The upsurge of violence in the Middle East as a new administration was discovering its feet in Washington DC is a portent of how incendiary the Middle East conflict really is. Enlightened observers have termed the region one of the most pressing problems facing the Obama administration, among others, namely the economy and climate change.
For his part, Barack Obama has been making all the right noises since taking over the US presidency on January 20. He has appointed George Mitchell, a widely respected diplomat, as his envoy for the Middle East, and in his first television interview since becoming president, he told Al-Arabiya, an Arab TV network, that it was Mitchell’s brief to “listen”, because “all too often the United States starts by dictating.”
To say that the task before Obama is an uphill one is to state the obvious. Will the new President be able to undo some of the damage that eight years of George W Bush’s presidency wreaked on the Middle East?
Patrick Tyler, who has covered the region for the Washington Post and New York Times, certainly hopes so. In A World of Trouble, the journalist-turned-writer summarizes 50 years of America’s involvement with the Middle East. This absorbing read starts in October 1956 — with Dwight D Eisenhower’s relationship with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and the anti-Communist agenda that drove the former to underestimate the power that Nasser wielded in the region.
From here, to the hits and misses of every subsequent administration, Tyler draws out a detailed discourse of the strategies that came to occupy the heart of America’s foreign policy interests. Tyler is a writer of anecdotes, and gently melds the larger historical narrative with the play of power that drove personal ambition. He is particularly scathing in his criticism of Henry Kissinger’s role during the 1973 Yom Kippur conflict. Tyler paints a picture of a wily man exploiting his position with the Israelis to isolate President Richard M Nixon, who was being battered back home by Watergate.
If Kissinger was the ace foreign policy hawk on the American side, there was also Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the quiet arsenal in the House of Saud’s weaponry. Bandar hovers above the book as a birdlike presence, dealing with one administration after the other, alert to the possibility of breakthroughs. Bill Clinton famously averted a major blunder in etiquette by getting Bandar to stop Yasser Arafat from planting a peck on Clinton’s cheeks during the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
Tyler reserves the title “A World of Trouble” for Bush Jr’s years in the White House. The botched path leading up to the war in Iraq is revealed in cringe-inducing detail. The trumped-up weapons of mass destruction dossier, the war itself and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse vanquished any goodwill left in the region for post-9/11 America.
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Iran continues to blight the Middle East party, and its nuclear ambitions are threatening to spiral out of control, Tyler asserts. He further argues that if America wants stability and peace in the region, it will have to address the aspirations of the millions of people still battling tyranny, most notably, in the kingdom where America has consistently propped up despots — Saudi Arabia.
Granted, George Bush’s “freedom agenda” backfired when democracy propelled distinctly Islamist parties to centre stage in country after country (Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq). But only a long-term commitment to fostering democracy, separate from America’s oil interests and militarism, will bring about real change on the ground. More importantly, Tyler writes, America will have to engage with regimes in the region and move away from Bush’s “Axis of evil” rhetoric.
Obama will have to walk the tightrope between containing Iran on the one hand, and assuring the people of the region that his administration has their good at its heart, on the other. If Tyler’s book is any indication, he will need more, much more, than charisma and popularity to implement his agenda.
A WORLD OF TROUBLE
THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE MIDDLE EAST — FROM THE COLD WAR TO THE WAR ON TERROR
Patrick Tyler
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
496 pages, $27
