American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (review)

With American Orientalism,a diplomatic history of U.S. relations with the Middle East, Douglas Little enters the debate over "why do they hate us?" (p. 2), suggesting that a "peculiar blend of ignorance and arrogance" prevented the United States from "truly understanding the region and its peoples" (pp. 2–3). The alleged U.S. impulse to remake the world in America's image, combined with ambivalence about the peoples to be remade has fed a history of policy blunders, creating a multitude of enemies and problems.

Little provides literary flair, both in his references to fiction and in his own writing style. The book is arranged in eight thematic chapters rather than a straight chronology. Each chapter, on issues such as oil, Israel, nationalism, Soviet containment, and the peace process, can stand on its own. Such a format has virtues and drawbacks. Readers can get a condensed and well-researched essay on several subjects. Other topics, such as the Suez crisis, are scattered across several chapters, preventing a more cogent and coherent analysis of such events.

What Little delivers in breadth of coverage, he squanders somewhat in method and conclusions. Too often he makes unsubstantiated claims about the collective U.S. imagination and way of thinking. In a book supposedly focusing on official and public attitudes, he makes scarcely any use of polls or interviews to ascertain past and present trends and relies instead on conjecture. For example, he asserts that "many Americans saw religious significance in the Jews reclaiming their ancient home in Palestine, and most would confess at some time that Israel was one of their favorite nations" (p. 79). This speculative statement is not backed by the evidence presented. How does Little know that "many Americans saw religious significance" in these events? How does he know that "most" Americans consider Israel one of their favorite countries? Such flimsy propositions, meant to hold together his thesis, detract from the abundance of researched insights into U.S. policy toward the Middle East. The textual analysis is selective and dubious because of its source choices (and omissions), its rules of evidence and inference, and the presumption that what shows up in a movie (e.g., Aladdin) or popular magazine (e.g., National Geographic) is affecting foreign policy decisions. Little approvingly quotes people who were marginal to decision-making, even when their comments are contradicted by the main decision-makers. Whereas the early chapters portray U.S. policy and attitudes as myopic and culturally biased, subsequent chapters take a decidedly materialist or political bent, raising the question of what the causal mechanism is in U.S. actions.

As a tale of unintended consequences, however, American Orientalismsucceeds in showing how decision-makers often took actions without foreseeing the repercussions. What seemed like a good idea in a Cold War context may not have been good for other U.S. goals and interests. Islamic fundamentalism and anti-American terrorism, for example, certainly have some relation to U.S. support for corrupt autocrats in Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Support for Israel has helped to fuel regional animosity toward the United States.

Yet the lessons and attributions of blame are not so clear, and Little is thin on suggestions of how things might have gone differently. The book spends little time analyzing indigenous regional forces and trends that gave rise to nationalist, Arabist, or Islamist movements, implying a larger U.S. role than may be the case. Did Islamism and anti-U.S. extremism gain ascendance because of, or despite, what the United States did? Should Carter and others nothave encouraged reform in Iran? Or did they not do enough?Would anythinghave made a difference? Little deplores U.S. policymakers' inattention to the region, but he himself too often makes the same mistake of omission.

The evidence regarding U.S. myopia and misperceptions of the region is also of mixed quality. Egypt's rejection of...