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Book review: An astute analysis of the political forces involved

Will the Middle East Explode?

by Mohammed Ayoob 

(Michigan State University, £9.99)

The question asked by Professor Mohammed Ayoob, professor of international relations at Michigan University, is a pertinent one, even if he doesn’t quite answer it. 

The hopes for democracy and social justice raised by the popular uprisings of 2011 in north Africa and the Middle East have run into the sand, and instead a spiral of violence and reaction is in full force. 

The author, a prolific Middle East scholar, manages in a few short pages to give readers an overview of the bewildering scale of events in the region while, at the same time, making clear how little basic power relations have changed up till now.

Behind the revolutions and civil wars in countries including Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain, the author illuminates how western and regional powers have played a decisive role in the violent and apparently chaotic process.

On the one side, the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel have acted to protect their interests in the face of upheavals across the region brought on by unemployment, inequality, corruption and lack of democracy. 

On the other side, Iran, Hizbollah and Russia have lined up with the surprisingly durable Assad regime in Syria. 

As one might expect from a political science work, the author maintains a certain objectivity and distance from his subject. 

This is not journalism, although the author does describe the dramatic events of recent years in some detail. 

What he does not explore is why, as a whole, the upheavals have failed to bring about lasting change.

At times I longed to step back from the melee and get a more penetrative sense of what is happening behind the headlines. 

However, he does offer astute analysis and provide a useful explanation of the various political forces and actors involved.

Ayoob makes it clear that the long-running dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme is not a cause but a symptom of the historic policy of the West, Israel and the House of Saud to resist any emerging challenge to their hegemony. 

In Egypt, the same forces were happy to see the back of the Muslim Brotherhood and the return of the army to power last July.

In the case of the Palestinian issue, he shows that steadfast US support for Israeli colonialism is the fundamental block on any real peace process or move to Palestinian statehood. 

In the Syrian quagmire, it is clear that a proxy war is underway with outside forces involved on all sides.

Some might call this imperialism, but Ayoob prefers more academic language. There is no doubt, though, that he wants the reader to appreciate how little self-determination the people of the countries affected by the so-called Arab Spring have in deciding their future. 

The region is too strategically important to be left to find its own path out of poverty, inequality and dictatorship. 

And it is this ongoing tragedy that may yet cause the explosion that the title suggests.

JOE GILL

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