Shaykh Yusuf Yassin (18921962) marked the contemporary history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in his capacity as a favorite advisor who was the founder monarchs confidential secretary, relentless envoy and chief foreign policy consultant. Born in Latakiyyah, Syria, Yassin earned the confidence of King Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, and moved to Riyadh even before the Third Saudi Kingdom was inaugurated in 1932. After obtaining citizenship he participated in critical decisions reached by the ruler as regional and international actors honed in on the wealth of the Arabian Peninsula. Over the course of several decades Yusuf Yassin met with and negotiated on behalf of three monarchs, Abdul Aziz and his two successors, Saud and Faysal, with Arab and global leaders. He was present at the creation of the country and suggested that al-Saudiyyah be added to its very nameAl-Mamlakah al-Arabiyyah al-Saudiyyahwhich reflected his personality and political outlook as an Arab nationalist who cherished the founder. Joseph Kechichian has written the first political biography of the statesman, based on original documents [the Yassin Papers] as well as Western diplomatic correspondence. Kechichian provides insights into the Nationalist Al Saud Advisor who left his mark on Saudi Arabia. The volume provides essential background on a man who rose from humble origins in Syria to espouse Arabian values, and walks the reader through nearly five decades of Arab history, including the repercussions of the infamous 1916 SykesPicot Agreement, the creation of the League of Arab States, and various Arab crises. These events, experienced and engaged with by Shaykh Yusuf Yassin at the highest political and diplomatic levels, set the stage that empowered Saudi Arabia, along with other Arab States, with the wherewithal to succeed for their respective peoples.

Joseph Kéchichian has written this political biography of the statesman, based on original documents (the Yassin Papers) as well as Western diplomatic correspondence. He provides insights into the Nationalist Al Saud Advisor who left his mark on Saudi Arabia.

Over the past decade, the political ground beneath the Middle East has shifted. Arab nationalism the political orthodoxy for most of this century has lost its grip on the imagination and allegiance of a new generation. At the same time, Islam as an ideology has spread across the region, and "Islamists" bid to capture the center of politics. Most Western scholars and experts once hailed the redemptive power of Arabism. Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival is a critical assessment of the contradictions of Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, and the misrepresentation of both in the West. The first part of the book argues that Arab nationalism--the so-called Arab awakening--bore within it the seeds of its own failure. Arabism as an idea drew upon foreign sources and resources. Even as it claimed to liberate the Arabs from imperialism it deepened intellectual dependence upon the West's own romanticism and radicalism. Ultimately, Arab nationalism became a force of oppression rather than liberation, and a mirror image of the imperialism it defied. Kramer's essays together form the only chronological telling and the at fully documented postmortem of Arabism. The second part of the book examines the similar failings of Islamism, whose ideas are Islamic reworkings of Western ideological radicalism. Its effect has been to give new life to old rationales for oppression, authoritarianism, and sectarian division. Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival provides an alternative view of a century of Middle Eastern history. As the region moves fitfully past ideology, Kramer's perspective is more compelling than at any time in the past-in Western academe no less than among many in the Middle. This book will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, economists, and Middle East specialists.

In the aftermath of popular uprisings that unleashed the quest for freedom, Arab governments scrambled to limit sectarian divisions, though much of these efforts came to naught. Regrettably, weak governments fell into carefully laid traps, aimed to divide and rule. Protracted wars further destroyed Arab wealth and cohesiveness, and Sunni communities saw their power bases marginalised. On cue, and predicted by some commentators, extremist movements like the so-called Islamic State emerged, targeting Sunnis with extreme violence. In 2014 Nabil Khalife, an established Lebanese thinker, published a widely praised thesis that identified the root causes of renewed sectarian tensions at a time when confrontations polarised awakened Arab societies. Based on an extensive discussion of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah, Khalife advanced the notion that the revolution was not Islamic but an Iranian-Shiah rebellion that ended the Pahlavi military monarchy, and that the post-2011 Sunni-Shiah struggle was planned by leading Western powers, including Russia, to preserve Israel and impose the latters acceptance in the Middle East as a natural element. In this translation of Istihdaf Ahl al-Sunna [Targeting Sunnis], Joseph A. Kechichian analyses the fundamental questions raised by the author to better place the current sectarian collision in a geo-strategic global perspective. Based on the books avowals of how the worlds three monotheistic religions perceive each other and Political Sunnism, Kechichian assesses Henry Kissinger's famous appellation of the Middle World that houses significant and indispensable oil resources, and why that allegedly makes it -- Political Sunnism -- dangerous. In a comprehensive introduction to the translation, he describes various initiatives that led global powers to check the undeniable force of Political Sunnism.

International trade has, for decades, been central to economic growth and improved standards of living for nations and regions worldwide. For most of the advanced countries, trade has raised standards of living, while for most emerging economies, growth did not begin until their integration into the global economy. The economic explanation is simple: international trade facilitates specialization, increased efficiency and improved productivity to an extent impossible in closed economies. However, recent years have seen a significant slowdown in global trade, and the global system has increasingly come under attack from politicians on the right and on the left. The benefits of open markets, the continuation of international co-operation, and the usefulness of multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have all been called into question. While globalization has had a broadly positive effect on overall global welfare, it has also been perceived by the public as damaging communities and social classes in the industrialized world, spawning, for example, Brexit and the US exit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The purpose of this volume is to examine international and regional preferential trade agreements (PTAs), which offer like-minded countries a possible means to continue receiving the benefits of economic liberalization and expanded trade. What are the strengths and weaknesses of such agreements, and how can they sustain growth and prosperity for their members in an ever-challenging global economic environment? The Handbook is divided into two parts. The first, Global Themes, offers analysis of issues including the WTO, trade agreements and economic development, intellectual property rights, security and environmental issues, and PTAs and developing countries. The second part examines regional and country-specific agreements and issues, including NAFTA, CARICOM, CETA, the Pacific Alliance, the European Union, EFTA, ECOWAS, SADC, TTIP, RCEP and the TPP (now the CPTPP), as well as the policies of countries such as Japan and Australia.

After the conservative Arab Gulf Monarchies - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - joined forces on 25 May 1981 within the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), few fathomed that security requirements on and around the Arabian Peninsula would be so precarious and for so long. To answer their search for permanent stability, Arab Gulf rulers erected a regional alliance that sought to integrate internal and regional defences, as well as strengthen their existing socio-economic ties. Several of the monarchies even hoped that co-ordination on foreign policy issues over which near unanimity existed could, eventually, lead to a full-fledged union as envisaged in the organisation's founding charter. Between 1981 and 2015 these Arab Gulf monarchies experienced major socio-political transformations resulting from upheavals throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. The perceived necessity to bring about a full-fledged union has come into conflict with entrenched viewpoints from regimes that value traditional military/political roles and norms. In this new study, Joseph A. Kechichian provides an evaluation of GCC States' military institutions to better evaluate whether a stable alliance is capable of enduring over the next few decades, and how civilian leaders perceive the role and influence of their military officers for the task. Kechichian raises fundamental questions over internal, regional and international threats, including an existential challenge emanating from the Islamic revolutionary government of Iran, and assesses how GCC professionals may be preparing to tackle them. He further elucidates on the best methods to meet security challenges not only to secure political survival but also to determine whether conservative Arab Gulf regimes can flourish outside an effective alliance. The volume concludes with an examination of evolving civil-military relations in the GCC States.

Decades before 9/11 and the 'Arab Spring', US and Arab elites contended over the future of the Middle East. Through unprecedented research in Arabic and English, Envisioning the Arab Future details how Americans and Arabs - nationalists, Islamists, and communists - disputed the meaning of modernization within a shared set of Cold War-era concepts. Faith in linear progress, the idea that society functioned as a 'system', and a fascination with speed united officials and intellectuals who were otherwise divided by language and politics. This book assesses the regional implications of US power while examining a range of topics that transcends the Arab-Israeli conflict, including travel, communities, gender, oil, agriculture, Iraqi nationalism, Nasser's Arab Socialism, and hijackings in both the United States and the Middle East. By uncovering a shared history of modernization between Arabs and Americans, Envisioning the Arab Future challenges assumptions about a 'clash of civilizations' and profoundly reinterprets the antecedents of today's crises.