Nasser S Gamble

Nasser's Gamble draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as "my Vietnam." Jesse Ferris argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi-Egyptian struggle over Yemen, Ferris demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the "Arab Cold War" set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, Nasser's Gamble brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.

In a bold reinterpretation of history, Ike's Gamble shows how the 1956 Suez Crisis taught President Eisenhower that Israel, not Egypt, would have to be America's ally in the region. In 1956 President Nasser of Egypt moved to take possession of the Suez Canal, bringing the Middle East to the brink of war. Distinguished Middle East expert Michael Doran shows how Nasser played the United States, invoking America's opposition to European colonialism to his own benefit. At the same time Nasser made weapons deals with the USSR and destabilized other Arab countries that the United States had been courting. In time, Eisenhower would realize that Nasser had duped him and that the Arab countries were too fractious to anchor America's interests in the Middle East. Affording deep insight into Eisenhower and his foreign policy, this fascinating and provocative history provides a rich new understanding of the tangled path by which the United States became the power broker in the Middle East. -- Back cover.

Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez’s groundbreaking history of the Six-Day War in 1967 radically changes our understanding of that conflict, casting it as a crucial arena of Cold War intrigue that has shaped the Middle East to this day. The authors, award-winning Israeli journalists and historians, have investigated newly available documents and testimonies from the former Soviet Union, cross-checked them against Israeli and Western sources, and arrived at fresh and startling conclusions. Contrary to previous interpretations, Ginor and Remez’s book shows that the Six-Day War was the result of a joint Soviet-Arab gambit to provoke Israel into a preemptive attack. The authors reveal how the Soviets received a secret Israeli message indicating that Israel, despite its official ambiguity, was about to acquire nuclear weapons. Determined to destroy Israel’s nuclear program before it could produce an atomic bomb, the Soviets then began preparing for war--well before Moscow accused Israel of offensive intent, the overt trigger of the crisis. Ginor and Remez’s startling account details how the Soviet-Arab onslaught was to be unleashed once Israel had been drawn into action and was branded as the aggressor. The Soviets had submarine-based nuclear missiles poised for use against Israel in case it already possessed and tried to use an atomic device, and the USSR prepared and actually began a marine landing on Israel’s shores backed by strategic bombers and fighter squadrons. They sent their most advanced, still-secret aircraft, the MiG-25 Foxbat, on provocative sorties over Israel’s Dimona nuclear complex to prepare the planned attack on it, and to scare Israel into making the first strike. It was only the unpredicted devastation of Israel’s response that narrowly thwarted the Soviet design.

The term “Crisis of Representation” rose to fame through Michel Foucault. The crisis, in the context of this issue, has not only a political and economic dimension, but a cultural, aesthetic and religious one as well. Thus, a serious inquiry into this complex and multidimensional phenomenon requires an interdisciplinary approach. The issue targets the phenomena at hand through 15 contributions – all with unique and innovative approaches to the topic. One common aim that holds the issue together is the analysis of the nature of the crisis, which helps to find suitable theoretical frameworks. On the other hand, the term itself functions as a tool that enables the analysis of specific societal developments. Contributing authors brought with them expertise from their respective fields including philosophy, political sciences, theology, Islamic studies and religious studies. This allowed for a cross-disciplinary approach on the phenomenon with special foci on politics, religions, societies and finance, as well as theoretical developments on current philosophical and post-colonial discourses.

Examining the concept of dignity, or karama in Arabic, this provides insights into protesters' motives in participating in the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

A reappraisal of Sir Anthony Eden's conduct of foreign relations during the Suez crisis of 1956. This book challenges previous assumptions and demonstrates that Eden was not as bellicose as has been alleged. It traces his conduct of crisis management, from July until his decision to use force on 14 October, focusing on the Prime Minister's personality and influences. It details the confusion and failed attempts at negotiation that eventually culminated in the reluctant gamble.

This edited volume brings together many of the world’s leading scholars of intelligence with a number of former senior practitioners to facilitate a wide-ranging dialogue on the central challenges confronting students of intelligence. The book presents a series of documents, nearly all of which are published here for the first time, accompanied by both overview and commentary sections. The central objectives of this collection are twofold. First, it seeks to build on existing scholarship on intelligence in deepening our understanding of its impact on a series of key events in the international history of the past century. Further, it aims to explore the different ways in which intelligence can be studied by bringing together both scholarly and practical expertise to examine a range of primary material relevant to the history of intelligence since the early twentieth century. This book will be of great interest to students of intelligence, strategic and security studies, foreign policy and international history.

Discusses the way leaders deal with risk in making foreign policy decisions