Conflict and War in the Middle East, 1967-91: Regional Dynamic and the Superpowers (review)

162 SAIS REVIEW proxy for British power in North America, and a rival for territory as the U.S. moved to settle the West and secure its borders. Secretary ofState William Seward's Alaska Purchase was undertaken in this context, as were disputes over the division ofthe Oregon Territory. Astonishingly, Stewart uncovers high-level concern in the State Department that Canada might attempt to challenge American interests for the possession of Hawaii. Stewart's book then turns to 1892, when a change ofattitude became apparent in Washington. A new, more commercially-directed approach to U.S.-Canadian relations culminated in the 1911 Reciprocity attempt. The Taft Administration, under pressure from domestic business to secure access to natural resources to fuel American industrial growth, crafted an offer ofReciprocity to the Canadians which. It was hoped that this agreement would break apart the British system ofImperial Trade Preferences. Although this treaty was rejected by Canadians in the 1911 election that unseated the government ofPrime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, Stewart makes the case thatthe change in the U.S. response to Canada, which was signalled by this initiative, was of central importance to the evolution of U.S. Canadian policy thereafter. Stewartthen moves at a breakneck pace through U.S. policyfrom 1911 through 1988, when the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement symbolically completed the shift in the U.S. agenda which had begun in 1911. The more recent are the events covered, the less original is Stewart's analysis. The archival "paper trail" begins to fade and Stewart wisely spends less time with the bilateral relations ofthe Cold Warera. The value ofthis partofthetextis chieflyinits tracingofthemajorthreads in the early history of Canada-U.S. relations through to the present. Arguably, it is this history which distinguishes the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement from its proposed successor, The North American Free Trade Agreement, which would include Mexico. The dearth of historical study of U.S. Canadian Policy is a serious problem for students in this field. Some excellent studies ofspecific periods in the bilateral relationship have been done, but until now, a comprehensive, concise and highly readable historical account of Canadian-American relations from the American perspective has been missing. With The American Response to Canada Since 1776, Gordon Stewart fills this gap and makes an invaluable contribution to Canadian in the United States. Conflict and War in the Middle East, 1967-91: Regional Dynamic and the Superpowers. ByBassamTibi. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. 253 pp. $39.95/ Hardcover. Reviewed by David J. Pervin, PhD. Candidate, Department of Political Science, UCLA and SAIS MA. 1989. Since 1948 the Middle East has undergone a continuing conflict that occasionally has escalated to war. Although the Arab-Israeli conflict has received the greatest attention, conflicts within and among Arab states and between Iraq and Iran have been more devastating. Because of the small geographical size of the region and the political links among the various actors, the three basic conflicts have interacted BOOK REVIEWS 163 and at times exacerbated each other. Overlapping all conflicts was the SovietAmerican competition for and support of local allies. Given this complexity, it is not surprising that the search for the causes ofconflicts and corresponding methods of resolution has been marked by different, and often contradictory perspectives. One can distinguish between two basic approaches; the globalist approach, which argues that conflict dynamics in the Middle East are largely determined by the policies of the super- or great powers using the regional states for their own purposes , and the regionalist approach, which holds that the disputes are local and it is the regional states that use the external powers. The end of the Cold War provides an opportunity to examine the relative merits of these two approaches, and there is a growing literature that seeks to reexplore the interaction of the global and regional systems. The question of which level is the most important in determining the conflicts' dynamics is examined in Bassam Tibi's Conflict and War in the Middle East, 1967-91: Regional Dynamic and the Superpowers. For Tibi, Professor of International Relations at Germany's Gttingen University and Research Associate at Harvard University, there are two aims for...