political conflict between the Egyptian and Lebanese governments. He recounts the beginnings of an uneasy and fitful cooperation between Lebanon and its neighbours, strengthened by Syria’s secession from the UAR in 1961.

With thorough research into original Lebanese, Arab and western sources and numerous interviews with leading players in the drama, this book is a compelling analysis of an important element in Middle Eastern politics.

HONEY AND VINEGAR

Incentives, Sanctions, And Foreign Policy

Edited by Richard N Haas and Meghan Osullivan

published by Brookings Institution Press

ISBN 0 8157 3356 9 price £28.75 hardback

ISBN 0 8157 3355 o price £12 25 paperback

Sanctions and military force are the normal tools for dealing with countries whose behaviour threatens US interests or offends American values. But in many instances, these punitive tools are ineffective, costly, or both. The principal alternative is another, less common foreign policy instrument: engagement, or the provision of economic and political incentives to reform behavior.

Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy is the first book to comprehensively address the option of engagement by exploring circumstances and strategies for employing incentives or rewards, rather than relying solely on penalties, to pursue foreign policy objectives.

The book reveals that engagement offers a promising alternative to policies of punishment that have either not achieved their objectives or have done so only at extremely high costs to the United States and the target country. The posture and policies currently adopted by the United States in some of its most problematic relationships — such as those with Cuba, Iran, Libya, and, to a lesser extent, Syria, demand re-evaluation.

This volume could hardly be more timely, coming out just as the Department of State declared it would no longer use the term ‘rogue states,’ in part because of growing US interest in pursuing the sort of engagement strategies urged in this book.

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