Riding The Tiger The Middle East Challenge After The Cold War

Dramatic changes in the global security environment have necessitated a fundamental reassessment of U.S. interests and policy worldwide. This book focuses on the underlying forces at work in the Middle East, the challenges the United States will face in the region in the coming decade, and how they will influence U.S. interests and future strategy. The contributors go beyond traditional perspectives in analyzing such critical issues as state-to-state conflicts in the Arab-Israeli and Persian Gulf arenas; growing Western dependence on Middle East oil; an increasingly lethal arms race that may upset the regional balance; competition for scarce resources, such as water, in non-oil states; and ethnic, sectarian, and ideological forces, such as the Islamic revival and pressures for democracy, that will affect regional stability and U.S. interests. Throughout, the authors take a fresh look at strategic priorities, the policy options available, and the dilemmas presented by conflicting U.S. interests. The many layers of analysis are woven together intricately but realistically.

Preface -- Introduction -- Moscow and the Middle East in the 1990s -- Oil in the 1990s: The Gulf Dominant -- The Military Balance: Change or Stasis? -- The Arab-Israeli Conflict in the 1990s: Prospects for a Settlement -- The Persian Gulf After the Storm -- Hazards to Middle East Stability in the 1990s: Economics, Population, and Water -- Beyond Geopolitics: Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict Elimination in the Middle East and North Africa -- Islamic Movements, Democratization, and U.S. Foreign Policy -- Strategies for an Era of Uncertainty: The U.S. Policy Agenda

Phebe Marr is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University and has spent thirty years as a scholar and analyst of the Middle East and Southwest Asia. She has taught at the University of Tennessee and California State University, Stanislau, chaired the Near East North Africa program at the Foreign Service Institute, and worked as a research analyst for the Arabian American Oil Company in Saudi Arabia. She has published widely on the Persian Gulf and is the author of The Modern History of Iraq (1985). William Lewis is the Director of Security Policy Studies and a Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. He has written widely on European and Middle Eastern security affairs, particularly on arms transfers and weapons proliferation in the Third World. He is a specialist on North Africa, with emphasis on Libya, and has served in the State Department in various posts dealing with security and defense policy.