The Middle East
January 1997

January Article Abstracts

Title: Kurdish Geopolitics
Author: Henri J. Barkey
Last fall saw the United States unleash a barrage of cruise missiles on Iraq in response to Iraqi moves against the Kurds in northern Iraq. While the attack renewed Western interest in the Kurds, and highlighted the the regional dimensions of the Kurdishh question, it did little to resolve the struggle of the largest ethnic group in the world without its own country.

Title: Lebanon: With Friends Like These. . .
Author: Augustus Richard Norton
"Lebanon's independence is held hostage to the Middle East peace process. Whether the hostage will be released at the end of that process remains a central question."

Title: Closing the Gate: The Persian Gulf War Revisited
Author: Michael Sterner
As the Persian Gulf War fades into memory, a revisionist reading of the war's aims and strategy has gained critical favor among those who see it as having been the last best hope for relieving the Middle East of Saddam Hussein. In response to this reinterpretation, Michael Sterner examines whether "there is anything the coalition did not do militarily that could have changed the political outcome of the war. To answer that we need to look not only at what coalition forces might have done, but at what the impact of those actions would likely have been in Iraq.

Title: Hazardous Hegemony: The United States in the Middle East
Author: Stephen Zunes
"[A]s the Romans, Crusaders, Mongols, Ottomans, French, and British all learned, hegemonic relationships with the Middle East can be short-lived and even disastrous for the once-dominant power. Whether the United States can be more enlightened and successful than its predecessors remains to be seen."

Title: Pragmatists or Ideologues? Turkey's Welfare Party in Power
Author: Jenny B. White
"Does the Welfare Party's December 1995 electoral victory signify a shift toward Islamic government and alliances, or does it herald a new era for Turkey, a merger of its traditional Islamic identity with contemporary democracy?"

Title: Israel: The Nationalists Return to Power
Author: Gideon Doron
On May 29, 1996, incumbent Shimon Peres lost Israel's first direct election for prime minister to Benjamin Netanyahu. Gideon Doron argues that "[v]oter attitudes toward the peace process and the personalities of the competing candidates provide only a partial explanation [of the electoral results]. . . A more complete account must include an assessment of the effects of the [recent] electoral reform."

Title: Designer Democracy in Kuwait
Author: Mary Ann Tétreault
"On the morning of October 8, Kuwaitis awoke to a new parliament in which the democratic nationalists appeared to be the biggest losers. . . The spin doctors crowed that the voters had indeed thrown the bums out, and that Kuwaitis had opted for conservatism in the 1996 parliament. But as in 1992, a rush to judgment may be premature."

Title: The Iranian Enigma
Author: Farhad Kazemi
"Iran's endurance does not mean that domestic and international challenges have disappeared; the Islamic Republic's problems are multifaceted and extremely serious."