Grand
Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East Kindle
Edition
by Steven
Simon (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
“A
comprehensive, even magisterial review . . . This is strong stuff, but Simon
does not flinch.” —Foreign Affairs
A
longtime American foreign policy insider’s penetrating and definitive reckoning
with this country’s involvement in the Middle East
The
culmination of almost forty years at the highest levels of policymaking and
scholarship, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon’s tour de force, offering a
comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engagement in the Middle
East. Simon begins with the Reagan administration, when American perception of
the region shifted from a cluster of faraway and frequently skirmishing nations
to a shining, urgent opportunity for America to (in Reagan’s words) “serve the
cause of world peace and the future of mankind.”
Reagan
fired the starting gun on decades of deepening American involvement, but as the
global economy grew, bringing an increasing reliance on oil, U.S. diplomatic
and military energies were ever more fatefully absorbed by the Middle East.
Grand Delusion explores the motivations, strategies, and shortcomings of each
presidential administration from Reagan to today, exposing a web of intertwined
events—from the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict amid Israeli domestic
politics, Cold War rivalries, and Saudi Arabia’s quest for security, to 9/11
and the war on terror—managed by a Washington policy process frequently ruled
by wishful thinking and partisan politics.
Simon’s
sharp sense of irony and incisive writing brings complex history to life. He
illuminates the motives behind America's commitment to Israel; explodes the
popular narrative of Desert Storm as a “good war”; and calls out the
devastating consequences of our mistakes, particularly for people of the region
trapped by the onslaught of American military action and pitiless economic
sanctions.
Grand
Delusion reveals that this story, while episodically impressive, has too often
been tragic and at times dishonorable. As we enter a new era in foreign policy,
this is an essential book, a cautionary history that illuminates American's
propensity for self-deception and misadventure at a moment when the nation is
redefining its engagement with a world in crisis.
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