I’ve just put the full text of 13 books which I’ve written onto the Internet. You can access them all for free with a single click.
This project has prompted me to think a lot about what I’ve been trying to do these last forty years.
The
main goal has been trying to explain the Middle East as it actually
exists, how its politics work, and how its history can be understood. My
basic overview is contained in my The Tragedy of the Middle East.
In structural terms, the Middle East can be seen as paralleling the
history and politics of other regions in the world. But along with that
is the all-important factor of its specific development.
Europe’s
and North America’s countries and peoples have figured out two critical
questions: How do we define ourselves? And How do we advance? In the
Middle East, instability and turmoil can be traced to the failure to
answer these questions. Regarding the first question, religious,
regional, ethnic, and national identities still compete on a roughly
equal basis. The “Arab Spring” wasn’t about democracy ultimately but
about the religious (and in some cases ethnic) identity overcoming the
failed nationalist identity of Arabism.
On
the second question, the
Middle East formulation has been: Why are we behind the West (or even
rest of the world) and what do we do about it? By defining the problem
as one of imperialism and exploitation, then defining the solution as
revolutionary battle, the Muslim-majority Middle East has landed itself
in a mess. Relative backwardness has become a self-fulfilling prophesy,
with Islamism now replacing Arab nationalism as the doctrine of
destruction.
The
answer, of course, is pragmatism, reasonably regulated capitalism, and
the kind of development that comes from accepting modern innovations,
though not necessarily all of them. In short, the Middle East has been
heading and continues to head in the wrong direction, with Iran and
Turkey dragged into this mix.
How these states have been structured is the topic of Modern Dictators: Third World Coupmakers, Strongmen, and Populist Tyrants. It’s a cross-national comparison of dictators around the world to explain their similarities and differences.
The
key theme is the difference between traditional dictators—who just
wanted their subjects to obey while they raked in the money—and modern
dictators, who seek to mobilize their populations through ideology,
control of echoing institutions (education, media, religion), zero
tolerance for dissent, and the demand for positive allegiance.
Modern
dictators are far stronger and more difficult to overthrown. And when
they are overthrown, as current Middle East developments show, they are
more likely to be overthrown by other modern dictators than by
democracies.
When the book came out (in the 1980s no less!) the Washington Post review
dismissed the book by saying that the cause of Third World problems
must be sought not in local conditions but because of U.S. imperialism.
And that kind of thinking reflects accurately the fact that the American
debate on these issues has been heading and continues to head in the
wrong direction as well.
It’s
not that U.S. policy hasn’t made mistakes but the interpretation of
those errors, and of events, has often been misleading. An example is
given in my history of U.S.-Iran relations up to the revolution, Paved with Good Intentions. The
United States did not lack good intentions when dealing with Iran. And
like it or not the disaster came not because U.S. policy was too mean
(backing an evil dictator whose secret police used torture) but in
undermining (often unintentionally) a bad system so that it could be
replaced by a worse one.
This
book includes a detailed day-by-day assessment of President Jimmy
Carter’s handling of the 1978-1981 Iran revolutionary and later hostage
crisis. Briefly, the catastrophe was due to disorganization, wishful
thinking, and a naïve view that moderation would inevitably triumph that
resembles nothing more than it does the Obama Administration strategy
of today. You can read it as a cautionary tale for those who disregard
all such warnings.
A case study of both the nature of these dictatorships and of U.S. policy is presented in The Truth About Syria.
The paradox of the book’s theme is the contradiction between a regime
that is very difficult to overthrow and impossible to reform, and yet
the terrible problems and powerful forces that such a regime builds up.
The book explains why Syria is such an archetypal case of Middle Eastern
politics and why the
country is engulfed today in a bloody civil war.
The
U.S. policy angle is also important. Briefly, the United States did not
recognize that the weaker and more intimidated the Syrian regime
became, the more it feared to cross U.S. interests. Squandering this
leverage and believing that the correct policy was to win this ferocious
dictatorship over
by kindness, U.S. policy made the situation far worse.
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That
picture of the interaction between U.S. policy and the primary—but not
exclusive—importance of internal developments is carried over to the
Persian Gulf in Cauldron of Turmoil .
It’s truly remarkable that this area went from the most apparently
distant and esoteric of regions for U.S. foreign policy to the very
centerpiece,
involving the United States directly in no less than six wars, as well
as generating the Iran hostage crisis and September 11! This book
explains why and how that happened.
What about present-date alternatives? Islamic Fundamentalists in Egyptian Politics is
a history of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist movements in Egypt. It
focuses mainly on their earlier failures to take over the country but
does incorporate the factors that produced their current success in
doing so.
The other side of the coin is provided in detail in The Long War for Freedom-The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East.
This, to my knowledge, is the only comprehensive look at America
moderate, reformist, and democratic movements and the problems they face
in taking over or competing with the Islamists. Briefly, the obstacles
to their success is tremendous.
What’s
been frustrating about doing this work is that the mainstream debate in
the West has gone in a very different direction. Yet if anyone in
positions of authority or opinion-making power had understood The Long
War for Freedom they never would have had the slightest illusion that
the moderates were going to win. The book was written before the “Arab
Spring” but it explains and predicts precisely what happened.
The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict asks
the question: How did different Arab states become involved in the
Arab-Israeli conflict, how did their involvements differ, and was the
history that happened inevitable?
Briefly,
the book shows the major and consistent differences between countries
based on their political cultures and geostrategic situations. It
explains that the long conflict, the waste of so many resources, the
hegemony of dictatorships and radical thinking were not inevitable but
arose from the victory of hard-line forces that fanatically believed
that battle was superior to compromise. There were moderate forces which
were defeated and the irony is that Israel's coming into existence was
largely due to the Arab radicals getting into control over setting
policy.
My trilogy on Palestinians, which has a parallel theme--Revolution Until Victory; The Transformation of Palestinian Politics; and Yasir
Arafat: A Political Biography--is not online but you can read the books.
How
little things have changed! And that’s the reason why these book are
especially important at a time when attention to the Middle East and
debates over U.S. policy toward the region are at an all-time
high.
Finally, there is Istanbul Intrigues, a
book about Turkey, the Middle East, and the Balkans during World War
Two. Much of the book concerns espionage, based on never-before-used
archives. I’d call it more of a fun read.
Trying
to understand the Middle East and U.S. policy for the last forty years
has been intellectual challenging and rewarding.
On the other hand, watching the same mistakes being made and the
refusal to learn the lessons so openly available has been very sad. The
tragedy of the Middle East goes on unabated and in some ways it has
become the tragedy of the world generally.
Barry
Rubin is director of the
Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of
the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.orgEditor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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