Opposing Viewpoints: The Middle East, edited by David M. Haugen, Susan Musser, and Kacy Lovelace

As someone who is a fan of the Opposing Viewpoints, I have long enjoyed the way that this particular series gives different viewpoints that can help inform both whether one agrees or disagrees with the particular viewpoints presented. Although this particular book was released in the process of the 2006 peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well as American involvement in Iraq, it is little surprise that the book is timely today, simply because the issues in the Middle East never seem to change. In that sense, although the specific peace discussions or the specific political leaders are not the same now as they were when this book was written, the larger issues that are discussed in this book, such as the tension between Hamas as a governing body within the Palestinian territories and Hamas as a terrorist group, the ambivalent role of Iran and Saudi Arabia in terrorism, as well as questions about Yemen. The reader who is well-informed about the Middle East is going to find a lot of matters here of interest, and the way in which American politics, Israeli politics, and politics on the Arab or Iranian street remain relevant year after year, decade after decade.

This book is a bit more than 200 pages and is divided into four chapters that are in turn divided into smaller writings that people have made regarding various positions related to the Middle East and its related concerns. The first chapter looks at how the United States should address problems in the Middle East, and the perspectives given include George W Bush’s call for the United States to promote democracy in the Middle East, Robert D. Kaplan and Peter Berkowitz call for the opposite, Bruce Bartlett urges for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, while Victor Davis Hanson argues for the opposite, and Chris Hedges argues that the U.S.-Israel relationship harms American interests, while Steve Rothman and David Frum argue for the opposite. In the second chapter, we see people write about the possibility between Israel and Palestine, with Mawan Muasher and Ghada Karmi debating whether peace negotiations are possible between Israel and Palestine, Henry Stigman and Dennis Ross argue whether those negotiations are possible under Hamas or Fatah rule, Newt Gingrich argues that Hamas must abandon terrorism and accept Israel’s right to exist while Michael Tarazi argues that Israel and Palestine should share a single state. The third chapter contains seven different positions about whether Iran is a threat to the United States and its allies, including positions by the U.S. House of Representatives (Iran is a threat), Scott Ritter (Iran is not a threat), John Bolton (Military strikes against Iran’s nuclear targets would slow Iran’s development of nuclear weapons), Zbigniew Brzezinski (military strikes would be counterproductive), Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh (US should promote Iranian integration into the Arab world), Steven Groves (US should promote regime change in Iran), and Nina Hamedani (the US has promoted negative stereotypes against Iran and its people). Finally, the fourth chapter discusses how the nations in the Middle East are addressing terrorism, with five viewpoints by Nick Fielding and Sara Baxter (Saudi Arabia breeds terrorists), Caryle Murphy (Saudi Arabia is promoting counterterrorism), the Council on Foreign Relations (Lebanon is a haven for terrorists), Bilal Y Saab (Lebanon is promoting Counterterrorism), and Kevin Whitelaw (Yemen’s counterterrorism has been mixed). The book ends with a periodical bibliography, comments for further discussion, organizations to contact, a bibliography of books, and an index.

In approving of this book, I do not state my agreement with all or even most of the essays here. In many cases, one can see the obvious self-serving rhetoric that is involved in the statements made by various political leaders and thinkers, even where I agree with the general positions. That said, one cannot deny that even the essays that one disagrees with often prove to be vitally important, such as Brzezinski’s essay, reflecting his experience as President Carter’s NSA advisor (during which time the Iran hostage crisis occurred in 1979), and also influencing the Obama-Biden policies towards Iran in the nuclear deal made in 2015. Other than the essays on Hamas that argue that the desire for international respect and success in elections would encourage Hamas to moderate its terrorism and accept Israel’s legitimacy as a nation, perhaps the most appropriate (if ironic) essay is the one on Yemen, where it seems crazy in hindsight that Yemen’s leader claimed to have the support of 96% of voters when one looks at the Houthi insurgency since then. Corrupt political regimes are generally pretty able to manufacture whatever majorities are necessary to preserve their own power, regardless of their genuine unpopularity. Some nations (including the United States) have obviously been taking notes on how to do this, but perhaps haven’t taken notes on the resorting to bullets when too many ballots prove to be fraudulent.