Kingmaker
Chosen by The Washington Post as one of the best books of the year!
Reviews
Kingmakers was chosen by The Times of London as one of the best history books of the year:
"[Kingmakers]looks at the flipside of cross-cultural influence. Both authors are journalists and are therefore canny to the fact that force of character burns geo-political boundaries. However strategic we are, most global decisions are taken by a few men (and fewer women). Whoever argues his or her case best will win the day. This book reminds us that international interventionism will always mean that one day someone else's tears will run down our own face.
Kingmakers was chosen as the "book of the month" for December by Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society. (see the review below)
Desert Sons
In 1921 an Arab prince and two Englishmen convened in Cairo to soothe the Arab's bruised pride. The prince, Abdullah, was a scion of the Hashemite clan; the Englishmen were the archaeologist-warrior T.E. Lawrence and the Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill. Abdullah needed a country to reign over, so the British invented one. As Churchill later recalled, he "created Jordan with a stroke of a pen one Sunday afternoon."
If that had been the only caprice the British ever allowed themselves in the Arab world, Karl Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac would have had sufficient reason to write their fine new Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East--for Abdullah got Jordan because the Brits had already granted his brother Faisal an arbitrary patch of desert called Iraq.
In fact, the history of British misadventure in the Middle East (with a late-innings appearance by some prominent American ringers) could have enabled Meyer and Brysac to fill a shelf stretching from Cairo to Tehran. But Kingmakers (W.W. Norton) manages to encapsulate a century's worth of misjudgment, overreach, and catastrophe in the most accessible of containers: a series of biographical portraits of true believers, artful game players, and a few heedless twits, all in feverish pursuit of glory, trade routes, and land (not to mention the ocean of vicous black stuff bubbling beneath it).
For instance: Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, who earned the nickname "Over-Baring" even before he presided over Egypt so memorably that 80 years after his death, Egyptians in Britain sought out his grave so they could spit on it. Or Frederick Lugard, the colonialist who promulgated the theory of "indirect rule," a spotless euphemism for a massive bribery scheme that was "described as a 'rent a sheik, buy an emir' strategy." Or Glubb Pasha, a.k.a. Sir John Bagot Glubb, one of the Arabs' most devoted friends, who incidentally perfected the art of aerial bombing as a means of squeezing tax payments out of reluctant colonials.
Of course, thanks to Peter O'Toole, director David Lean, and his own promotional abilities, the best known of the kingmakers is Lawrence--"the Achilles of the Great War," write Meyer and Brysac, "the supporting actor who steals the show." But I'll salute him here for something the authors have exhumed for its contemporary resonance: "The people of England have been led into a trap in Mesopotamia from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour," Lawrence wrote in 1920. "They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information."
Mesopotamia, of course was the Arabist name for that piece of land where so much blood, treasure, and honor have been misspent in our own time. and this the authors acknowledge with a superb final biography--about this interesting fellow named Wolfowitz. . ..
Daniel Okrent, Fortune Magazine (August 18, 2008)
The years from the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 to the British debacle in the 1956 Suez crisis spanned what Elizabeth Monroe in her classic work called "Britain's moment in the Middle East." It was a period of imperial domination characterized not by outright colonial rule, as with the British Raj in India or British rule in the African colonies, but by a mix of treaties, mandates, and kingmaking. Meyer and Brysac use a dozen short biographies to tell the story of this era. Their list of characters includes, as would be expected, T.E. Lawrence, Lord Cromer, Gertrude Bell, Sir Mark Sykes, and Glubb Pasha. Among the others are Lord Lugard, Harry St. John Philby, and several other individuals involved in the United Kingdom's post--world War I initiatives in Iraq and Iran: Sir Arnold Wilson plus "the three Percys"--Cox, Sykes, and Loraine. The authors then, in an intriguing innovation, turn to three American "kingmakers" in the Middle East: two from the CIA--Kermit Roosevelt (leading the 1953 coup in Iran) and Miles Copeland, Jr. (championing clandestine activities during the 1950s)--plus Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz (pushing for the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq). It all adds up to a well-researched and readable account of first British and then U.S. efforts to manage the Middle East.
L. Carl Brown, Foreign Affairs (November/December 2008)
The one truly transcendent law in the Middle East is that of unintended consequences," observe the authors early on--but that dry, weary tone will have a good many outings as the book proceeds. Even before the oil was discovered, this was not only a strategically vital region but a home to defiant traditionalism and religious fervour. The whole tenor of recent historical enquiry has been to play down the importance of 'Great Men'--the Alexanders, the Napoleons, the Churchills. Unfortunately, as Meyer and Brysac show, the Middle East has been made by Little Men--desk-driving mandarins, deal-doing statesmen in Westminster and Washington. Sobering in its implications, but fortunately anything but in its narrative style, Kingmakers is an absorbing, illuminating read. *****
Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman (October 4, 2008)
Meddle East
"'Intelligence was faulty.' 'Who could have foreseen?' Mistakes were made.' these were among the excuses given by British officials following General Gordon's disastrous foray into the Sudan against the Mahdi Army in 1884-85, which ended; as legend has it, with his simultaneous puncturing by the spears of four dervishes. According to 'Kingmakers: The Invention of the Middle East," those who forget the history of Western encounters with the Middle East really do seem doomed to repeat it.
This book is the follow-up to Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac's 'Tournament of Shadows,' a swashbuckling account of the Great Game in Central Asia. 'Kingmakers' examines the similar phenomenon of Western meddling and imperialism in the arabian lands of the Middle East and North Africa, through a series of biographical essays. The subjects range in time and nationality from the British consul-general Lord Cromer, who secured control of Egypt during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to the recent American deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz and his adventures in Iraq.
Meyer and Brysac have some captivating stories to tell. There is the 1921 coronation of the Hashemite prince Faisal as king of Iraq, crowned, according to one report, upon a throne hastily constructed from old Asahi beer crates. There is the very different ceremony that installed the former stablehand Reza Khan Pahlavi as shah of Iran in 1926, for which Vita Sackville-West delved wrist-deep in trays of emeralds and pearls from Persian jewel vaults to select his regalia.
Above all, there is the career of T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, who rode around the Middle East derailing Ottoman supply trains, recruiting mercenaries to the British cause and bribing Arab leaders (occasionally by mistake: once, he was so careless as to send 25,000 pounds in gold to the wrong prince). Finally, Meyer and Brysac describe the modern successors to these interventionist Britons: interventionist Americans, whose eccentricities and failures have been neither less colorful nor les evident.. . .
Meyer and Brysac provide some fascinating material on American relations with Ibn Saud and the exploitation of Saudi oil. The essay on how Wolfowitz convinced himself that what Iraq needed was the imposition of democracy is enlightening and commend ably balanced. And the tale of C.I.A. involvement in the 1953 oil-prompted coup in Iran is marvelously told, down to the appealing detail of the operative Kermit Roosevelt listening to 'Luck Be a Lady Tonight' on his phonograph while he awaited the shah's agreement to to the American cause. . .
Meyer and Brysac conclude that their kingmakers 'erred not through malice or ignorance but through excess of ambition.' similarly, their book is admirably fair-minded and well researched. Had it played more to its strengths of adding color and depth to the story of American involvement in the Middle East, it could have been accused neither of lacking ambition nor of error."
Alex von Tunzelmann, The New York Times, August 10, 2008
The Road Already Taken
"The importance of Kingmakers for a wide American audience emerges slowly. At first, the book appears to be a quaint reminiscence of eccentric and often familiar British colonials of the early 20th century, strutting across Middle Eastern deserts in pith helmets, instructing the benighted native tribesmen about the fundamentals of governing. But as this beautifully written and researched book proceeds, it becomes abundantly clear that these skilled English soldier-diplomats are the progenitors of (and in some cases, role models for) the current crop of American diplomats and soldiers on the same turf. The issues that this country is now debating--how to exit Iraq gracefully, how to protect American interests in the region after withdrawal, how to keep Arab insurgencies in check, how to continue the essential flow of oil, how to maintain American presence without the appearance of colonialism or occupation--these issues have all been addressed before.
The authors make the relevance of their study clear at the outset. 'History never repeats, but attitudes and arguments, dilemmas and excuses, clichés and delusions recur with the inevitability of a sun setting on successive empires.' The refer to their work as 'forgotten history.' But it is history that is well-chronicled, and the authors draw copiously on the scholarship that has come before theirs.
Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac have organized their book into a gallery of colorful figures who played significant roles in the shaping of the Middle East in the wake of World War I. Some of these fascinating figures are well-known: T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Gen. Charles George Gordon and Field Marshall H.H. Kitchener, Prime Ministers William Gladstone and David Lloyd George. But more weight and space are given to figures who are less famous: Sir Mark Sykes, Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson and 'Jack' Philby, the fascinating father of the master spy Kim Philby. These were the key players in such pivotal events as the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Cairo Conference of 1921, events that set a course toward a Jewish homeland in Palestine and drew the lines of Iraq by joining the Mesopotamian provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul into an amorphous country. How Persia was carved up between British and Russian interests in the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907, how the countries of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon were created, is also covered. Just how arbitrary these boundary lines were, and how blatantly driven by English and French self-interest, is abundantly clear.
Perhaps more important than these extravagant personalities and the events they shaped are the principles that guided their 'New Imperialism,' most significant the idea of indirect rule, a doctrine that evolved from the experience of Cecil Rhodes in South Africa and Lord Lugard in Central Africa, and was promoted byThe London Timescolonial editor, Flora Shaw, who was also Lugard's wife. In this doctrine, the British Empire sought to control a vast region of disparate, warring tribes by appointing and then 'advising' Arab leaders and kings. This policy of 'rent a sheik, buy an emir' was a mixed success at best, as the troubled experience with King Faisal of Iraq and King Saud of Saudi Arabia shows. The colonials faced a succession of Arab revolts and insurgencies in which their clients seemed to switch sides at will.
But indirect rule possesses an inherent contradiction, as Meyer and Brysac point out. ''Though New Imperialism was justified as an agent of modernization, the British perpetuated existing hierarchies resistant to fundamental change. Moreover, since sultans and emirs owed their offices to foreigners and infidels, they forfeited their legitimacy, too often becoming demoralized or dissolute.' How apt to the current American circumstance. if indeed the United States is going to establish some 50 permanent bases in Iraq and remain in that country for the next 100 years, the agents of American indirect rule might keep this warning in mind.
The book completes its gallery with portraits of three American, would-be kingmakers: CIA agents Kermit Roosevelt (who was behind the overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq) and Miles Copeland (who skulked throughout the Middle East), and former deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz (a chief architect of the plan to invade Iraq). In contrast to the subtle British colonials who engaged with Arab culture down to its tribal roots, the Middle East of these American operatives seems to be merely an exotic playground where the prime instrument for regime change or control is bags of cash. Copeland's own words speak volumes: 'We were innocent kids with new toys--and a license to steal.'
This is the least successful section of the book. But the paucity of good American subjects may be due to the fact that the American colonial era in the Middle East is only now beginning in earnest. American attention will shortly shift to the vocabulary of indirect control, of American proconsuls and high commissioners, zones of influence, mandate principles, protectorates and client states. This fine book lays an excellent foundation for thinking about the thorny next phase.
James Reston, Jr, The Washington Post, July 6, 2008
If you grew up in the 1970s, it was impossible not to be acutely aware of the Middle East as a flashpoint in the Cold War, a region fraught with danger, beset by conflict between Israel and the surrounding Arab states, home to radical groups that hijacked airplanes and in 1972 disrupted the Olympics. Long and difficult negotiations finally led to peace between Egypt and Israel in 1977, before darkness returned after the Shah of Iran was overthrown and replaced by a revolutionary group led by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.
The kaleidoscope of war, peace, terrorism and revolution was a vivid and unsettling aspect of the 1970s, but what is both startling and depressing about the Middle East is that the same statement with different details could be made about the region for every single decade of the 20th century, and for the first decade of the 21st. It is not true that the Middle East has seen more war or instability than any other region in the world over the past century; far from it. Southeast Asia, Korea, China, Europe through 1945 saw far more devastation and death from war, as have large swaths of sub-Saharan Africa in the past decades. But the Middle East does have a singular ability to draw attention, create global shock waves and upset international politics. While the discovery of oil in the region early in the 20th century was certainly a factor, oil has not been the sole source of conflict or the primary reason for many of the crises. There is no one reason for the peculiar capacity of the Middle East to generate shock waves. Take history, a dollop of religion and ideology, mix in a bit of geography, add oil and serve over political sclerosis and corruption with some bad luck on the side, and you get a tumultuous corner of the world where 'after a century of Western assertiveness, peace remains elusive and sectarian passions are virulent.'
The quotation comes from 'Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East,' co-authored by Karl Meyer (longtime editor of the World Policy Journal) and Shareen Blair Brysac (a documentary producer and author of several previous books, one with her husband, Meyer). Acutely aware of the central role of the Middle East in the various passion plays of the past century, the two have written a book that tells the story of British and American entanglement in the Middle East through the lives of 12 people who shaped—or tried to shape—the arc of Middle Eastern history. Beginning with Lord Cromer,whom they dub “the proconsul” because of his long tenure as de facto ruler of Egypt on behalf of the British empire at the end of the 19th century, continuing with the likes of T. E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and Kermit "Kim Roosevelt, they conclude with Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. deputy secretary of defense from 2001 till 2004, one of the primary architects of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, cleverly and poignantly given the sobriquet “the man who knew too much” by Meyer and Brysac.
It is to their credit that the book places Wolfowitz at the end of a continuum that began more than a century ago. While his belief that America was uniquely placed to remake Iraqi society by overthrowing Saddam Hussein appeared at the time to be a radical departure from the status quo approach to the region, the belief that Western ingenuity and initiative could reshape the Middle East and make it better has been an endemic problem for generations. Meyer and Brysac do not preach, and they focus primarily on the stories rather than on the lessons. But they make clear at both the onset and the conclusion that the continual shortcomings of the various kingmakers were not the product of 'malice or ignorance, but ... an excess of ambition. These proconsuls and paladins undertook—to state it simply—to do the impossible for the ungrateful.'
The inclusion of Wolfowitz is the perfect denouement to the inglorious history of king-making. It is also likely to attract the lion’s share of attention, especially relative to less familiar and frankly less controversial figures such as Lord and Lady Lugard, who ruled Nigeria on behalf of Queen Victoria at the end of the 19th century. Without actually saying “I told you so,” Meyer and Brysac portray Wolfowitz as the latest in a series of misguided, overweening kingmakers whose reach exceeded their grasp. If the present blowback from the Iraq debacle is more acute right now than the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1954 or the placement of King Faisal on the throne of Iraq by the British in 1921, that is only because the sting and harm of those earlier episodes have faded in the fullness of time. One day, Iraq will be part of an inglorious past; it may even become a quaint tale of arrogance and ignorance, but for now we are left with the raw wounds and the as-yet-to-heal scars.
The great virtue of “Kingmakers” is to place the recent Iraq invasion in its historical context. The result is to demonstrate that a central aspect of the modern history of the Middle East consists of visionary Westerners failing to achieve their visions in the region. It is easy enough to vilify these actors for their stupidity and cupidity, but the reality was often complicated. Many of the kingmakers were highly educated, fluent in Arabic or Persian, and had spent years living in the region. They were hardly ignorant or uninformed. Yet, true-blue British scions such as Sir Mark Sykes, who was the architect of a secret Anglo-French agreement during World War I that carved up the region between France and Britain, or John Bagot Glubb, who as “Glubb Pasha” created and led the Jordanian army for more than three decades until he was dismissed by King Hussein in 1956, carried with them a cultural lens that distorted as much as it revealed. That is a human failing, and perhaps inevitable; we are all products of a particular culture with its own peculiar frames of references, moral codes and rights and wrongs. But the kingmakers, both British and American, also had power, and more of it than the Arabs and Persians that they directly or indirectly manipulated and ruled. That made their cultural frames less benign, and allowed them to inflict substantial harm, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes purposefully.
That they believed in a larger cause doesn’t excuse the consequences. Men like Lawrence of Arabia, Sykes and of course Wolfowitz may have believed that their actions would serve the interests of progress, stability and the greater good of the region, but they also believed that their societies were more advanced and positioned to teach the peoples of the Middle East a lesson in civilization and democracy. They viewed local rulers, whether Faisal in Iraq in the 1920s, Abdullah in Jordan in the 1920s through the 1940s, the Shah of Iran from the 1940s through the 1970s or Iraqi exiles like Ahmad Chalabi, as well intentioned but underdeveloped wards, teenagers in need of guidance and occasional sternness. That the Arabs and Persians had developed their own cultures and civilizations over the course of 2,000 years, had thrived when the West was mired in chaos and darkness, and had their own sense of the past and the future was largely discounted by these kingmakers and ignored except as interesting academic factoids of days long gone.
One of the wiser comments from the various players in these stories comes from Ja'far al-Askari, an Iraqi notable who led one faction during the tumultuous 1920s, who remarked to Gertrude Bell that the Iraq independence was not something that the British could grant or impose. 'My lady, complete independence is never given; it is always taken.'
For Americans especially, heirs to a revolutionary tradition that established the independence of the United States from Great Britain in the late 18th century, that should have been obvious. But somehow, the American past was never used as a guide to American policy in other regions. Americans cherish their streak of stubbornness and independence, and tend to reject foreign ideas and influences. Americans would never accept with open arms a foreign power invading under the guise of liberators, yet many fully expected that the Iraqis of 2003 would do just that. More than a century of history to the contrary was overlooked and discounted.
Meyer and Brysac are perhaps too modest in their approach; they are content to tell the stories, framed by the cautionary lesson they want to impart, but without directly speaking to the issues of today. They are traditional historians, wary of drawing too many simple present-tense conclusions from a past that is complicated and messier. But if they pull their punches, they still manage to offer a panoply of stories with contemporary relevance and resonance. It would be wonderful if future generations of American leaders took some of this history to heart. But while we have been reconsidering the wisdom of U.S. actions in Iraq, it’s not clear that we have begun to examine the limitations of power and the dangers of unrealistic visions of how the world could be. Balancing idealism with realism has never been easy, but it would be refreshing not to continue tilting with windmills in the deserts of the Middle East.
Zachary Karabell, www.truthdig.com
Desert Terror
When Anthony Eden invited his hated rival Gamal Abdel Nasser to the British embassy, the Egyptian President remarked with a chuckle: "At last I can see the place from which Egypt was ruled for so long." Kingmakers: The invention of the modern Middle East, which quotes the exchange, begins with Napoleon's brief but highly cultivated invasion of Egypt in 1798. This exposed the Middle East for the first time to the extraordinary group of men, and one woman, who were to "invent" the modern Middle East. The void filled by Napoleon's departure -- Nelson sank his fleet -- was filled by a Macedonian adventurer, Muhammad Ali, who opened Egypt up to the West at full throttle. Factories came from Germany in kits, and the new Egyptian Army would have seized the whole Ottoman Empire had Britain, France and Russia not insisted on preserving it for its very weakness.
When the profligacy of Muhammad Ali's flamboyant descendant, Ismail, led to bankruptcy -- he persuaded the Empress Eugenie to open the Suez Canal and turned Cairo into a copy of Haussmann's Paris in time for it -- Britain took over Egypt's finances, and it was soon considered by many a part of the British Empire. The first great character in Kingmakers is Lord Cromer, the "GOM" (The Grand Old Man) [note: this is a mistake by the reviewer, the GOM was Gladstone], the first and most powerful of all the kingmakers and, as Consul-General, Egypt's effective ruler. He was hated by Egyptians but his "veiled protectorate" was part of a new imperialism that attracted liberals like Bertrand Russell and Beatrice Webb. Miles Lampson, Britain's ambassador during the Second World War, enjoyed similar powers and derisively called King Farouk, whom he ordered at one stage to abdicate, 'that boy."
The authors' goal is to trace the present-day turmoil in Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan back to the days when Englishmen, and later Americans, moulded states and leaders according to whim. In the First World War, T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and similar misfits gathered to create Gilbert Clayton's Arab Bureau in Cairo's Savoy Hotel. It was from there that Lawrence set off to the Hejaz on his great campaign. If the West's present bullying in the region shocks, so did the adventures of the colourful Brits who played with it. Having defeated the Mahdi after Gordon's death, Herbert Kitchener wanted to use his skull as an inkwell or a drinking cup.
Gertrude Bell, Oriental Secretary to Sir Percy Cox (Chief Political Officer in Mesopotamia), saw herself as the architect of modern Iraq. Her wonderful museum was looted in 2003. More conventional figures resented her just as they resented Lawrence. Mark Sykes called her a "bitch," an "infernal liar," the "terror of the desert" and a "blithering ass," while Hugh Trevor-Roper described Lawrence as one of the century's least attractive 'charlatans and frauds." In Britain after the First World War, the American Lowell Thomas took his firm of Lawrence's campaign to a packed Royal Albert Hall,"so ravenous were British audiences for a redeeming heroic epilogue to a grisly war." To describe Lawrence, he quoted an old Turkish saying, "He had a genius for backing into the spotlight." One might have described Bell in similar terms. The chapter on Bell is called "Dreadfully occupied in making Kings and governments." Edmund Ironside, who helped to bring Reza Khan to power in Iran in 1921, may have been the inspiration for Richard Hannay in The Thirty-Nine Steps. Meanwhile, the coup organized in 1952 by the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt in favour of Reza Khan's son is pure Boy's Own magazine copy. Although it was a US coup, a terrified Shah waited like a schoolboy to know whether Britain wanted him to stay or leave, and when the coup appeared to have failed, he fled for cover to Baghdad.
Roosevelt simply doled out cash, employed a mob of wrestlers and jugglers, and drove his choice as pro-Western premier, General Zahedi, around Tehran, telling him which buildings to seize. When the Shah heard how the crowds were suddenly chanting his name, he said naively, "K knew they loved me." He came closer to the truth when he gave Roosevelt a vodka toast, saying, "I owe my throne to God, to my people, my army -- and to you." The West has failed to learn from its kingmakers, say the authors. Cromer's rule was backstage, for indirect rule -- a far cry from our present adventure -- was the British way. Lawrence believed that the Arabs would side with the British willingly. "You can lead them without force anywhere," he advised. Glubb Pasha was ousted in 1956 by King Hussein, partly because he was too popular with is Arab Legion. Another lesson for today is that regime change only allows for a very short occupation. Today, say the authors, we call Iran part of an "Axis of Evil" despite its having helped to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. telling its story through British and American apprentice sorcerers, Kingmakers is a character-driven, complex and page-turning human story.
--Trevor Mostyn in The Times Literary Supplement
Alasdair Buchan's suggestions for reading:
A history book that sidelines native Middle East politicians to concentrate on the British and, latterly, US imperialists who interfered endlessly in the region would seem to be an insulting anachronism. Yet this rich and revelatory title works.
The personae include TE Lawrence (of Arabia), Generals Gordon and Kitchener, Prime Ministers William Gladstone and David Lloyd George and Kings Faisal and Saud. along with a great many lesser known -- but, it turns out, hugely influential - imperial civil servants, they created artificial states (such as Iraq from Basra, Baghdad and Mosul) or created new ones like Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Always in the interests of the British not the residents. The Russians need to be thrown a bone? Give them half of Persia.
The magnificent anecdotes alone make the book a pleasure, but the US writers have a higher purpose. Place these familiar quotes in a Middle East contect: "The intelligence was faulty" and "mistakes were made". No, not the Pentagon talking about Iraq but excuses made by British officials following General Gordon's disastrous defeat by the Hamdi army in 1884-85. The book ends with the US in iraq and powerfully deliers on its premise that those who forget the history of interference in the Middle east are doomed to failure.
---Diplomat
The Impossible Dream
One sunday in 1921, at the time of the great Cairo conference, Winston Churchill - then colonial secretary -- headed off to have his photo taken at the pyramids of Giza. The conference confronted many weighty issues -- the future of new political entities such as Palestine and Transjordan, how to make sure an amenable monarcy ascended to the throne of Iraq -- so a tourist outing was doubtless a welcome diversion. Unfortunately, Churchill fell from his unruly camel. When his Egyptian hosts suggested he might prefer to ride a horse on the homeward journey, Churchill was having none of it: 'I started on a camel and I shall finish on a camel,' he barked.
Such a moment of dogged determination carries a powerful symbolic charge: it rather sums up the Western approach to Middle Eastern politics over the past century and a half. As Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac conclude: 'The many real and would-be kingmakers erred not through malice or ignorance, but through excess of ambition. [They] undertook -- to state it simply -- to do the impossible for the ungrateful.'
...Meyer and Brysac take a broadly bioraphical approach to their vast subject. They home in on notable individuals -- some famous, others less so -- who, as spies and journalists, statesman and soldiers, became embroiled in the whirligig of Middle Eastern politics. This narrative strategy has its drawbacks. There is in the effort to provide context for their protagonists, a large amount of repetition of basic facts. But their approach has many advantages, too, not least in the way in which unduly neglected historical figures are brought to centre stage. We meet the redoubtable Flora Shaw, for instance, who covered colonial issues from Cairo to the Cape for The Times, named Nigeria, and became involved in the infamous Jameson Raid: the attempt to bring about regime change in the Transvaal (nothing much to do with the Middle East, admittedly, but always an interesting tale to revisit.
We also encounter Arnold Talbot Wilson, who arrived in Persia in 1908 as a subaltern and played a crucial role in the creation of modern Iraq, and the extraordinary John Bagot Glubb, lover of Bedouin culture and leader of the Arab Legion. Perhaps most fascinating of all, in a book steeped in intrigue and shady political manoeuvring, is Harry St. John Philby. He ws the retired civil servant (and father of the infamous Kim), who helped bring about the epochal meeting in 1933 between the Royal treasurer of the Saudi government and a lawyer for Standard Oil of California: an event that granted exclusive oil rights in eastern Saudi Arabia to US big business, after which things would never be the same again on the geopolitical stage.
There are more familiar names, too, of course, and the authors provide detailed, usually even-handed accounts of everyone from Evelyn Baring, first Earl of Cromer -- the talented Egyptian pro-consul who rather tarnished his reputation with talk of 'subject races' -- to TE Lawrence, who, for my money, enjoys fame out of all proportion to his actual talents and achievements. Indeed, it's the range of this book -- (from the British invasion of Egypt in 1882 to the second Gulf War -- that most impresses, and the detailed accounts of decades' worth of politicking, diplomacy and espionage will help any reader understand the process that led to the present pickle in which the Middle East finds itself. . .
Whenever the West has intervened in the region, it has done so with a sure sense that it is bringing superior, civilising values. That is just as true today -- and runs just as much risk of being inflammatory -- as it was when, in 1919, The Times uttered words of warning to those engaged in carving up the Middle East: "We are asking the Arab to exchange his pride and independence for a little Western civilisation.' All too often, it has been an uneven bargain and, by now, perhaps we should have learnt our lesson.
--Jonathan Wright, Geographical
The Middle East is unstable, war-torn, and generally hostile to the West; religious and/or civil strife, fanaticism, and militias are ever more dangerous; America is a clumsy meddler—and soaring oil prices a worldwide threat. Just how did all this come to be?
This story resonates with excitement—a dozen or so architects of nation-building, religious zealots, and plain scoundrels, almost all British, high-handedly cut up and parceled out much of the decaying Ottoman Empire after Turkey allied itself with Germany in World War I. They wrought a monstrous coil. Meyer and Brysac have combined their formidable research skills and narrative art to deliver a first-class, always engrossing account of events. They begin by presenting some off-site trial runs, so to speak, that set the pattern for playing high-stakes Monopoly in the Middle East.
The invasion and rule of Egypt (1882-1954), ostensibly to straighten out a bankrupt administration and protect the Suez Canal; the Jameson Raid (1895), conspiratorially devised to aid the “oppressed” British incomers to Boer territory and shift control of the Transvaal from the Dutch to the British; the rule of Nigeria (1900) to protect British trade—all of these proved to be laboratories for perfecting the techniques of domination.
Meyer and Brysac don’t present a dry post-mortem merely recording how the corpse was dismembered but highlight a unique caste of driven Britons (the Americans were fewer and participated later) who took a gung-ho approach, “building nations, defining borders, and selecting or helping to select local rulers.” Most knew no hesitancy; they should “if necessary, unilaterally and proactively advance the Empire’s interests, since these coincided in any case with humankind’s,” as Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain assured one and all. And what a cast of characters these kingmakers were.
If Lord Cromer, for long the eminence grise ensuring an Egypt pliant to Britain, was a model of heavy-jowled imperturbability, then Flora Shaw, supporter and later wife of Lugard of East Africa, was a live-wire, get-you-on-board journalist, with the Times(her employer) in her pocket. The charming aristocrat Mark Sykes was the fixer par excellence. In 1915 his Sykes–Picot agreement secured the greater part of Syria for Britain, leaving France with Lebanon; he then successfully pushed for the Balfour Declaration (1917), which virtually guaranteed the future Israel. Gertrude Bell, an Arabic speaker and expert on Iraq’s tribes, helped ensure that the Sharif of Mecca’s sons apprehensively mounted the thrones of newly gerrymandered Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, then to be deposed or murdered (they were hardly beloved locals)—only in Jordan do they still reign.
In Arabia in 1916 the brilliant outsider T. E. Lawrence created a new dimension in guerilla warfare in raising a revolt against the Turks. In 1933, after the handsome desert sheikh Ibn Saud won the throne, the treacherous insider St. John Philby ensured that America, not Britain, secured the oil concessions. In Persia, divided in 1907 into British and Russian spheres of influence, Britain found oil (essential for her navy) in 1909. Later Britain was to back Reza Khan as shah-by-seizure. In 1953 the British and Americans (Kermit Roosevelt i/c) engineered the ouster of the patriotic prime minister Mossadegh, bringing back Shah Reza Mohammed, who later lost his throne. In a return to Egypt we witness the ouster of the comic-operetta King Farouk and the ill-fated Anglo-French Suez Canal fiasco of 1956. The current travails of Israel and the sorry fate of Iraq round out events.
Meyer and Brysac do not stint on recounting America’s post-WWII role in policy guidance and regime change in Syria, Persia, and Iraq. Readers may well conclude that not having analyzed Britain’s many mistakes, the Americans brashly repeated them….
The authors’ greatest gift in their magisterial yet accessible narrative is their capacity to present context: in what framework did events happen? What were the motivations? They quote illuminatingly from primary sources: we learn what the principals said. A thoughtful epilogue summarizes pitfalls in policy-making; a map and chronology handily serve readers, while photographs illustrate the peerless paladins of yore. A most necessary and rewarding book, and a primer on what not to do in the Middle East. (June)
Peter Skinner, Foreword Magazine
Colonial History Examined
"...The interesting thing about this book is that it identifies not only the political issues in contention, but also the major players on the scene, chiefly from the U.S. and Great Britain, who concocted various schemes to divvy up the region under terms most favorable to the interests of their own governments, irrespective of the wishes or cultural traditions of the inhabitants.
...In an absorbing narrative, the authors weave the story of the creation of the modern Middle East through stories of the lives of the people who shaped it.
...The authors have wrought a penetrating and authoritative look at the caprices of diplomacy and the outcomes of the law of unintended consequences.
Read Ben McC. Moises full review that appeared in the Charleston Post and Courier @
http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/sep/07/colonial_history_examined53217/
“'Eminent Imperialists' might be a better title for this sprightly episodic history of Anglo-American meddling in the Middle East, from the 1882 British invasion of Egypt to the current Iraq War, told through profiles of the officials who spearheaded those policies. Journalists Meyer and Brysac (Tournament of Shadows) spotlight well-known, flamboyant figures like T.E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) and British Arabist Gertrude Bell. But they focus on unsung toilers in the trenches of imperial rule like A.T. Wilson, the British colonial administrator whose idea it was to cobble Iraq together out of three fractious Ottoman provinces, and Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA agent who choreographed the 1953 ouster of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq. Policy continuities—securing the approaches to India and access to oil—sometimes get overshadowed by the authors’ biographical approach, but in a sense that’s the point. Their imperialism is marked by idiosyncrasy, improvisation, unforeseen circumstances and unintended—usually tragic—consequences. Policy was very much driven by the personalities who constructed it: their Orientalist enthusiasms, knee-jerk assumptions of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, arcane Straussian precepts and stubborn maverick streaks loom as large as cold geostrategic calculations. The result is a colorful study of empire as a very human endeavor.”
Publishers Weekly
The term Middle East is a Western creation; that is appropriate, since some of the nation-states in the volatile region were cobbled together to serve the imperial and economic designs of Britain, France, and the U.S. Meyer is a foreign affairs writer for the New York Times and the Washington Post. Brysac is a journalist and formerly a producer of documentaries for CBS News. They have written a timely and engrossing study of the men and women who were instrumental in giving birth to some of the nations, institutions, and chronic problems of the area. Some of these figures, like T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell, are famous. Others were almost faceless civil servants and bureaucrats who effectively operated in the shadows on behalf of the interests of their nations. There is even a chapter devoted to Paul Wolfowitz, whose fantasies were influential in bringing on our current predicament in Iraq. What seems to unite these characters is a degree of imperial hubris and an appalling unwillingness to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. This is an important work.
Jay Freeman, Booklist
Succinct overview of 12 people who have exerted significant influence on the fortunes of the Middle East since England invaded Egypt in 1882. World Policy Journal editor emeritus Meyer and former CBS News producer Brysac (co-authors, Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia, 1999) dedicate a chapter each to individuals ranging from historical icons (Lawrence of Arabia) to current-day politicians (Paul Wolfowitz). They begin by profiling Evelyn Baring, Egypt's unpopular British consul-general from 1883 to 1907, unaffectionately dubbed "The Great Bear" by his charges. Accounts of explorer Frederick Lugard, risk-taking diplomatic advisor Sir Mark Sykes and the former British civil commissioner for Baghdad, Arnold Wilson, follow. The book concludes with brief histories of former CIA operative Miles Copeland Jr. and Wolfowitz. Even with well-known subjects like Lawrence, Copeland and Wolfowitz, the authors keep things relatively fresh by spotlighting the key elements in familiar stories. Meyer and Brysac often draw links between historical events and current developments in the region. The passage on Wilson, for example, details an Iraqi insurgency that rose against the British in 1920 and unearths some eerie parallels with the 2006 uprising against the Allied forces. Similarly, they note that the Hashemite dynasty and the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, both established by Gertrude Bell, were destroyed many years after her death by (respectively) Saddam Hussein and the military invasion of Iraq. The authors close with an empathetic summary of the views expressed by present-day Iranians, neatly encapsulating the feelings of many Middle East citizensfor America. A satisfying, uncluttered account that makes a welcome addition to the shelf of books on the Middle East.
Kirkus Reviews
A recent review of Kingmakers by Rory Miller of King's College London has appeared. It is quite long so please access it with the link below.
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/764