Review: Middle East: Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East
| Published date | 01 March 1998 |
| Date | 01 March 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209805300119 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
Reviews
The
central
argument
of
this
work
tration
of
export
control
systems,
is
that, through
flawed
policies
and
but
to
few
others.
a
long
succession
of
errors
of
omis-
sion
and
commission, the
govern-
STRATEGIC
GEOGRAPHY
AND
THE
ments
of
the
United
States
and
CHANGING
MIDDLE
EAST
Britain
contributed
enormously
to
Geoffrey
Kemp
and
Robert
E.
the development
of
Iraq's
military
Harkavy
arsenal,
an
arsenal
which
was
then
Washington:
Brookings
Institution
turned
against
them
in
the
Gulf
Press,
1997,
xv,
4
95pp,
US$52.95
War
of
1991.
It
is
a
rather
tawdry
cloth,
US$22.95
paper
tale
of
connivance
among
politi-
cians,
government
agencies,
intelli-
This
is
a
work
of
geopolitical analy-
gence
services,
and
commercial
sis
on
a
grand
scale.
Eschewing
tra-
interests
in
hiding
from
legislatures
ditional
concepts
of what
consti-
and
publics
the
true
nature
of
the
tutes
the Middle
East,
the
authors
criteria
being
used
to
authorize
the
offer
their
own
definition
of
what
export
of
military
equipment
to
they
call
'the
greater
Middle
East,'
a
Iraq
(and
Iran)
during
the
1980s.
region
stretching
from
Morocco
in
Unfortunately,
the
central
argument
the
west to
the
India-China
border
frequently
gets
lost in
a
mass
of
in
the
east,
and
from
Kazakstan
in
tedious
detail,
much
of
it totally the
north
to
Somalia
in
the
south.
extraneous
to
the
case.
While
the
study
focusses
on
the
The
relative
importance
of
British
strategic
importance
of
energy
and
American arms
shipments
to
resources, scarcity,
and
weapons
Iraq,
whether
direct or
indirect,
is
proliferation,
it
also
deals
with
greatly exaggerated
by the
author
as
demographic
trends,
ethnicity,
reli-
he
seeks
to
nail
down
his
case.
The
gion,
ideology,
and
unresolved
terri-
vast
majority
of
the
major
weapons
torial disputes
as
sources
of
conflict,
systems
in
the
Iraqi
arsenal
at
the
actual or
potential.
time
of
the
Gulf
War
were,
in
fact,
One
particularly
good chapter
of
Soviet
origin.
During
the
1980s,
assesses
the
oil
and
gas
resources
of
as
the author's own
data
demon-
the
Persian
Gulf
and
the
Caspian
strates,
the
United
States
and
Britain
Basin
in
the context
of
projected
ranked
well
behind
the
Soviet
global energy
requirements
over
the
Union,
China,
France,
and
Brazil
as
next
15
years.
There
are
equally
exporters
of
arms to
Iraq.
good
chapters
on
the
Gulf
War
and
This
book
may
be
of
interest to
the
revolution
in
military
affairs
and
investigative
journalists
and
to
on
the
future
of
United
States
experts
in
the
design
and
adminis-
power
projection
capabilities.
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Winter
1997-8
187
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