Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs at the End of the Century by Itamar RabinovichReview by: L. Carl BrownForeign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1999), pp. 144-145Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049419 .

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Recent Books

provide a detailed history of the Bosnian

war, including its background, conduct,

termination, and aftermath. They focus

on when and how the outside world should

intervene to thwart such conflicts, but

only after describing at length Bosnia's

own descent into war. They strive

throughout to be fair to all sides but do not shun moral judgments. Like other

analysts before them, the lion's share of

blame goes to nationalist Serb forces in

Bosnia and the leaders in Serbia who

cultivated them. For all, however, there

is blame aplenty to go around. Could it

all have been prevented? Maybe, the authors answer, but only if the great powers had invested themselves two years before,

when the 1990 Yugoslav elections had not

yet been won by nationalists committed to

mutually irreconcilable objectives. The last

chance came on the eve of violence in 1991,

when the great powers, led by the United

States, could have deemed the stakes

worthy of expensive political and military commitments. Tragically, they did not.

attempt to explain the forces that allowed

ideas to prevail as policy at any given time.

But she does stress what little regard the

Russian peasantry's intellectual benefactors

had for the "dark people"; the influence of progressive Western economics often

produced a shallow appreciation of the

Russian commune's merit. The book paints a

deeply complex picture of Marxism's role

in this intellectual stream?long before

Lenin and his colleagues imposed their

antipeasant version.

Middle East L. CARL BROWN

Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs at the

End of the Century, by itamar

rabinovich. New York: Farrar,

Straus ?cGiroux, 1999, 224 pp. $23.00. That hackneyed blurb "if you're going to

read only one book..." actually applies

in this case. Rabinovich offers a masterful

overview without wasting a word. An

opening chapter boils down the essentials

of the Arab-Israeli confrontation from the

earliest days to the 1991 Madrid Conference; the following four chapters trace in greater detail the subsequent developments. The

author concludes by proposing a "new

agenda" of prudent realism that applies the lessons learned. First, prospects for a

single great breakthrough are dim. Second,

Israel's plan to address the remaining issues

with the Palestinians first and then tackle

negotiations with Syria (or vice versa)

will not work. Third, a bold program of

regional economic development might

provoke as many negative responses as

positive ones. Instead, Israel and the

Arabs will best make progress through

In Search of the True West: Culture,

Economics, and Problems of Russian

Development, by Esther

kingston-mann. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1999, 296

pp. $59.50 (paper, $27.95). Despite the title and the inexplicable dust-jacket photo of Boris Yeltsin dancing

frantically on stage during the 1996

presidential campaign, this book's subject is the Russian commune from the seven

teenth century through Stalin's brutal

collectivization. Kingston-Mann focuses

on the currents of thought that first ration

alized serfdom, then sought its improve

ment, eventually questioned it, and finally

provided an alternative. She does not

[144] FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Volume78No.4

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Recent Books

incremental steps that wrestle with all

issues simultaneously. The United

States, Rabinovich believes, remains

essential in keeping Middle East peace making

on track. A distillation of a

seasoned scholar s thoughtful good

sense, this book's great strength is its

fair and accurate presentation of policies and perceptions of all sides.

Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in

Regional Order, by Michael n.

barnett. NewYork: Columbia

University Press, 1998, 376 pp. $40.00

(paper, $17.50). Barnett maintains that inter-Arab politics are not so much a state-centered affair

conducted along realist considerations

of power as an ongoing dialogue over the

desired regional order. In this war of words

among Arab political leaders, the ability to dictate the discourse (as Egypt's Gamal

Abdel Nasser once did, for example) can determine the behavior of political rivals

as much as military threats or inducements

can. Barnett proposes five periods of this

distinctive Arab dialogue: from 1920 to the 1945 establishment of the Arab League; 1945 through the 1955 debate over the

Baghdad Pact; the Suez War to the Six

Day War (1956-1967); 1967 to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; and the post-Gulf

War period. He depicts a trend toward

greater state autonomy and an easing of pan-Arabist ideology. Even scholars

who might deem Barnett s emphasis on

"dialogue" interesting but overdrawn

should be attracted to this coherent

narrative of inter-Arab diplomacy since

the 1920s.

Turkey Unveiled: A History of Modern

Turkey, by hugh and nicole pope.

NewYork: Overlook Press, 1999,

266 pp. $29.95. Western interpretations of Turkey have

long been bifurcated. Some observers

view it as the most modernized Middle Eastern state, citing its parliament, diverse political parties, and female

emancipation. Others see Turkey as the

heir of all that was bad in the Ottoman

Empire, responsible for the tragic plight of the Armenians and a bully to its own Kurdish population?to

name a

few charges. Turkey Unveiled avoids

these extremes. Instead, the Popes offer a complex and nuanced picture.

Especially adept in narrating the recent

years they experienced firsthand, the

authors also provide an account of the

Ottoman legacy and the early years of

the republic. The emerging picture is

of a dynamic but often inflexible polity with many rough edges, few heroes, and many problems?the Kurds, the

Islamists, and the military's dominant

role in politics?that the government

only sporadically addresses. This first

rate political reporting demonstrates

that those seeing Turkey in either the best or the worst

light are only

half right.

Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem, by amir

s. cheshin, bill hutman, and

avi melamed. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1999, 288 pp. $27.95. A truly inside story of Israel's post-1967 rule of a united Jerusalem. Cheshin

served as government adviser on Arab

affairs in Jerusalem from 1984 to 1993, Melamed as his successor, and Hutman

as senior reporter covering Jerusalem for

The Jerusalem Post from 1992 through

FOREIGN AFFAIRS July/August 1999 [*45]

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