Imagining the Middle East: The Building of an American Foreign Policy, 1918-1967As its interests have become deeply tied to the Middle East, the United States has long sought to develop a usable understanding of the people, politics, and cultures of the region. In Imagining the Middle East, Matthew Jacobs illuminates how Americans' ideas and perspectives about the region have shaped, justified, and sustained U.S. cultural, economic, military, and political involvement there. Jacobs examines the ways in which an informal network of academic, business, government, and media specialists interpreted and shared their perceptions of the Middle East from the end of World War I through the late 1960s. During that period, Jacobs argues, members of this network imagined the Middle East as a region defined by certain common characteristics--religion, mass politics, underdevelopment, and an escalating Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and as a place that might be transformed through U.S. involvement. Thus, the ways in which specialists and policymakers imagined the Middle East of the past or present came to justify policies designed to create an imagined Middle East of the future. Jacobs demonstrates that an analysis of the intellectual roots of current politics and foreign policy is critical to comprehending the styles of U.S. engagement with the Middle East in a post-9/11 world. |
Contents
1 | |
National Interests Knowledge Production and the Emergence of an Informal Network | 23 |
The Perils and Promise of Political Islam | 55 |
Interpretations of Secular Mass Politics | 95 |
Imagining a Transformed Middle East | 140 |
The ArabIsraeliPalestinian Conflict and the Limits of the Network | 187 |
Other editions - View all
Imagining the Middle East: The Building of an American Foreign Policy, 1918-1967 Matthew F. Jacobs No preview available - 2011 |
Imagining the Middle East: The Building of an American Foreign Policy, 1918-1967 Matthew F. Jacobs No preview available - 2011 |
Common terms and phrases
academic American Antonius Arab nationalism Arab-Israeli conflict Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict ARAMCO argued Badeau believed British broader century Cold War concerns crisis Department Department’s E. A. Speiser early economic efforts Egypt Egyptian Eisenhower emerging forces Foreign Affairs Foreign Policy Foreign Relations FRUS Fulbright Hoskins Hurewitz Ibn Saud imagined the Middle informal network interpretation Iran Iranian Islam Israel Israeli issue Jewish Jews Komer late leaders Memorandum Middle East specialists Middle Eastern nationalism Middle Eastern Studies missionary modern Middle East Mossadegh mufti Muslim Nasser National Security network members Orientalist Ottoman Palestine Palestinian participants political Polk postwar President problems refugees region religion religious role Rostow sacred and secular Saud Saudi Arabia secretary secular mission shah social Soviet Soviet Union Speiser Suez Crisis tion totalitarian transformation Truman Turkey U.S. foreign U.S. government U.S. interests U.S. policy U.S. policymakers United United Arab Republic Western World War II Zionist