Critical Issues Facing the Middle East

JAMES A. RUSSELL is Senior Lecturer, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, USA.

'A timely and readable compendium of informed expertise; bridging the divide of internal and external security; addressing the sources of Middle East insecurity from the interdisciplinary perspectives of economics, politics, history, international relations and religion. To cope with such a variegated security environment the sources of potential instability and conflict are broken into their constituent parts, developing a holistic focus that pierces the fog in shedding new light of the impending Middle East storm. Having no equal it will readily find its utility on student reading lists and the shelves of practitioners, commentators and critics. - Glen M. Segell, FRGS, Director, Institute of Security Policy. "Critical issues in Middle East Security challenges the conventional wisdom that the driving search for Middle East is, or should be, a purely military consideration. Although current events in Iraq and elsewhere give good reason to rest comfortably with such a notion, the book's authors dig deeper to probe the underlying sources of the region's current and coming challenges. Critical Issues is an important contribution, by important scholars, and deserves a wide readership by those concerned with the seemingly unending cycle of conflict roiling the Middle East." - Rachel Bronson, author of Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia, Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

• PART I: THEORETICAL OVERVIEW Proliferation, Asymmetric War, and the Contemporary Threat Environment; S.Blank PART II: MIDDLE EAST CASE STUDIES Continuity and Change in Israeli Strategic Thinking: Reflections in the Wake of Operation Iraqi Freedom; A.Cohen Iran at the Strategic Crossroads; R.Takeyh Syrian WMD Programs in Context; M.Jouejati Syrian Weapons of Mass Destruction; A.Hashim A.Q. Khan, Proliferation Networks, and the Nuclear Slippery Slope; C.Clary Saudi Arabia in the 21st Century: A New Security Calculus?; J.A.Russell Saudi Arabia: The Nuclear Conundrum; G.Segell Tracking and Assessing Nuclear Issues in Open Sources: The Case of Libya; W.Bowen PART III: POLICY IMPLICATIONS Iraq and Libya: Nonproliferation through Regime Change or Change in a Regime?; R.Litwak Counterproliferation vs. Nonproliferation in the Middle East after Saddam: Lessons from Iraq and Libya; M.Friend A Demand Side Strategy for Regional Security and Nonproliferation in the Persian Gulf; M.Kraig & R.Kahwaji Threat Reduction and the Middle East; R.Gottemoeller