Perilous Prospects: The Peace Process and the Arab-Israeli Military Balance (review)

168 SHOFAR Fall 1998 Vol. 17, No.1 chirpy words he papers over enormous holes in his argument. Time and again he marks himself as a thorough-going amateur. Jacob Neusner University of South Florida and Bard College Perilous Prospects: The Peace Process and the Arab-Israeli Military Balance, by Anthony H. Cordesman. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. 317 pp. $69.00. Cordesman is a preeminent defense analyst with extraordinary access to sources of military information, a fmely tuned sense of the funding of the military around the globe, its materials as well as its uses. He, therefore, is more than qualified to tackle the topic he has chosen to examine, the ongoing "peace process," with his perspective relating it to, first, the Arab-Israeli conflict and, second, national arsenals. The two concepts are purposely separated without, in this reviewer's opinion, a credible explanation for any connection. The book is a most carefully designed configuration of the respective military capability of Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians with data collected from standard sources, ACDA, SIPRI, and the IISS. The military capabilities are, further, suitably gauged by conventional indicators, i.e., arms expenditures, sales, and transfers. Additionally, there is a clear understanding that regional and violent confrontation are affected by varying degrees of national capabilities and intent, frequently determined by external factors but all dependent on military force levels. While there are discriminatory assessments of military hardware, the assumptions oftheir potential use are continuously qualified by contingent "mays" covering all sorts ofpossible conditions. Without, however, a linkage established, either in a theoretical format or any other framework, between on the one hand the military establishments and their hardware and on the other the political dynamic to reduce the levels of tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the reader is left to do the difficult analysis without intelligent boundaries. Cordesman notes, properly, that force ratios are best or at least accurately compared ifrelated to the resource capability available to each state. Conventional force ratios are applicable when applied to traditional or conventional war but neither to nuclear conflict at any level nor to limited conflict. Certainly, it would not be difficult to establish a relationship, causal or otherwise, between military resources and political dynamics, but in this instance, there is little basis for an evaluation. A series of case studies, bolstered by a policy orientation, are presented as possible outcomes of the developing relational dynamic of arms accumulation and the peace Book Reviews 169 process. Hence, Cordesman looks.at the possibility ofa new Palestinian intifada, a move by the Syrians to regain the Golan Heights, a possible confrontation between Israel and Jordan, a potential alliance between Jordan and Syria, a confrontation between Israel and Egypt, a coalition of Islamic states aligned against Israel, the possible coalition of rogue states, Iraq, Iran, and Libya, and the deterrence value of weapons of mass destruction. Little attention is paid to the political causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict which become important when establishing the purposeful use of any of the parties' formal means of extending coercion across their respective borders. Military forces are best estimated when they are a part of a formally established government. This cannot be said entirely for the Palestine National Authority (PNA) except for those forces authorized by international agreements. Additionally, Islamic-based organizations whose loyalty to the PNA is suspect, i.e., Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, do not publicize, in any recognizable form, their respective force capabilities. Here then is a real contribution by Cordesman who delves into a thorough order-of-battle statement and analysis. This is not a new or unstudied topic; there is a substantial body of literature on the themes discussed here. For example, those who want additional perspectives may look at M. Yaffe. "An Overview ofthe Middle East Peace Process Working Group on Arms Control and Regional Security," in Confidence-Building and Security Co-operation in the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East, edited by F. Tanner (Malta: University of Malta, 1994) and Bridging the Gap: A Future Security Architecturefor the Middle East, edited by Shai Feldman and Abdullah Toukan (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). The criticism registered...