A critical assessment of America's foreign policy in the Middle East throughout the past four decades evaluates and connects regional engagements since 1990 while revealing their massive costs.

This textbook anthology of selected readings on pressing Middle East security concerns serves as an invaluable single-volume assessment of critical security issues in nations such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. The issues and current events of the Greater Middle East continue to hold deep implications for American geopolitical interests in the region—as they have for many decades. An ideal resource for students in undergraduate courses on the Middle East and related regions as well as students in graduate programs of international studies or security studies, this textbook anthologizes recent, insightful analyses by top scholars on trends and events in the Middle East that bear crucially on regional and global security considerations, covering topics like Iran's nuclear ambitions; the rise, ebb, and resurgence of Al Qaeda; and the war in Syria. The essays address concerns that include the re-imposition of military rule in Egypt; the current status of Palestinian-Israeli relations; the civil war and proposed chemical inspections in Syria; Sunni-Shiite conflict and the revitalized al Qaeda presence in Iraq and the Sunni resurgence in Iraq and Syria; and the on-again-off-again international monitoring of nuclear facilities in Iran, along with discussions of that country's connections to the Syrian regime and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The use of drone strikes as antiterrorist weapons and their use within U.S. and international law also receive specific attention. Each reading is summarized and contextualized by a concise introduction that serves to enhance the integration of the individual readings across the book. Original source notes are included with each chapter as guides to further reading, and numerous maps provide an essential sense of place. The book also includes a glossary of terms and a register of brief biographies of significant persons.

Examines Saudi and Syrian policies during three pivotal wars, to understand how identity and power influence state behaviour in the Middle East.

Increasingly the Middle East and its growing population face a highly complex and fragile security system. The book analyzes these emerging security challenges in a comprehensive and systematic manner. It draws national and regional security issues into both the global security and human security perspectives.

Water has always been a source of risks and opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet rapidly changing socioeconomic, political, and environmental conditions make water security a different, and more urgent, challenge than ever before. This report shows that achieving water security means much more than coping with water scarcity. It means managing water resources in a sustainable, efficient, and equitable way. It also involves delivering water services reliably and affordably, to reinforce relationships between service providers and water users and contribute to a renewed social contract. Water security also entails mitigating water-related risks such as floods and droughts. Water security is an urgent target, but it is also a target within reach. A host of potential solutions to the region’s water management challenges exist. To make these solutions work, clear incentives are needed to change the way water is managed, conserved, and allocated. To make these solutions work, countries in the region will also need to better engage water users, civil society, and youth. The failure of policies to address water challenges can have severe impacts on people’s well-being and political stability. The strategic question for the region is whether countries will act with foresight and resolve to strengthen water security, or whether they will wait to react to the inevitable disruptions of water crises.

This report identifies several important trends that are shaping regional security. It examines traditional security concerns, such as energy security and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as newer challenges posed by political reform, economic reform, civil-military relations, leadership change, and the information revolution. The report concludes by identifying the implications of these trends for U.S. foreign policy.

This anthology unites in one volume two studies of the Greater Middle East in global politics – each conceptual and empirical. First, it is a historical-comparative study of politics and societies in selected Greater Middle Eastern countries from Napoleon’s invasion of Ottoman Egypt in 1798 up until today. It addresses development and change in these societies as results of the complex interactions between external developments, the rise and expansion of European industrialized powers, and internal developments, the disintegration of Islamic Empires, their transformation into nation-states, and their efforts to industrialize and modernize. Second, it is an empirical case study of states and societies of the Greater Middle East in global politics, addressing themes such as nationalism, revolution, political Islam, democracy, globalization, regionalism, revolution, war, energy, and conflict and cooperation. The book is comprised of three parts and nineteen chapters. Contributors include: Mehdi Parvizi Amineh, Simon Bromley, Robert M. Cutler, Louisa Dris-Aït-Hamadouche, S.N. Eisenstadt, Femke Hoogeveen, Henk Houweling, B.M. Jain, Mehran Kamrava, Roger Kangas, Fred H. Lawson, Prithvi Ram Mudiam, Nilgun Onder, Wilbur Perlot, Richard Pomfret, Kurt W. Radtke, Mirzohid Rahimov, Eva Patricia Rakel, and Yahia H. Zoubir.