Product Description

The international relations of the Middle East have long been dominated by uncertainty and conflict. External intervention, interstate war, political upheaval and interethnic violence are compounded by the vagaries of oil prices and the claims of military, nationalist and religious movements. The purpose of this book is to set this region and its conflicts in context, providing on the one hand a historical introduction to its character and problems, and on the other a reasoned analysis of its politics. In an engagement with both the study of the Middle East and the theoretical analysis of international relations, the author, who is one of the best known and most authoritative scholars writing on the region today, offers a compelling and original interpretation. Written in a clear, accessible and interactive style, the book is designed for students, policymakers, and the general reader.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230647 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

Review
‘A masterly survey by a scholar with a long and unusually rich personal experience of the region.‘ E. Roger Owen, A. J. Meyer Professor of Middle Eastern History, Harvard University

'Mr Halliday offers an authoritative analysis of the armed conflict, social upheaval and political economics that formed the background to the attack on America in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq nearly two years later.' The Economist

‘A most worthwhile study that should become compulsory reading for all students of the Middle East.‘ Contemporary Review

'The Middle East in International Relations may well be regarded as his chef d'oeuvre, bringing together as it does not only the borad range of his earlier writings on the area but also a formidable array of other contributions.' Asian Affairs

'Firstly, Halliday arouses curiosity when he compares political theories to mushrooms: Some are eatable, some enjoyable and a third category is simply poisonous …Halliday explains particularly convincingly the reasons for the fast and thorough adoption of the exogenous ideology of nationalism in the Arabic region. … The real value of the chapter lies in the question that Halliday poses about which movements/phenomena/factors are international (inter-state) and which are truly trans-national. He answers this question in an extraordinarily conclusive way using the five case studies of nationalist movements, … a well thought through appendix of maps, charts, diagrams, and statistic information … The exquisitely comprehensive selection of sources by itself would justify the "subsequent use". This publication, therefore, belongs in every serious Near East library' Henner Fuertig

About the Author
Fred Halliday is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. His publications include Two Hours that Shook the World (2001) and Nation and Religion in the Middle East (2000).

Customer Reviews

A Masterclass from an Inspiring Teacher
The beauty and importance of this book lies in its timeliness. Planned before the events of 2001, it appears now, when the question of the Middle East demands a wider understanding of a situation with all the complexity of the forces in place at the beginning of the Thirty Years War. It fulfils the need for an authoritative source available to all.

Coming within a few months of Robert Fisk's eagerly awaited book on The Great War for Civilisation and accompanied by a companion volume on 100 Myths about the Middle East, this book provides a framework for examining the problem in all its dimensions.

The book is logically structured to cover the history of the region and the varied and often contradictory dimensions that the region can be studied in. It starts by proposing that a study of the languages of the area is a necessary but not sufficient condition for understanding of the region. It goes on to analyse the ideological, political, economic, sociological and military aspects of the problem along with the legacy of colonialism and the proxy conflicts of the cold war period.

Over and over again the reader is struck by the sheer erudition of the author where, in a couple of well chosen finely honed words, he lets us know that he has read about assessed and understood some economic, sociological or political theory that might have relevance and applied it to his analysis. The range of these illustrates the breadth of the subject. The personal insights ranging from the coincidence of his finishing his undergraduate examinations in 1967 on the day of the classic strike from the sea to his confession of the identity of his hero add a leavening humanity to the intricacies of the region.

Surprisingly, the author does not expect water to be a major cause of conflict in the area.

His footnotes add to the wonderful feeling of confidence that the author, unsurprisingly, knows what he is talking about. Anecdotes about spending a night on a hillside in Dhofar with a bodyguard of insurgents while the SAS were raiding across the frontier or a reference to a book on the subject of Arab Political Humour add enormous credibility to the content.

The book condenses forty years of knowledge, study, hard won experience and astonishing amounts of reading into three hundred readable and understandable pages that lead the reader to go around and start again to assimilate more on the second reading. For those interested in educating themselves about the subject the bibliography is a cornucopia.

To quote from the final paragraph of the book:

"To face the forthcoming struggles, one must be armed. One must learn to distance oneself from the myths, to assimilate the lessons of human experience, to reject complacency and self-satisfaction, which are causes of stagnation; one must always seek to surpass oneself and the existing situation in the effort to accomplish the great human tasks."

Professor Halliday's book provides a means to achieve this admirable end for anyone with more than a cursory interest in the subject.