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222 SAIS REVIEW provided Churchill with new hope that he could convince the new president of the truth behind his bleak picture of the Soviet Union and its intentions. The third and final section begins with Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, which, though at first poorly received, drew more and more adherents to Churchill's philosophy as Stalin made deeper advances into independent Iran. This "Iran crisis," debated on the sparkling new United Nations Security Council floor, ushered in a tough new U.S. policy toward communism and is considered by some, including Professor Harbutt, as the beginning of the cold war. Churchill was at last rewarded for his many years of trying to win the Americans over to his side. None of the information covered in The Iron Curtain is particularly insightful . Professer Harbutt, like most Western cold war scholars, blames it on the Soviets, citing their aggression and disregard for personal liberty. Harbutt's most daring point is his suggestion that Truman might have "commissioned" the Fulton speech as a means of legitimating his plans to get tough with the Soviets, though Professor Harbutt doubts that this was the case. Professor Harbutt states in his introduction that the book is a sort of "biography" of Churchill in his role as chief protagonist of the Anglo-American front, and that Harbutt aimed to write an account of the cold war that was not Americocentric; in fact only the latter goal was even remotely achieved. Churchill plays an important role in the first half of the book, while no one in the American government gave his ideas credence. The impression given by the second half of the book, in which Churchill is not an important character, is that it was actuallyJoseph Stalin's threat to Iranian sovereignty that prompted the Truman administration to act. In this respect the United States is not at the center of events, thus the account is not U.S. -centric. Were it a suspense novel, The Iron Curtain would be good reading— it contains substantial intrigue, infighting, and villainy— Nazis and Communists. As history, however, it is simply yet another book on an already towering pile of similar books with the same message — Soviet expansionism caused the conflict , and it was necessary for the United States to prevent its success. The PLO Under Arafat: Between Gun and Olive Branch. By Shaul Mishal. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. 190 pp. $21.00/cloth. Reviewed by Michael Young, M. A. candidate, SAIS. On being forced to leave Beirut in the summer of 1982, Yasser Arafat said something to the effect that, while the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had left with its honor, the Israelis had left with the bathroom faucets. More relevant was a comment by Issam Sartawi, Arafat's adviser on foreign affairs, who remarked with irony that with any more victories like the one in Beirut the PLO would soon be fighting in Fiji. The PLO dilemma of translating diplomatic successes into territorial gains is the focus of Shaul Mishal's useful book, The PLO Under Arafat: Between Gun and Olive Branch. BOOK REVIEWS 223 The battle of Beirut was a devastating loss to the PLO and demonstrated the fragility of the political and military gains achieved by it during the 1970s. The inability of the organization to renounce armed struggle for fear of a split, particularly between Fat'h and the less compromising Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) eventually created a strategic deadlock for PLO leadership; hard-liners were wary of political initiatives while a military victory over Israel remained Utopian. The PLO cannot easily pursue political solutions to the problem of Palestinian nationhood because it is unwilling to renounce its ultimate objective of creating a secular Palestinian state in all of Palestine. Israel perceives political initiatives of the PLO as mere tactics in a continuing military confrontation, thus it rejects such proposals as the creation of a Palestinian entity on the West Bank and Gaza under PLO leadership. Given the obstacles facing the PLO, it is legitimate to ask whether or not too literal...

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