Douglas Little - Böcker

Douglas Little explores the stormy American relationship with the Middle East from World War II through the war in Iraq, focusing particularly on the complex and often inconsistent attitudes and interests that helped put the United States on a collision course with radical Islam early in the new millennium. After documenting the persistence of ""orientalist"" stereotypes in American popular culture, Little examines oil, Israel, and other aspects of U.S. policy. He concludes that a peculiar blend of arrogance and ignorance has led American officials to overestimate their ability to shape events in the Middle East from 1945 through the present day, and that it has been a driving force behind the Iraq war. For this updated third edition, Little covers events through 2007, including a new chapter on the Bush Doctrine, demonstrating that in many important ways, George W. Bush's Middle Eastern policies mark a sharp break with the past.

In this important new book, Douglas Little explores the political and cultural turmoil that led U.S. policy makers to shift their attention from containing the ""Red Threat"" of international communism to combatting the ""Green Threat"" of radical Islam after 1989. Little analyzes America's confrontation with Islamic extremism through the traditional ideological framework of ""us versus them"" that has historically pitted the United States against Native Americans, Mexicans, Asian immigrants, Nazis, and the Soviets.The collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to signal that the doctrine of containment had served U.S. interests in the Middle East well, preserving Western access to Persian Gulf oil while protecting Israel and preventing communist subversion. Yet, although many Americans hoped that the end of the Cold War would enable the United States to redefine its diplomatic relationships in the Middle East and elsewhere, Little demonstrates that from Operation Desert Storm in 1991 to Obama's battle against ISIS today, U.S. foreign policy has been governed by ""us versus them"" thinking, with Islamophobia supplanting the threats of yesteryear.

Acclaimed historian of U.S.–Middle East foreign relations Douglas Little examines how American presidents, policy makers, and diplomats dealt with the rise of Islamic extremism in the modern era. Focusing on White House decision-making from George H. W. Bush to Barack Obama, Little traces the transformation of the Cold War–era "Red Threat" into the "Green Threat" of radical Islam. Analyzing key episodes from the 1991 Persian Gulf War and Bill Clinton's mishandling of the Oslo peace process through the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, and the showdown with ISIS, Little shows how the threat posed by Islamic "others" shaped the Middle Eastern policies of both Democratic and Republican presidents. This second edition includes a new afterword that carries the story through the Trump administration and into the Biden presidency, focusing particularly on Afghanistan, a major trouble spot in the Muslim world that will command global attention for many years to come.

Thinking Otherwise addresses the question of what makes a great historian by exploring the teaching and scholarship of Walter LaFeber, widely acclaimed as the most distinguished historian of US foreign relations. This volume of essays, edited by Susan A. Brewer, Richard H. Immerman, and Douglas Little, is a testament to a scholar who published more than a dozen books during his time at Cornell University, where he delivered legendary lectures for half a century. The chapters trace LaFeber's journey as a scholar and demonstrate his enduring influence on the history of US foreign relations by linking six of his monographs to his abiding concern about the fate of the American experiment from the 18th century to the present. Thinking Otherwise explains and assesses the scholarship of a historian whose work became canonical in his lifetime and continues to resonate throughout public policy debates.