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The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to The Islamic State
By David Vine, University of California Press, 2020, hardcover, 464 pp. MEB $29
Reviewed by Walter L. Hixson
In this in-depth account, anthropologist David Vine illuminates the role of military bases in fueling a largely unbroken history of American global intervention. The book is a sweeping indictment of the nation’s heavily militarized foreign policy, including the nearly incalculable costs, financial as well as moral, that have been exacted both at home and abroad.
The United States of War immediately becomes the definitive account of the history of U.S. overseas bases and their role in the history of American militarism. Vine, the author of a previous study on Diego Garcia, a key U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean, devoted 18 years to researching and writing the book, including visits to more than 60 bases in 14 countries around the world. The study is sup-
Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor. plemented with a series of intricately detailed two-page maps illustrating American overseas bases across the globe.
Vine is not the first critic to argue that the “state of war is the norm in U.S. history,” but his exhaustive study of the history of American military bases underscores the point. According to U.S. government sources, as Vine points out, “the U.S. military has waged war, engaged in combat, or otherwise employed its forces aggressively in foreign lands in all but eleven years of its existence.” In the overwhelming majority of these cases, he correctly notes, the United States initiated military conflict rather than being forced into it.
The United States of Warviews military bases as “windows to understand the pattern of endless U.S. wars.” The bases provided “the infrastructure that made the wars possible.” Vine argues that military bases are thus “a particularly important cause” of American militarism, though he does not deny that economic, racial, strategic, psychological and other motives also fueled the virtually uninterrupted history of intervention. Vine, ultimately, is less convincing about bases being the cause of American militarism than about them being an indispensable instrument embodying and carrying out the nation’s imperial foreign policy.
To his credit, unlike many other authors who focus overwhelmingly on the postWorld War II period, Vine understands that American militarism is deeply rooted in the nation’s history—indeed, in its prehistory. The book is divided into five parts, the first of which centers on the deep roots of U.S. empire in European colonization followed by the brutal and prolonged subjugation of the indigenous people of North America. Part II, which analyzes 18th and 19th century U.S. empire, begins with a chapter chronicling militarization of the continental United States, appropriately entitled, “Why are so Many Places Named Fort?” After analyzing the burst of imperialism in the socalled “Spanish-American War,” including the establishment of overseas occupations and military bases stretching from the Caribbean to the Pacific, Vine focuses on the pivotal impact of the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Part IV hones in on the global intervention spawned by the post-World War II Cold War, while Part V pivots the narrative to the 21st century “global war on terror.”
The book is well-organized as well as comprehensive, capably written and passionately argued. Vine is deeply concerned about the ways in which militarism undermines America’s putative democratic values both at home and abroad. He provides in-depth analysis of the ways in which U.S. bases function as outposts of imperialism undermining the sovereignty and ways of life of those under U.S. occupation, whether indigenous people driven from their homes or the residents of “developed” nations, which often only appear to have “invited” the Yankee occupation of their countries.
Onthehomefront,Vineemphasizes themyriadconstituenciesthatsupportand promoteAmericanmilitarism—thevenerablemilitary-industrialcomplexthatPresidentDwightD.Eisenhowercondemned in1961.Vineunnecessarilyrenamesthis the“MilitaryIndustrialCongressional Complex,”whereasEisen hower’smodel alwaysincorporatedCongress,whose roleinpromotingmilitarismwaswellunderstoodbytheformerarmygeneral turnedchiefexecutive,aswellassubsequentcritics.Fundamentally,however, Vineisonsolidgroundinemphasizing “thepowerfulforcesthathaveshapedthe permanentsystemofimperialwarin whichtheUnitedStatesistrappedtoday.”
Currently, the United States operates some 800 bases in 85 countries and remains mired in the “forever wars” of the Middle East and south-central Asia. Covert operations—which have a long history, also effectively chronicled by Vine—continue all over the globe. Vine sees hope, however, in growing congressional and public antiwar sentiment, pointing to the unpopularity of endless wars and that Congress recently cut off funding for the U.S. support of the Saudiled conflict in Yemen. Even the otherwise belligerent superpatriot, Donald Trump, condemned the endless wars and advocated a demilitarized approach.
The way forward, Vine avers, lies in “reducing the power of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex,” with the full understanding that this is a “particularly difficult challenge.” He calls for “dramatically increasing civilian oversight over contracts and every aspect of the operations” of the Pentagon. A combination of coercive antitrust laws, coupled with incentives to “defense” corporations to reorient from military production to civilian uses, could begin the process of breaking down the American war machine.
In addition to structural transformation, Vine calls for a nationwide reckoning and program of rectification for countries and peoples damaged by American militarism. Sweeping change of this magnitude will require nothing less than a deconstruction and repudiation of the imperial mindset. The United States thus must decolonize not only abroad, but internally, even spiritually, as well.
Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice
By Ronald J. Olive, Naval Institute Press, 2009, paperback, 320 pp. MEB: $18
Reviewed by Andrew I. Killgore
So eager was Jonathan Pollard to sneak American secret intelligence to Israel that he left his luncheon companion to obtain the telephone numbers of some pay telephones near his apartment. Pollard’s companion was Aviem Sella, a colonel in the Israeli air force deputized by Yosef Yagur of the Israeli Consulate in New York to check Pollard out.
Sella had told Pollard that he would set up a communications link with a single Hebrew letter assigned to each pay telephone near Pollard’s apartment in Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. The colonel would call Pollard at home, give him the Hebrew letter for a designated phone, and Pollard would then go to that phone to receive Sella’s instructions.
Andrew I. Killgore, 1919-2016, was the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. This review was published in the May/June 2011 issue.
Sella had discovered that Pollard was a nonstop, boastful talker. But to test how good he was, Sella told Pollard to provide him with a, presumably, top secret photo of Tuwaitra, Iraq, a nuclear facility which Sella had bombed in 1981. This Pollard provided at their next meeting, plus other highly secret material.
Pollard, who liked to be called Jay, was the youngest of three siblings born in Galveston, Texas. His father, Dr. Morris Pollard, was a well-known research microbiologist who had attained a prestigious position at Notre Dame University while his son was young. The family traveled a lot in Europe, including Germany. Jonathan’s visit to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, near Munich, made a powerful impression on him and increased his already strong love for Israel.
Pollard, who had been picked on in undergraduate school, graduated from Stanford University, where he told fanciful stories about being in the Mossad, Israel’s secret foreign intelligence service. He also claimed to be a member of the Golani Brigade, a prestigious Israeli military unit. Some of his fellow students said dismissively, “That’s just Pollard.”
Pollard tried to get into the CIA, but was turned down. He did manage to get a top secret job with the U.S. Navy, however, and later received a SSI (special security) clearance. Throughout his life Pollard was considered to be very bright, but unstable and inclined to stretch the truth and lie.
Pollard stole more than a million pages of highly classified material for Israel. By virtue of his clearances he could simply carry bundles of material out of his office. The Israeli Embassy rented a special apartment on Washington’s Van Ness Street, a few blocks from the embassy, for receiving and photocopying the purloined documents supplied by Pollard.
Pollard and his girlfriend Anne made an Israeli-sponsored and paid-for trip to Europe and a separate trip to Israel, where they met Mossad chief Rafael Eitan and talked about what financial
reward Pollard could expect. Pollard pushed for more, Eitan pushed back.
Some “spy excitement” appears when Pollard calls Anne, now his wife, in November 1985 with two out-of-context words: “cactus” and “wedding album.” This alerted a frantic Anne that Pollard had been arrested, that she was to inform Sella and Yagur of Pollard’s arrest, and that she was to remove all classified material from their Dupont Circle apartment.
Sellamadeheroiceffortstogetfrom WashingtontoNewYorktoTelAvivto avoidarrestandapossibleprisonsentence.Hesucceeded,asdidYagur. Meanwhile,Pollardseemedtobelievethat theIsraelishadaschemetoprotecthim.
Anne, a small woman, gathered up 70 pounds of secret material which she planned to throw in a dumpster in the alley. But she saw two men, whom she took to be FBI agents, parked in a car. She assumed they were after the Pollards—when actually they were looking for another spy. Anne asked a neighbor to take the sack to Washington’s Four Seasons Hotel. Not finding Anne there, the neighbor took the package back to his apartment and put it in his bathtub.
The author of this book, Olive, who was the agent at the heart of the Pollard investigation, and his FBI colleagues had no idea of Pollard’s religion (he claimed he was a Presbyterian) or to whom he would deliver his stolen secrets. He had had a habit of offering secret material to various people, perhaps to bolster his ego. But when he ran for cover to the Israeli Embassy on Van Ness Street, a light suddenly dawned: It was for Israel that Pollard had stolen American secrets.
Pollard had been instructed to stall for 72 hours if arrested. He never mentioned Israel during the first 72 hours of his interrogations—thereby enabling not only Sella and Yagur to escape, but also Erit Erb, Israeli Embassy secretary in Washington.
Jonathan Jay Pollard was first of all arrogant. When his Israeli connection finally became clear, he rebuked his captors, “You botched it, you thought it was the Soviet Union.” His passion was to help Israel, but he insisted on being paid. Israel did agree to $2,500 a month. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s 40-page memorandum to the sentencing judge about the enormous cost of Pollard’s theft and urging a harsh prison sentence made no impression on Pollard. He appeared to feel no remorse.
The American team that went to Israel to “recover” Pollard’s stolen materials got a truly shoddy runaround fron the Israelis. When a prominent American member of the team was leaving Tel Aviv’s BenGurion Airport he was asked by a security guard if he had enjoyed his stay in Israel, and replied that he had “for the most part.” The guard then said in a cold, hard voice, “Good, because you will never be coming back here again.” His remark reflected the way the American delegation had been treated in Israel.
Capturing Jonathan Pollard is recommended reading for those looking for the grubby details of Israel’s massive theft of U.S. secrets, and for an Israel that looked out for its own interests without a care for the interests of its patron and ally, the United States.
By Rosie Bsheer, Stanford University Press, 2020, paperback, 416 pp. MEB $30
Reviewed by Eleni Zaras
In recent years, Saudi Arabia has been striving to rebrand itself. It has done this primarily through its “Vision 2030” program, replete with futuristic cities, the loosening of token social regulations like granting women the right to drive and through new arts centers such as a modern art museum publicized in 2019. These are just a few of the projects King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have orchestrated to promote an increasingly secular, modern image of the Kingdom. Rosie Bsheer’s Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia reveals the significance behind these maneuvers and how they fit into a long, complex history of secrecy, historical manipulation and erasure in Saudi Arabia.
Bsheer’s newest book offers unprecedented archival and on-the-ground research that traces the politics of history formation in the Kingdom from its establishment up to the present. Focusing first on efforts to create a national archive and then on the implication of urban space, Bsheer offers a plethora of new information on the mechanics of Saudi politics.
Not only has the Kingdom been “occluding” the pre-1932 intellectual transnational and transoceanic exchanges since its foundation, but in the post-Gulf War years, Salman has been aggressively pushing a reframed secularized historical narrative. According to Bsheer, the country’s “archival performance,” marked by inefficiencies, sabotage and coercion, reveal its “conflicting visions of the past” and its, at times, tenuous grip on power.
Eleni Zaras is the former assistant bookstore director at Middle East Books and More. She is a student in Near Eastern Studies at New York University’s Kevorkian Center and has a BA in the History of Art from the University of Michigan and a Masters degree in History from the Universite Paris Diderot.
Indeed, the royal family’s authority depended largely on American corporations and the U.S. government since its establishment, which “protected the ruling family from pervasive, if erased, domestic anticolonial and anti-authoritarian mobilizations as well as from regional rivals like [Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel] Nasser.” Yet the royal family’s struggle to maintain political legitimacy on their own accord signaled a need for a state-sanctioned historical narrative.
Thelackofcentralizedarchivespriorto the1960s,though,resultedinindividual departmentsacrossthecountrykeeping ordestroyingtheirpapersaccordingto theirownsetofstandards.Manyfunctionariesalsosimplykepttheirown recordsathome.Theregime’sseemingly suddencampaigntoclaimthesedocumentswasthusmetwithskepticism,and manyignoredthesedirectivestothebest oftheirabilities.Bytracingthenon-official avenuesofarchivingandnoncompliance asresistance,Bsheeralsohighlightsthe limitsofthestate.
After the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia reinvigorated its efforts—in large part thanks to Salman—to revive the archival project. In his newly framed campaign, the archive became “a marker of modernity. It promised to ‘elevate’ Saudi Arabians to the level of other nations, something wealth and religious morality have failed to do.” Much to the chagrin of other family members, though, Salman pushed a secular version of the story, reviving the controversial legacy of Al Saud at the expense of his more conservative and often favored brother, Faisal. The archive was now only one small pawn in a much larger game that divided the royal family itself.
Turning from the archiving of ephemera to the built environment, Bsheer outlines how, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Salman spearheaded massive development projects in, notably, Mecca and Riyadh to monumentalize his vision. In Mecca, Salman’s secularizing agenda produced ostenta-
Masters of the Pearl: A History of Qatar, by Michael Quentin Morton, Reaktion Books, 2020, hardcover, 256
pp. MEB $35. Qatar is a country of spectacular contrasts: from pearl fishing, its main industry until the 1930s, to gas and oil, which generate immense wealth today; to famously being at the center of both triumph and controversy in recent years for hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Almost a lifetime since he grew up in Qatar, Michael Quentin Morton writes about the country’s colorful past and its astonishing present. The book is filled with stories about the people of this land: the tribes and the travelers, the seafarers and slaves—as much a part of Qatar’s history as its rulers and their wealth. The opaque Arabian world guards its secrets well, but Masters of the Pearlpenetrates the veil to shed light on a country that until now has defied explanation.
Understanding the War Industry, by Christian Sorensen,
Clarity Press, 2020, paperback, 444 pp. MEB $29. Stunning in the depth of its research, Understanding the War Industrydocuments how the war industry commands the other two sides of the military-industrial-congressional triangle. It lays bare the multiple levers enabling the vast and proliferating war industry to wield undue influence, exploiting financial and legal structures, while co-opting Congress, academia and the media. Spiked with insights into how corporate boardrooms view the troops, overseas bases and warzones, it assiduously delineates how corporations reap enormous profits by providing a myriad of goods and services devoted to making war, which must be rationalized and used if the game is to go on: advanced weaponry, drones and nukes; invasive information technology; space-based weapons; and special operations—with contracts stuffed with ongoing and proliferating developmental, tertiary and maintenance products for all of it.
It names the names—individuals and corporations—that weld it all together.
No president, even if so inclined, can stop America’s permanent wars until and unless a mass movement comes to understand and then demand the roll back of corporate war profiteering, their deeply-rooted cause. This book provides a lever.
Indigenous Medicine Among the Bedouin in the Middle East, by Aref Abu-Rabia, Berghahn Books, 2020, paper-
back, 232 pp. MEB $35. Modern medicine has penetrated Bedouin tribes in the course of rapid urbanization and education, but when serious illnesses strike, even educated people turn to traditional medicine for a remedy. Over the course of 30 years, Aref Abu-Rabia gathered data on traditional Bedouin medicine among pastoral-nomadic, semi-nomadic and settled tribes. Based on interviews with healers, clients and other active participants in treatments, this book contributes to the renewed thinking about a synthesis between traditional and modern medicine—to their reciprocal enrichment.
tious high-rises looming precariously over the Kaaba. Claiming religious sites for the wealthy pilgrims promised substantial capital returns, with the added bonus of undermining the religious elites’ authority. In contrast, his destructive and disruptive efforts around Riyadh paradoxically promoted a preservationist agenda, which claimed to save “traditional” adobe buildings from ruin in hopes of bolstering his story.
Without any conclusion to this battle over history in sight, it is at least clear that the country’s projects are contested on multiple fronts, even if primarily in hushed tones. Bsheer does offer examples of resistance, sabotage and contestation, however the focus of her study remains primarily on the perspective and motives of the royal family.
Through her powerful, yet unsensational account, Bsheer reveals a fragmented royal family whose members pursue their own economic and political agendas, often at the expense of other family members, regional and religious authorities and Saudi citizens. She also explicitly counters tendencies in scholarship that suggest a Saudi or Gulf exceptionalism, that often reductively attribute all forms of cultural erasure to Wahhabi iconoclasm.
Indeed, Saudi practices of cultural erasure, dispersing documents, and curating a state-sanctioned historical narrative resemble tactics of “bureaucratic violence” honed by colonial administrations. To some degree, these Western European archives signaled to the Saudi government that a national archive is part of the infrastructure of power in a “modern” state. Although ironically, as Bsheer notes, the nation may arguably never want to succeed in opening a fully functioning archive in order to maintain secrecy.
Finally, by situating the Saudi case at the nexus of cultural theory and economic histories of capitalism, financialization of real estate and the commodification of cultural heritage, Bsheer writes a complex history of Saudi politics that more broadly contributes to scholarship on the instrumentalization of history and culture for state and subject formation.
“The state is an effect of ‘ideological power,’” Bsheer asserts, “It is an effect whose dominance and legitimacy require ongoing reproduction and reification through the repetition of cultural practices.” Not just in Saudi Arabia, but across the globe.
BOOK TALKS
By Diana Darke, 2020, hardcover, 328 pp. MEB $29
On a Nov. 5 webcast, Middle East Institute (MEI) nonresident scholar Diana Darke discussed her book, Stealing From the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe, with Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, a London-based non-profit that promotes conflict resolution, human rights and civil society in the Arab world. As a child, Darke said, she was taught that Europe was “the center of the universe.” After she began traveling, she realized that “the Greeks got most of their ideas from further east. And everything goes further and further east until you get to the cradle of civilization which is between the Tigris and Euphrates where so many things were invented.”
Pointed arches, trefoil arches and stained-glass windows—all recognizable features in Gothic cathedrals and buildings throughout Europe today—originated in the Islamic world of the East.
“When I look at churches, I see Syria,” London-based Darke said. Stained-glass is one architectural feature prevalent in European cathedrals that originated in Syria, which was the world leader in glass, not only the techniques, but also the raw materials and the high-grade Syrian form of soda plant ash that was considered the best.
Even when the Venetians took over the glass industry they insisted on “the cinders of Syria” because they knew that was the best quality. “The stunning colors of early stained-glass and the alchemy of how to create these colors—the techniques, styles and skills—all came out of Damascus,” she said.
Darke was inspired to write her book after the fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. “I suddenly realized that most of the world simply does not understand the back-story of European architecture,” she stated.
The word “Saracen” was in popular use centuries ago. The English architect Sir Christopher Wren, who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral in the 16th century, said “What we call the Gothic style should rightly be called the Saracen style.” Wren incorporated the Saracen ribbed vaulting and the Islamic double dome technique into his buildings.
Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi also admitted to being influenced by Islamic architecture. He loved the lack of right angles, believing that “nature has no right angles,” Darke noted.
Muslim Spain was the most influential and the earliest entry point of Islamic architecture into Europe. The first trefoil
Elaine Pasquini is a correspondent for the Washington Report and the Nuze.ink online news service.
arches appeared in the 10th century Cordoba Mezquita mosque, she explained. All of these early Omayyad features were recreated in Spain. Architectural engineers examining the ribbed vaulting for the first time in 2017 were astonished to find such an incredible example of geometric perfection. “This is because of the supreme skill with geometry of the Muslim stonemasons,” she said.
“It’s wonderful to see that so many centuries ago all of these influences were finding their way to Europe, and that is what enriches everything.” —Elaine Pasquini
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Time’s Monster: How History Makes History, by Priya Satia, Belknap Press, 2020, hardcover, 384 pp. MEB
$29. For generations, British thinkers told the history of an empire whose story was still very much in the making. While they wrote of conquest, imperial rule in India, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean was consolidated. While they described the development of imperial governance, rebellions were brutally crushed. As they reimagined empire during the two world wars, decolonization was compromised. Priya Satia shows how these historians not only interpreted the major political events of their time but also shaped the future that followed.
Time’s Monster demonstrates the dramatic consequences of writing history today as much as in the past. Against the backdrop of enduring global inequalities, debates about reparations and the crisis in the humanities, Satia’s is an urgent moral voice.
Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt, by Ziad Fahmy, Stanford University Press, 2020,
paperback, 312 pp. MEB $28. As the 20th century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street vendors, the music of wedding processions, and even the traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street life, while “listening“ to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets.
Interweaving infrastructural, cultural and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. He contextualizes sound, layering historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.
Amazing Women of the Middle East: 25 Stories from Ancient Times to Present Day, by Wafa Tarnowska, Croc-
odile Books, 2020, hardcover, 112 pp. MEB $20. Discover Sheherazade, the famous storyteller, dive into the musical world of the beautiful singer Fairuz and meet Amal Clooney, an outstanding international lawyer. Feel inspired by 25 amazing women from the Middle East, who have created a legacy through strength of vision, leadership, courage and determination. Amazing Women of the Middle East is about breaking boundaries and empowering young girls. Written by awardwinning author and trailblazer, Wafa Tarnowska, this stunning collection of life stories is illustrated with vibrant and contemporary artwork by a team of internationally recognized artists. This book is an absolute must-have! This stunning hardcover edition has unique cover finishes that make it the perfect gift for children 9+.
