From Beirut to Jerusalem:
Book R eview
23 Years On
Review by Lt. Patrick Devane, OPNAV N95 Training Requirements Officer
The views expressed above are those of the reviewing author. The publication of this review does not imply DoD endorsement of the reviewing author or the work reviewed and its author.
M
uch has been made of the United States’ “strategic pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. To address a rising China and begin the transition from more than ten years of ground war, the President and his national security team have focused the military and diplomatic attention of the country eastward. The Navy is at the forefront of this shift in priorities, as the clearest guarantor of the open sea lanes of communication required to maintain relative peace and economic stability in the vast waters of the Pacific Rim. Even a cursory analysis will reveal, however, that the Middle East will remain very much a central part of American foreign policy in the near and long term. 22% of American oil imports in 2011 originated in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia. Iran’s nuclear program dominates much of the global community’s attention. Even with the 2014 withdrawal of American combat troops from Afghanistan looming, that nation’s saga is clearly far from resolution. Also, as of this writing, a bloody civil war rages in Syria, threatening to entangle and inflame the region as a whole. The Middle East’s continuing strategic importance makes Thomas Friedman’s bestseller From Beirut to Jerusalem, originally published in 1989, a must-read for those attempting to gain some understanding of an intimidatingly complex part of the world. Friedman, in his anecdotal style, navigates the reader through a warren of tribal loyalties, historical intricacies, and shifting political allegiances to explain the Middle East of the 1980s. What makes the book relevant after 23 years of often dramatic change is not so much his observations on contemporary events, but
his ability to identify the themes beneath the surface. For example, Friedman uses an explanation of then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s regime’s viciously bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood stronghold of Hama (until recently, the event against which al-Assad’s son Bashar’s regime was compared) as a representative case for what he describes as the region’s three political traditions: tribal fidelity, authoritarianism, and the modern nationstate, the latter imposed during the West’s
What makes the book relevant after 23 years of often dramatic change is not so much his observations on contemporary events, but his ability to identify the themes beneath the surface. phase of colonialism. Westerners, Friedman says, do not appreciate this combination of philosophies; at one point, he vividly describes Middle Eastern politics as threedimensional chess, with the United States seeming “to know only how to play checkers—one plodding move at a time.” That larger point—that a deeper cultural, political, and historical understanding of a place is critical to successfully interacting with it—runs throughout From Beirut to Jerusalem. Importantly, Friedman levies
criticism not only at the West in this regard. Friedman describes Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, ostensibly to rid Israel’s northern border of Palestinian militants, as a journey “Into the Kaleidoscope.” Israeli troops, after initial success pushing the Palestine Liberation Organization out of Beirut, became embroiled in a low-grade irregular conflict with Lebanese Shiites, who had initially been tacitly supportive of the invaders. Such regional complexities are in place today, even after two decades, the end of the Cold War as a larger backdrop for all things geopolitical, and the sweeping changes wrought by the Arab Spring. This is why From Beirut to Jerusalem is still a critical text. Friedman not only illuminates the Middle East for the unaware, he simultaneously and convincingly makes the case for appreciating the degree to which underlying attitudes and allegiances inform national interest and tactical realities. American policymakers, in facing these challenges, must grapple with nuance, shifting loyalties, and historical enmities in protecting the nation’s interest. It is critical, too, for executors of those policies to be well-versed in these nuances. This is a lesson that, if nothing else, the wars of the last 11 years have made clear. How well we have learned is something we will determine in the future. SW
http://issuu.com/surfacewarrior/docs • Fall 2012
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