Myths Illusions And Peace

"A trenchant and often pugnacious demolition of the numerous misconceptions about strategic thinking on the Middle East" -The New York Times Now updated with a new chapter on the current climate, Myths, Illusions, and Peace addresses why the United States has consistently failed to achieve its strategic goals in the Middle East. According to Dennis Ross-special advisor to President Obama and senior director at the National Security Council for that region-and policy analyst David Makovsky, it is because we have repeatedly fallen prey to dangerous myths about this part of the world-myths with roots that reach back decades yet persist today. Clearly articulated and accessible, Myths, Illusions, and Peace captures the real­ity of the problems in the Middle East like no book has before. It presents a concise and far-reaching set of principles that will help America set an effective course of action in the region, and in so doing secure a safer future for all Americans.

"The definitive and gripping account of the sometimes exhilarating, often tortured twists and turns in the Middle East peace process, viewed from the front row by one of its major players."--Bill Clinton The Missing Peace, published to great acclaim last year, is the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever written. Dennis Ross, the chief Middle East peace negotiator in the presidential administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is that rare figure who is respected by all parties: Democrats and Republicans, Palestinians and Israelis, presidents and people on the street in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Washington, D.C. Ross recounts the peace process in detail from 1988 to the breakdown of talks in early 2001 that prompted the so-called second Intifada-and takes account of recent developments in a new afterword written for this edition. It's all here: Camp David, Oslo, Geneva, Egypt, and other summits; the assassination of Yitzak Rabin; the rise and fall of Benjamin Netanyahu; the very different characters and strategies of Rabin, Yasir Arafat, and Bill Clinton; and the first steps of the Palestinian Authority. For the first time, the backroom negotiations, the dramatic and often secretive nature of the process, and the reasons for its faltering are on display for all to see. The Missing Peace explains, as no other book has, why Middle East peace remains so elusive.

This book surveys discourse and opinion in the United States toward the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1991. Contrary to popular myth, it demonstrates that U.S. support for Israel is not based on the pro-Israel lobby, but rather is deeply rooted in American political culture. That support has increased since 9/11. However, the bulk of this increase has been among Republicans, conservatives, evangelicals, and Orthodox Jews. Meanwhile, among Democrats, liberals, the Mainline Protestant Church, and non-Orthodox Jews, criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians has become more vociferous. This book works to explain this paradox.

In a provocative book about American hegemony, Christopher Layne outlines his belief that U.S. foreign policy has been consistent in its aims for more than sixty years and that the current Bush administration clings to mid-twentieth-century tactics--to no good effect. What should the nation's grand strategy look like for the next several decades? The end of the cold war profoundly and permanently altered the international landscape, yet we have seen no parallel change in the aims and shape of U.S. foreign policy. The Peace of Illusions intervenes in the ongoing debate about American grand strategy and the costs and benefits of "American empire." Layne urges the desirability of a strategy he calls "offshore balancing": rather than wield power to dominate other states, the U.S. government should engage in diplomacy to balance large states against one another. The United States should intervene, Layne asserts, only when another state threatens, regionally or locally, to destroy the established balance. Drawing on extensive archival research, Layne traces the form and aims of U.S. foreign policy since 1940, examining alternatives foregone and identifying the strategic aims of different administrations. His offshore-balancing notion, if put into practice with the goal of extending the "American Century," would be a sea change in current strategy. Layne has much to say about present-day governmental decision making, which he examines from the perspectives of both international relations theory and American diplomatic history.

In this book a former United Nations Envoy offers an insider perspective on conflict management and peace efforts during the three most recent failed peace initiatives and three wars in Gaza. Robert Serry shares his reflections on walking the tight rope of diplomacy between Israel and Palestine and his analysis of what has gone wrong and why a “one-state reality” may be around the corner. Offering fresh thinking on how to preserve prospects for a two-state solution, this book examines the UN’s uneasy history in the Arab-Israeli conflict since partition was proposed in resolution 181 (1948) and provides a rare insight into the life of a United Nations Envoy in today’s Middle East.

This book incorporates recent research that emphasizes the need for civil society and a grassroots approach to peacebuilding while taking into account a variety of perspectives, including neoconservatism and revolutionary analysis. The contributions, which include the reflections of those involved in the negotiation and implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, also provide policy prescriptions for modern conflicts.

“Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process offers a nuanced and stimulating analysis which goes beyond standard explanations by exploring the motives and means used by those who made peace in Northern Ireland.” (Professor Timothy White, Xavier University, USA) “Paul Dixon has produced an impressive and challenging book. Dixon defends the Northern Ireland peace process as a carefully-crafted, drawn-out episode in realist, pragmatic politics. However, he pulls few punches in highlighting the moral deceptions which have kept the process in play. Provocatively, Dixon also challenges a wide range of academic interpretations of the processes and their associated political prescriptions. Thoughtful and well-researched throughout, Performing the Northern Ireland Peace Process is an essential read for anyone interested in conflict management.” (Professor Jon Tonge, University of Liverpool) “In this outstanding book, Dixon shows yet again the importance of the theatrical metaphor for Northern Ireland. More importantly still, he demonstrates that the adoption of a critically realist outlook actually enhances our capacity to think creatively about the political choices we face in international politics and the alternative policies and institutions we might construct.” (Professor Adrian Little, The University of Melbourne) This book is exceptional in defending the ‘dirty politics’ of the Northern Ireland peace process. Political actors in Britain, Ireland and the United States performed the peace process and used ‘political skills’, often including deception and hypocrisy, in order to wind down the conflict and achieve accommodation. These political skills, it is argued, are often morally justifiable even as they are popularly condemned. The Northern Ireland peace process has been highly successful in reducing violence and an accurate understanding of its politics is an important contribution to international debates about managing conflict.

In this handbook, a diverse range of leading scholars consider the social, cultural, economic, political, and developmental underpinnings of peace. This handbook is a much-needed response to the failures of contemporary peacebuilding missions and narrow disciplinary debates, both of which have outlined the need for more interdisciplinary work in International Relations and Peace and Conflict studies. Scholars, students, and policymakers are often disillusioned with universalist and northern-dominated approaches, and a better understanding of the variations of peace and its building blocks, across different regions, is required. Collectively, these chapters promote a more differentiated notion of peace, employing comparative analysis to explain how peace is debated and contested.