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The Journal of Military History 67.3 (2003) 992-993



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Politics, the Military, and National Security in Jordan, 1955-1967. By Lawrence Tal. New York: Palgrave, 2002. ISBN 0-333-96398-9. Map. Illustrations. Appendix. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 181. $42.50.

Lawrence Tal's monograph covers an eventful period in the history of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, beginning shortly after the accession of the teenaged King Hussein and ending with the Six-Day War. The story is essentially about the efforts of the Jordanian oligarchy to contain the king's two excursions into pan-Arab radicalism: the first commencing with the abrupt firing of the legendary commander of the Arab Legion, Sir John Bagot Glubb, and the second culminating in Jordan's decision to join Nasser's ill-advised confrontation with Israel in 1967. Tal's straightforward narrative makes excellent use of recently declassified diplomatic and intelligence reports from the U.S. and U.K., supplemented by interviews with many surviving participants of the political-military chaos of that era as well as a wide variety of secondary sources. He makes a persuasive case that a broad-based and fairly diverse political-military elite had emerged in Jordan by the 1950s, which coalesced just enough to ensure the survival of the kingdom in the face of near-constant crises triggered by internal instability and the intransigence of neighboring Arab states—thereby confounding the pessimistic expectations of most Western diplomats and Mideast experts. Contemplating the sometimes admirable and sometimes shabby cast of characters, we are repeatedly drawn to Wasfi al-Tell, an honorable and courageous statesman who did his best to keep Jordan on the proper path during this period. (Sadly, al-Tell died at the hands of a PLO assassin in 1971.) The author's research brackets the most probable truth with regard to major incidents, putting official Jordanian government accounts as well as published memoirs into perspective. This makes his account extremely useful to scholars of recent Middle East history—up to a point.

The problem with niche scholarship—in this case, the "slice of time" approach—is that analysis is necessarily truncated. Tal gives us a cursory overview of Jordanian history from the kingdom's founding in 1921, but much is absent. For example, little or nothing is said about the character and education of the "brave young King" (BYK, as abbreviated by American arabists) prior to his assumption of the throne as a teenager in 1952. The author tosses Hussein willy-nilly into the fray of national security and domestic politics, where his charismatic leadership proved over time to be a positive force for stability—except where punctuated by his "loose cannon" tendencies, which admittedly frame the narrative. But in limiting his study to the [End Page 992] 1955 to 1967 period the author omits crucial political-military events that set the stage, such as Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1950. On the back end we are left hanging at the conclusion of the 1967 war, with more critical events looming: the bloody expulsion of the PLO in 1970, and King Hussein's renunciation of Jordan's claim to the West Bank in 1988. In the spirit of contemporary academic scholarship, however, "a niche must remain a niche."

Tal provides a useful appendix with short biographies of the main characters in this twelve-year drama, to which most readers should definitely turn first. As with many works of careful scholarship, the copious endnotes are well worth a detour.

 



Ralph Hitchens
Poolesville, Maryland

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