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This volume offers a wide-ranging examination of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), featuring fresh regional and international perspectives derived from recently available new archival material. Three decades ago Iran and Iraq became embroiled in a devastating eight-year war which served to re-define the international relations of the Gulf region. The Iran-Iraq War stands as an anomaly in the Cold War era; it was the only significant conflict in which the interests of the United States and Soviet Union unwittingly aligned, with both superpowers ultimately supporting the Iraqi regime. The Iran-Iraq War re-assesses not only the superpower role in the conflict but also the war's regional and wider international dimensions by bringing to the fore fresh evidence and new perspectives from a variety of sources. It focuses on a number of themes including the economic dimensions of the war and the roles played by a variety of powers, including the Gulf States, Turkey, France, the Soviet Union and the United States. The contributions to the volume serve to underline that the Iran-Iraq war was a defining conflict, shaping the perspectives of the key protagonists for a generation to come. This book will be of much interest to students of international and Cold War history, Middle Eastern politics, foreign policy, and International Relations in general.

Great powers and grand strategies. It is easy to assume that the most powerful nations pursue and employ consistent, cohesive, and decisive policies in trying to promote their interests in regions of the world. Popular theory emphasizes two such grand strategies that great powers may pursue: balance of power policy or hegemonic domination. But, as Steve A. Yetiv contends, things may not always be that cut and dried. Analyzing the evolution of the United States' foreign policy in the Persian Gulf from 1972 to 2005, Yetiv offers a provocative and panoramic view of American strategies in a region critical to the functioning of the entire global economy. Ten cases—from the policies of the Nixon administration to George W. Bush's war in Iraq—reveal shifting, improvised, and reactive policies that were responses to unanticipated and unpredictable events and threats. In fact, the distinguishing feature of the U.S. experience in the Gulf has been the absence of grand strategy. Yetiv introduces the concept of \"reactive engagement\" as an alternative approach to understanding the behavior of great powers in unstable regions. At a time when the effects of U.S. foreign policy are rippling across the globe, The Absence of Grand Strategy offers key insight into the nature and evolution of American foreign policy in the Gulf.

The US-led coalition which launched an invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003 led to a decade-long military presence in the country. In the run-up to that invasion, many comparisons were made with the 1991 Gulf War. Ahmed Ijaz Malik takes these two instances of military intervention by Republican US governments to highlight how the official discourse of leaders and decision-makers has an impact on foreign policy and its results. By taking these two examples, he examines how discourse affects real events, and the extent to which the legacy of the Cold War has influenced the decisions which are made at the upper echelons of the US government. US Foreign Policy and the Gulf Wars critically analyses the post-Cold War liberal cosmopolitan and realist discourses related to these two instances of US military intervention. Using an approach which Malik labels 'critical realism', this book examines the ways in which discourses often act as ideological covers for material interests, whilst still not holding a deterministic view whereby these interests alone shape policies. From this perspective, this book assesses the themes of 'Just War', humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism. It furthermore uses the approach of 'critical realism' to engage with a variety of arguments on the emerging role of the US - as they were displayed in academic discourses and other intellectual contributions around each of the 1991 and 2003 wars. Malik relates these discussions to an analysis of the official discourses, documents and policies displayed prior to the 1991 and 2003 wars, as well as to an examination of the resulting actual conduct. Since the implications of the US military presence in the Middle East are so central to the study of International Relations and Security Studies, this book will be invaluable for specialists in these disciplines, as well as for those interested in policy formation and the wider Middle East.

This highly controversial and topical book provides the first full, balanced account of how Iraq cheated the UN inspectors on disarmament and how the US manipulated and infiltrated the UN inspection teams and other staff to gather intelligence on Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Aimed at the general reader, it follows and assesses the role of Saddam Hussein who became president of Iraq in 1979. Dilip Hiro, an experienced journalist who has written extensively on the region, provides a historical and accessible perspective to the relationship between Iraq and Iran and examines the consequences of internationally significant events such as the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran a year after the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. Providing a full account and analysis of events in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, he contrasts the long totalitarianism under Hussein with the evolution of the political-religious system in Iran and the development of its internal politics. This is an essential overview to the conflicts in the Gulf, and should be read by anyone with an interest in the region, its politics and its interactions with the US and UN. Dilip Hiro is a full-time writer and journalist, and a frequent commentator on Middle Eastern, Gulf and Islamic affairs in radio and telelvision. He is the author of The Longest War, The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict, Holy Wars:The Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism and Iran Under the Ayatollahs among other books. His articles on the Middle East and allied subjects have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times, Guardian, Toronto Star and International Herald Tribune . Part 1: Iraq 1. Saddam Center-Stage, Exit Bush 2. Enter Clinton: Saddam's New Nemesis 3. A Shattering Betrayal, Then Lucky Breaks for Saddam 4. The Mother of all Failed Coups 5. Saddam and Re-elected Clinton 6. 'Desert Thunder' That Didn't Thunder 7. Operation 'Desert Fox' Part 2: Iran 8. Iran, A Return to Normalcy 9. Rafsanjani's Reconstruction and Economic Reform 10. Khatami, a Moderate with a Mission 11. Political Reform and Reaction 12. Reform Restrained