The Middle East and Changing Superpower Relations

The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969–1973

This chapter compares and explains the American and the Chinese foreign policies toward the Middle East through a conceptual lens of “path dependence.” Most importantly, taking a scalar and place-based approach toward global politics, this chapter examines how the iterative dialogical interactions between the US, China, and other actors in the Middle East and beyond have helped forge and maintain the different “paths” that the US and China have been taking in the region. Finally, this chapter also discusses whether and how the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 would bring about a new political and economic landscape in the Middle East and as a result create a “critical juncture” for China to move away from its non-interventionist path and become more assertive on the issues facing the region in order to protect and promote the growing interests it has there.

Consisting of 34 essays by an equal number of scholarly experts from around the globe, The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War should prove an invaluable resource for specialists and students alike. The essays explore a wide range of topics. Eschewing a standard chronological approach, editors Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde have organized the volume around geographical and thematic topics. Every major region of the world is covered, as is almost every conceivable topic—from the standard ones (geopolitics, economics, the nuclear revolution) to those that have become fashionable more recently (race, gender and women's rights, the environment, transnationalism, globalization, and the religious Cold War, among them).One of the book's many strengths is that the contributors do not speak with a single voice. Rather, they represent a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives, including an opening essay by Akira Iriye that takes a contrarian stance, arguing for the relative unimportance of the Cold War compared to other global developments during the twentieth century's second half—such as globalization and the emergence of a human rights regime. The authors have positioned the volume, in their words, “at the intersection of boundaries that divide many cold war histories and historians” (p. 3). Yet three guiding precepts run through the various chapters. First, many of the individual authors stress the global dimensions of the Cold War, emphasizing the agency of small states as well as non-state actors, thus moving well beyond the traditional concentration on superpower relations. Second, the essays taken together help overcome the tendency to separate the political, economic, ideological, and cultural spheres as distinct; the inextricable links between those spheres emerge clearly here. Third, many of the essayists highlight the tight connections between domestic and international developments, showing how the Cold War was influenced by and in turn influenced domestic forces.As with any edited collection, some essays stand out for their freshness and analytical rigor. Naoko Shibusawa's essay on “Ideology, Culture, and the Cold War,” for example, provides the most concise and sophisticated explication I have yet seen of that important subject. She regards ideologies of race, gender, and maturity as mutually reinforcing “notions of modernity” that shaped U.S. and Soviet attitudes and policies, and portrays the Cold War as a struggle between “competing exceptionalist claims” emanating from Moscow as well as Washington (pp. 39, 41). Cary Fraser, in his contribution on “Decolonization and the Cold War,” offers an equally provocative and persuasive explication of that critical historical phenomenon. “Decolonization,” he writes, “was thus project, process, and outcome of the search for a replacement for the quest for North Atlantic hegemony that had shaped the imperialism that preceded 1945 and the bipolar vision of the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact that emerged after 1945” (pp. 471472). John Prados's outstanding synthesis of “Cold War Intelligence History” and Vladislav Zubok's explication of the intersection between power and culture in Soviet strategy also deserve to be singled out for commendation. Among the regional essays, the contributions on the Middle East, by Salim Yaqub; South Asia, by Andrew J. Rotter; and Japan, by Antony Best, are especially noteworthy. Campbell Craig's masterful, succinct essay on the role of nuclear weapons in the Cold War also stands out.Other essays prove more descriptive than analytical, and a few border on the superficial, including the entries on geopolitics, on Africa, on international institutions, and on economics.Yet the volume contains far more strong essays than weak ones. Overall, the collection stands as a magnificent achievement. Its breadth and its helpful bibliographical aids alone make this a must-have volume. The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War belongs on the bookshelf of every serious scholar of the Cold War.

The Middle East and Changing Superpower Relations

The 21st century has witnessed economic, political, and normative transformations as a result of protracted economic crises, technological developments used to overcome these crises, shifts in global value chains, and the consequent shifts in power distribution among great powers and leading regions. The relations between the US and China are among the most contentious dynamics in the contemporary world. With the so-called "rise of China" as a result of China's successful economic reform since the late 1970s, which has turned China into the second largest economy of the world following the US only, scholars and diplomats alike are wondering how the relations between the two powers in our world today will evolve. Many recent developments, such as the revival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the US, Japan, Australia, and India since 2017, the Sino-US "trade war" since 2018, and the US-led "diplomatic boycott" of China's Winter Olympics in 2022, seem to reveal the emergence of the Sino-US rivalry and the increase of the tension between the two in our international system. In this context of growing Sino-US conflicts, it is both academically and practically important to study their relations in one of the most strategically important regions in our world, the Middle East, which is producing one third of the oil for the whole world.

The Middle East and Changing Superpower Relations

The October War: A Retrospective, ed. by Richard B. Parker. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. xxii + 336 pages. Appends. to p. 373. Bibl. to page 379. Index to p. 396. $55. Ambassador Richard Parker-a fine diplomatic historian, as well as practitioner-has performed a useful service by organizing and now publishing proceedings of a conference held in 1998 on 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which brought together former officials and academic specialists from United States, former Soviet Union, Egypt, Israel, Syria and Jordan to discuss causes and effects of this conflict. The conference was cosponsored by The Middle East Institute and Anwar Sadat Chair at University of Maryland. Sessions and chapters were devoted to failures of diplomacy and intelligence in run-up to war, US airlift of military supplies to Israel and crisis management during war, an assessment of diplomacy that ended conflict, and superpower relations. There are two ways to read this book. For those in a hurry, commentaries by academics that introduce each chapter and summarize panel proceedings will provide a succinct overview and an often trenchant exposition of subject at hand. Particularly commendable are Parker's introduction and conclusion, Janice Gross Stein's commentary on intelligence failures, and Shibley Telhami's thoughts on lessons learned and puzzles to be solved. For those with more time to spare, a perusal of apparently very lightly edited transcript of actual deliberations yields occasional nuggets of value. For example, Ambassador Ashraf Ghorbal delivers a cogent account of Egyptian thinking-and puzzlement-that United States did not take full advantage of coming to power of President Anwar Sadat (p. 36). Ambassador Michael Sterner offers a critical reading of President Richard Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's failings, constraints on Sadat, and Israel's singularly inflexible role (p. 58). The intelligence officers, from whom one might have expected extreme reticence, are actually very candid, particularly Brigadier General Aryeh Shalev, former deputy director of Israeli intelligence, whose thoughtful analysis of Israel's miscalculation, is honest and informative. Former US Defense Secretary James Schlesinger's dinner address about US military airlift is entertaining, but more significant is his account of curious rump meeting of National Security Council (Nixon was not present) that issued controversial DefConIII alert for US military forces worldwide (including nuclear forces) following Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's implied threat of unilateral Soviet intervention (pp. 202-205). But even long stretches of repetitive reminiscences and casual conversation offer a certain insight into culture and mind-set of mostly mid-level officials who found themselves caught up in drama of Yom Kippur or Ramadan war. Among policymakers there is a certain clubbiness-first names, insider anecdotes-as former comrades-in-arms and adversaries try to recall adventures of 25 years ago. Even though US Ambassador Samuel Lewis doubts that scholars (especially those utilizing rational-actor assumptions) will ever really understand policymaking process, some of commentaries, especially in intelligence and crisis-management chapters, do expose what he describes as the atmosphere in a meeting at a moment of crisis among half a dozen leaders with imperfect information, a domestic political context, personal interactions of trust or mistrust among them, time deadlines, and inadequate information. …

FOREWORD .his issue of the SAIS REVIEW comes out at the end of 1989, a year which has witnessed two momentous foreign policy debates. The first, climaxing last spring, concerned the question of whether the Cold War was finally over. The second, ignited last summer by Francis Fukuyama's highly provocative and thoughtful article, "The End of History?" revolves around the question of whether major ideological conflict (and hence, goes the argument, history) has ended.1 The first debate appears by now to have spent itself, with those laying wreaths on the Cold War triumphant . Of course, just how dependent the debate's outcome was on a temporary mood in superpower relations and on the fortune and charisma of one Soviet leader remains to be seen. The current debate over history's end will also soon exhaust itself. The reasons are two-fold. First, too many different interests (including international affairs journals) have invested too many resources in the continuation of history to accept passively its cessation and wholesale replacement by "boring" technical matters. History has, in other words, more than enough defenders. Second, and more important, is the fact that Fukuyama's thesis— that economic and political liberalism has conquered all ideological rivals, and consequently, large-scale conflict will soon be extinct—is flawed. To begin with, Fukuyama's explicit assumption that international conflict is determined primarily by ideological rivalry is highly debatable, even in the ubiquitous long run. Traditional great power motivations, which 1 . Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History," TAe National Interest, no. 16 (Summer 1989): 3-18. vi SAIS REVIEW Fukuyama is willing to acknowledge as essential in the case of China's foreign policy, will not simply be swept away by the end of ideological rivalry. Indeed, in the absence ofsuch rivalry, they may generate greater interstate conflict. This is one of the points made (correctly) by those who argue that the cessation of the Cold War and its ideological intensity will not eliminate the possibility of hot wars, much less the reemergence of superpower tensions. Further, as welcome as liberalism's current success is, it would be foolhardy to assume (and especially to plan on the assumption) that this temporary victory is anything but that—temporary. One need not be a devout believer in communism's regenerative capabilities to hold that liberalism's monopoly on ideological universalism is vulnerable to challenge . From where is hard to predict. But surely it does not stretch the imagination to see how certain calamitous events, such as a global economic depression, could quickly threaten liberalism's appeal and give rise to new rival ideologies—some modern variation of fascism, for example . Indeed, if anything must be assumed, it should be what Vojtech Mastny, in this issue's opening article, concludes from his survey of recent historical periods—that "the seemingly irreversible [in this case, the triumph of liberalism] is often reversed." Finally, Fukuyama's thesis suffers from the assertion (perhaps, tongue in cheek) that the post-historical period will be marked by "boredom" — that is, by "economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems , environmental concerns, and the satisfaction ofsophisticated consumer demands." To return to Fukuyama's analysis of China: while declaring Beijing's ideological expansionism to have virtually disappeared, he highlights its commercially motivated transfer of ballistic missiles to the Middle East. Given this proliferation's dangerous implications for regional stability and U.S. interests, as described in this issue by Thomas G. Mahnken and Timothy D. Hoyt, this purported change in motivations and policy is almost enough to make one long for the good old days of ideological conflict. In short, even if one accepts Fukuyama's assertion that ideological rivalry is now over, the remaining challenges of international relations, given their complexity and consequences for all humans, do not allow us the luxury of celebrating the end of the Cold War or the demise of history. This is one of the themes of this issue of the SAIS REVIEW, which focuses primarily on the threats that the upcoming decade poses to U.S. national interests. In the symposium which opens this issue, thirteen prominent policy specialists tackle the task of prioritizing the challenges that will...