Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East

by Dennis Ross, David Makovsky

Overview

"A trenchant and often pugnacious demolition of the numerous misconceptions about strategic thinking on the Middle East"
-The New York Times

Now updated with a new chapter on the current climate, Myths, Illusions, and Peace addresses why the United States has consistently failed to achieve its strategic goals in the Middle East. According to Dennis Ross-special advisor to President Obama and senior director at the National Security Council for that region-and policy analyst David Makovsky, it is because we have repeatedly fallen prey to dangerous myths about this part of the world-myths with roots that reach back decades yet persist today. Clearly articulated and accessible, Myths, Illusions, and Peace captures the real­ity of the problems in the Middle East like no book has before. It presents a concise and far-reaching set of principles that will help America set an effective course of action in the region, and in so doing secure a safer future for all Americans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101081877
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/11/2009
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	516 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Dennis Ross is special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Gulf and Southwest Asia. He is the author of the bestselling The Missing Peace.

Analyst and former journalist David Makovsky is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of Making Peace with the PLO.

Editorial Reviews

The authors advocate secret, high-level diplomacy with Iran, while working in concert with other Middle Eastern countries, the European Union and Russia. And they suggest a short time frame: 90 days. More specifically, they say, beyond that 90-day period "dissuasion steps" should begin. At a minimum, Mr. Ross and Mr. Makovsky conclude chillingly, "the use of force against Iran will look dramatically different should good faith, direct negotiations be tried and fail."
—The New York Times

Howard W. French

Ross and Makovsky have used their decades of experience and insider knowledge to write a trenchant and often pugnacious demolition of numerous misconceptions about strategic thinking on the Middle East…The authors' strength is innovative thinking.
—The New York Times

Adam LeBor

Ross (The Missing Peace) and Makovsky (Making Peace with the PLO) contend that if the U.S. wants to broker peace in the Middle East, it must cease operating from ideological assumptions and "see the world as it is." Ross, now an adviser to Hillary Clinton, was chief negotiator for the Clinton administration, and Makovsky is with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; their call comes with real bona fides. "Context matters," they write-but they, too, fail to consider the entire context in question: Israel is all but denied agency, as the authors fail to address the impact of its occupation of Palestinian lands. What may be the crux of the book is found in a mention of This Much Too Promised Land by Ross's former deputy, Aaron David Miller, which examines American negotiating mistakes, including the efforts of his and Ross's team. Ross and Makovsky's open antagonism to Miller suggest they may be less interested in learning from errors than in explaining why everyone else is wrong. (June)

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Publishers Weekly

Bush I and Clinton peace negotiator Ross (Statecraft and How to Restore America's Standing in the World, 2007, etc.) and journalist Makovsky (Making Peace With the PLO: The Rabin Government's Road to the Oslo Accord, 1995) seek to correct some fallacies about the Middle East. No Arab government, the authors write, protested when, in 2007, Israel bombed a nuclear reactor that Syria was building. That, they explain, is because "most Arab governments want Israel to be strong when it comes to Iran, Hizbollah, Hamas, and Syria," and because most of those governments mistrust Iran as a potential threat with designs on, among other things, Arab oil. Setting aside the tedious construct that all official American thought vis-a-vis matters Middle Eastern has been marred by myths and illusions-the corollary being that only this book is correct on such things, much too daring a claim-Ross and Makovsky venture some Machiavellian divide-and-conquer strategies that have the potential to solve multiple problems at once. Everyone wants peace between Israel and Palestine, for instance, except for a certain percentage of radicals on both sides. Peace would have the further benefit of depriving the radical fringe in the Arab world-at whose extreme stands al-Qaeda, as well as Iran-from having a unifying cause to complain about. Forget the old orthodoxies about linkage, the authors write. When it comes to outflanking Iran, purity of procedure is less important than effective action. Hybrid approaches, they write, are more realistically situated than the triumphalist claims of the neoconservatives who brought us the Iraq War. On that note, they write, "the Bush years have left a woeful legacy: the forces thatreject peace are far stronger than they have been . . . [and] the forces favoring coexistence are far weaker." Yet the authors express hope that a new administration might make headway in securing America's interests in the region. Though mostly addressed to the inside-the-Beltway crowd, Ross and Makovsky's book merits wider attention-and is sure to tick off certain readers in Tehran, Damascus and perhaps Tel Aviv.

Kirkus Reviews