Search results for ""Author Tore T. Petersen""

When the British Labour party announced the withdrawal of British forces from the Persian Gulf in January 1968, the United States faced a potential power vacuum in the area. The incoming Nixon administration, preoccupied with the Soviet Union and China, and the war in Vietnam, had no intention of replacing the British in the Gulf. To avoid further military commitments, the US encouraged Iran and Saudi Arabia to maintain area security. A critical policy decision, overlooked by most scholars, saw Nixon and Kissinger engineer the rise in oil prices between 1969 and 1972 to enable Saudi Arabia and Iran to purchase the necessary military hardware to serve as guardians of the Gulf. For all their bluster about reversing Labour's withdrawal decision, after their surprise victory in the election of June 1970 the Conservatives adhered to Labour's policy. But in contrast to Labour's wish to cut the umbilical cord of empire, the Tories wanted to retain influence in the Persian Gulf, pursuing policies largely independent of the US by the creation of the United Arab Emirates, deposing the sultan of Oman, and trying to solve the dispute over the Buraimi oasis with Saudi Arabia. By trying to maintain its empire on the cheap, Britain turned into an arms supplier supreme. But offering and selling arms does not a foreign policy make, leaving Britain in the long run with less influence in regional affairs. This was true also for the US, whose arms sales were to prove no realistic an alternative to foreign policy. The US hid under the Iranian security blanket for almost a decade. Given the weakness of the regime and the Shah's nonsensical dreams of turning Iran into one of the top five industrial and military powers in the world, the policy was cavalierly irresponsible. Similarly, leaving Saudi Arabia wallowing in oil money and medieval stupor -- a seedbed for Islamic fundamentalists -- created major future problems for the United States, as evinced by 9/11.

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Discusses Anglo-American policy in the Middle East under Kennedy and Johnson, as well as under British Conservative and Labour governments; Provides a historical background on the Anglo-American Middle East for the 1950s; Analyses Western policy toward Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, and toward the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. The author provides an extensive study of the common British and American interest in the Middle East (hence the term Anglo-American Middle East) under Kennedy and Johnson. Contrary to recent scholarly opinion, the author argues that the loss of influence to the Soviet Union and Arab radicalism in the Middle East was not the result of lack of power but lack of will. Britain, during the period of Harold Wilson's Labour government (1964-1970) withdrew from its Middle Eastern bases for ideological reasons, namely a distaste for imperialism and colonialism. The United States, while placing great store in a continued British presence east of Suez, was unable or unwilling to prevent the British withdrawal. And as the British withdrawal gathered momentum, American disinterest toward the Middle East increased.

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For over sixty years the state of Israel has proved adept at practising clandestine diplomacy - - about which little is known, as one might expect. These hitherto undisclosed episodes in Israel's diplomatic history are revealed for the first time by the contributors to this volume, who explore how relations based upon patronage and personal friendships, as well as ties born from kinship and realpolitik both informed the creation of the state and later defined Israel's relations with a host of actors, both state and non-state. The authors focus on the extent to which Israel's clandestine diplomacies have indeed been regarded as purely functional and sub- ordinate to a realist quest for security amid the perceived hostility of a predominantly Muslim-Arab world, or have in fact proved to be manifestations of a wider acceptance - political, social and cultural - of a Jewish sovereign state as an intrinsic part of the Middle East. They also discuss whether clandestine diplomacy has been more effective in securing Israeli objectives than reliance upon more formal diplomatic ties constrained by inter- national legal obligations and how this often complex and at times contradictory matrix of clandestine relationships continues to influence perceptions of Israel's foreign policy.

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