An analysis of the evolution of US policy toward the Middle East -
as well as of the foreign-policy elite that guided it - that goes
far deeper than the headlines. America's concern with the Middle
East, says Kaplan (Soldiers of God, 1990, etc.), began in the 19th
century with the missionaries who braved great hardship, with
little success, to bring the Christian message to the area.
Eventually, these missionaries concluded that education might be
the best way of proselytizing - a conclusion that Kaplan calls
"probably the most inspired idea in the history of foreign aid."
More sustained American interest in the Middle East developed only
after WW II, and much of the subsequent history of the "Arabists"
is tied up with Truman's decision to recognize the State of Israel
despite the almost universal opposition of his foreign-policy
advisors - opposition that, according to Truman, smacked of
anti-Semitism. Kaplan, himself Jewish, handles this controversy
evenhandedly, and notes that then-Assistant Secretary of State Loy
Henderson was remarkably prescient about the aftermath of our
recognition of Israel: decades of constant trouble and expense, as
well "the rise of fanatic Mohammedanism" of a kind "not experienced
for hundreds of years." In tracing the controversy over
recognition, Kaplan relies particularly on interviews with leading
Arabists, and he gives vivid pictures of an elite whose skills were
developed by the sheer difficulty of mastering Arabic but who
nonetheless have been regarded by critics like Francis Fukuyama as
"more systematically wrong" than any other branch of the foreign
service. The Arabists' story, Kaplan says, is one of dramatic
successes (e.g., the extraction of the Falasha Jews from the Sudan,
revealed here in all its truth perhaps for the first time) but of
great failures as well (for instance, the failure to predict the
true aims of Saddam Hussein). Full of fascinating, sometimes
brilliant, insight into the politics of the area and its impact on
those entrusted with US policy. (Kirkus Reviews)
A tight-knit group closely linked by intermarriage as well as class
and old school ties, the "Arabists" were men and women who spent
much of their lives living and working in the Arab world as
diplomats, military attaches, intelligence agents,
scholar-adventurers, and teachers. As such, the Arabists exerted
considerable influence both as career diplomats and as bureaucrats
within the State Department from the early 19th century to the
present. But over time, as this work shows, the group increasingly
lost touch with a rapidly changing American society, growing both
more insular and headstrong and showing a marked tendency to assert
the Arab point of view. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and other
official and private sources, Kaplan reconstructs the 100-year
history of the Arabist elite, demonstrating their profound
influence on American attitudes toward the Middle East, and tracing
their decline as an influx of ethnic and regional specialists has
transformed the State Department and challenged the power of the
old elite.
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