The New Middle East: What Everyone Needs to Know by James L. Gelvin (review)

The New Middle East is an outstanding contribution to our understanding the complexity, importance and tragedy of the modern Middle East. The challenge of writing anything that claims to summarize what the reader needs to know about the political, economic, and international security implications of the Middle East since last week, let alone 2010, is a bold project that requires an expert hand. Thankfully, James Gelvin is an expert hand.

The title of the book suggests that it is a summary of important topics for the general reader. While the general reader will learn much from this volume, as a student of this region (and in particular the political violence of this region), I gained much as well. The author clearly, skillfully, and smartly reveals the fundamental struggles that the region has endured since 2010. Equally as important, the author approaches the topic in a pragmatic, realistic manner and respects the limits of writing about history while in the midst of living it.

The structure of the book allows for easy access to the text based on popular questions or topics of interest. The book opens with a brief review of Middle East history from 1945 to 2010. This is followed by explorations of three key topics that have captured the world's attention since 2010: the Arab Spring, the Syrian conflict, and the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The book closes with a wide-ranging discussion of the international relations of the region and a discussion of a collection of topics that the author captures as "human security" (e.g., water, population, poverty, and the role of women).

The book is well-researched and the narrative well-paced—a significant accomplishment in itself, especially in light of the challenge that Gelvin faced navigating such a wide and variegated regional terrain so close to when the events within it happened. The chapter on the Syrian conflict and the rise and decline of ISIS is as good and succinct a summary as I have read. The discussion of ISIS, in particular, is smartly crafted and balanced. The author uses history in a nuanced way to explain the "ordinariness" of some of the actions that the group took (e.g., cruelly purging society of infidels is not peculiar to Islam). This helps the reader locate groups such as ISIS within the broader sweep of history. He also takes the time to expose the complexity of al-Qa'ida and ISIS—two of the most violent non-state actors operating in the region. He unpacks the philosophical and operational differences between them, e.g., the interpretation and implementation of takfir (declaring someone an infidel) and the far versus near enemy.

The chapter on the international relations of the region is informative, though it could have profited from more extensive treatment of structural factors, such as the ways in which the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States informed and constrained policy-makers' choices and actions. The reader should know that great statesmen matter, but the world—the international system—has a vote in how things play out. In the chapter on ISIS, for example, the author clearly exposes the holes in the "ideology alone" arguments that some observers used to explain the group's battlefield successes in its early days. The chapter on human security seemed like a catch-all of topics that do deserve to be included, but was less coherent than other parts of the book.

There are a few other aspects of the book that the author could have developed further, such as the Iran-Saudi regional rivalry and the role of Turkey. Gelvin also rightly points out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has receded in international, and likely regional, importance and that its linkage to progress overall diplomatically has subsided. However, this subject is covered in a mere two pages; Israel's role in the Middle East likewise receives...