Jordan has long served as a pivot between moderate pro-Western states and radical anti-American states in the Middle East. This volume explores the international relations between the West, Middle East and Jordan.

The continuing crisis in Syria has raised questions over the common perception of Middle Eastern affairs as an offshoot of global power politics. To Western intellectuals, foreign policy experts, and politicians, “empire” and “imperialism” are categories that apply exclusively to Europe and more recently to the United States of America. As they see it, Middle Eastern history is the product of its unhappy interaction with these powers. Forming the basis of President Obama's much ballyhooed “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” this outlook is continuing to shape crucial foreign policy among Western governments, but in these pages, Efraim Karsh propounds a radically different interpretation of Middle Eastern experience. He argues that the Western view of Muslims and Arabs as hapless victims is absurd. On the contrary, modern Middle Eastern history has been the culmination of long-existing indigenous trends. Great power influences, however potent, have played a secondary role constituting neither the primary force behind the region's political development nor the main cause of its notorious volatility. Karsh argues it is only when Middle Eastern people disown their victimization mentality and take responsibility for their actions and their Western champions drop their condescending approach to Arabs and Muslims, that the region can at long last look forward to a real “spring.”

Describes how the discovery of oil has affected world history and current events.

When Ditmars first went to Iraq in 1997 for the "New York Times," she saw beauty, architecture, and music in the midst of despair. Ditmars traveled to Iraq again and again, reporting on every aspect of life. Featuring tales of her visits, this book captures the full humanity of a people who have suffered much yet have maintained a spirit of resilience. Photos.

"[This book] examines how Iraq's evolving political order affects its complex relationships with its neighbors and the United States. The book depicts a region unbalanced, shaped by new and old tensions, struggling with a classic collective action dilemma, and anxious about Iraq's political future, as well as America's role in the region, all of which suggest trouble ahead absent concerted efforts to promote regional cooperation. In the volume's case studies ... [scholars] review Iraq's bilateral relationships with Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Arab states, Syria, and Jordan and explore how Iraq's neighbors could advance the country's transition to security and stability. The volume also looks at the United States' relations with and long-term strategic interests in Iraq and offers recommendations for how the United States can help Iraq strengthen and grow"--Page 4 of cover.

The Gulf Conflict provides the most authoritative and comprehensive account to date of Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, its expulsion by a coalition of Western and Arab forces seven months later, and the aftermath of the war. Blending compelling narrative history with objective analysis, Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh inquire into the fundamental issues underlying the dispute and probe the strategic calculations of all the participants.

Leading artists, theorists, and writers exhume the dystopian and utopian futures contained within the present “I am the supercommunity, and you are only starting to recognize me. I grew out of something that used to be humanity. Some have compared me to angry crowds in public squares; others compare me to wind and atmosphere, or to software.” Invited to exhibit at the 56th Venice Biennale, e-flux journal produced a single issue over a four-month span, publishing an article a day both online and on site from Venice. In essays, poems, short stories, and plays, artists and theorists trace the negative collective that is the subject of contemporary life, in which art, the internet, and globalization have shed their utopian guises but persist as naked power, in the face of apocalyptic ecological disaster and against the claims of the social commons. “I convert care to cruelty, and cruelty back to care. I convert political desires to economic flows and data, and then I convert them back again. I convert revolutions to revelations. I don’t want security, I want to leave, and then disperse myself everywhere and all the time.”

The author who spent twenty years developing Iraq's atomic weapon, recounts his life in Saddam Hussein's inner circle and his daring flight to the West. The book delves into the darkest corners of a regime ruled by a volatile, brutal leader, Dr. Hamza, the only defector who has lived to write a firsthand portrait of Iraq, also presents an unprecedented portrait of Saddam -- his drunken rages, his women, his cold-blooded murder of underlings, and his unrivaled power. If pushed to the wall, Saddam will use the bomb that Dr. Hamza helped create. This is an account of what he endured in Iraq to his harrowing flight across three continents and his first encounter with skeptical CIA agents who turned him away.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949. The treaty was signed by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, France, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Today there are a total of 26 countries that belong to NATO. The A to Z of NATO and Other International Security Organizations covers the Atlantic Alliance's origins, structure and organization through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 1,000 cross-referenced dictionary entries on its Secretaries-Generals, its Supreme Allied Commanders-Europe, plus all affiliated organizations created to enhance NATO's reach in a broader Euro-Atlantic security architecture (e.g., North Atlantic Consultative Council, Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, NATO-Russia Charter; NATO-Ukraine Charter, and NATO-Mediterranean Dialogue Partners). This book also covers other related regional organizations with security responsibilities in Europe and worldwide where they interact with NATO, either currently (e.g. ANZUS, ASEAN, European Union, Organization of African Unity, Organization of American States, Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and United Nations) or in the past (e.g. CENTO, European Defence Community, SEATO, Warsaw Pact, and Western European Union).