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Introduction: The Middle East: Myths and Realities
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17157 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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12 / 1990 |
748 Words |
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As the world watches and waits for a resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis, hopefully without war, old myths about the Middle East are being discarded and new realities acknowledged. The myths include: immutable Arab unity, fundamentalist Iran as the most dangerous threat, and an inexorable Soviet drive for power and influence in the region. The realities include: a splintered Arab world, secular Iraq as the most abiding danger, and a Soviet willingness to support an international consensus against the Iraqi aggression.
What Winston Churchill said about Russia can as easily be said about the Middle East, at least for most Americans: "It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.'' But Saddam Hussein's brutal annexation of Kuwait and the real possibility of a prolonged conflict is forcing policymakers in the United States and elsewhere to try harder to solve the riddle of this strife-ridden part of the world.
In this month's Special Report, Professor Rashid I. Khalidi of the University of Chicago argues that widespread Arab mistrust of foreign, that is, American, forces in the Middle East is part historical (colonial powers created the present Arab "nations" after World War I), part religious (Saudi Arabia is the site of two of the three holiest places in Islam), and part political (the United States is seen as always tilting toward Israel in the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict). Arabs fault the United States, says Khalidi, for galvanizing the UN Security Council into taking stringent action against Iraq while preventing the Council from "imposing sanctions on Israel."
In the post-Cold War era, suggests Leon T. Hadar of
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