MER Article Editor's Bookshelf The 30-year declassification rule for most US and British and some Israeli official documents stimulates predictably timed reassessments of recent historical events. During 1986 and 1987, three conferences on the Suez-Sinai crisis of 1956 -- prompted by Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal and culminating in the Israeli-Anglo-French attack Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Al Miskin During the first seven months of this year, for the first time since the Cold War began, the position of “official enemy” of the United States went unfilled, the Soviets having resigned the role. That deplorable deficiency, which threw the White House and the Pentagon into a panic, has now been reme Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article Letter from Jordan “Can you help me get a job in the United States?” “We like Saddam because he is a man of his word: He stood up to the Kuwaiti cheaters and now he is standing up to foreign domination and US intervention in the Arab world.” I heard these two statements repeatedly -- often from the same person -- dur Karen Pfeifer • 3 min read
MER Article Who's Afraid of Bureaustroika? At a dinner party in Damascus, our Lebanese host referred enthusiastically to Soviet perestroika, saying: “We Arabs could reap many benefits from it.” A case at hand was his new restaurant in Moscow. Thanks to the good old days when the Communist Party of the USSR used to ladle out scholarships to m Isam al-Khafaji • 13 min read
MER Article Responsibilities of the US Peace Movement Once again the American peace movement faces the threat of war. In the 1960s and 1970s it was Vietnam, in the 1980s Central America and the nuclear threat, and now it is Arabia. This dangerous moment calls for a major change of direction for peace and anti-intervention forces. Activities underway be David Cortright • 3 min read
MER Article The Pentagon's New Army Sitting comfortably in his living room in Arlington, Virginia, some two years ago, Gen. Edward C. Meyer reflected on the American military and the transformations it has undergone in the last two decades. “This isn’t the American military of World War II, or even Tet,” he said. “This is a totally di Mark Perry • 6 min read
MER Article Iraq Since 1986: The Strengthening of Saddam In June 1986, we wrote that the situation in which Iraq found itself “underlines the vital need for the establishment of democracy...however broadly this may be defined.” Four years later, this plea has become more urgent; the regime has become even more powerful and repressive and has now extended Marion Farouk-Sluglett • 15 min read
MER Article Continuity and Change in Soviet Policy The day after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and US Secretary of State James Baker announced what they termed “an unusual step.” They issued a communique “jointly urging the international community to join them and suspend all supplies of arms to Iraq on an in Alain Gresh • 18 min read
MER Article From the Editors The world is fortunate that it has taken the Pentagon nearly three months to dispatch a quarter million troops and the requisite heavy hardware to Arabia. The interval seems to have allowed for some salutary second thoughts about why they are there in the first place. But the logic of war still prev The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article Botman, Rise of Egyptian Communism Selma Botman, The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970 (Syracuse, 1988). The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970, one of several recent books that offer new insights on the experience of Marxism in Egypt before and during the Nasser era, provides an extensive account of the membership, organizat Marsha Pripstein Posusney • 1 min read
MER Article Halliday, From Kabul to Managua Fred Halliday, From Kabul to Managua: Soviet-American Relations in the 1980s (Pantheon, 1989). To give an account, in a mere 163 pages, of Soviet-American competition in the Third World is no mean feat. After all, this rivalry has lasted nearly half a century and its form has varied considerably. M Rajan Menon • 2 min read
