MER Article Current Soviet Policy and the Middle East This report summarizes impressions of Soviet foreign policy gained during a study visit to the USSR in July 1982. During this visit, under the auspices of the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences, I was able to meet a wide range of experts working in the institute, as well as journalists an Fred Halliday • 14 min read
MER Article The Era of Super-Violence Ever since the end of World War II, the world has been sliding in and out of battles which have killed more than 10 million people. Even in the shadow of this bloody chronicle, 1982 represents something of a watershed: In addition to the two major international conflicts in the Falklands/Malvinas an Michael Klare • 5 min read
MER Article AirLand Battle Doctrine The US Army has recently adopted an aggressive new warfighting doctrine called AirLand Battle. Its precepts now constitute the Army’s basic “how to fight” principles for a decade of “intense, deadly, and costly” battles. The Middle East is one of three major theaters—along with Europe and Korea—in w Martha Wenger • 13 min read
MER Article On the Beach There are two kinds of beaches in US defense planning. The first is the shoreline that US Marines typically storm in a real or rehearsed military intervention. The second belongs to the domain of the nuclear strategists. When their “limited” nuclear war games go astray, simulating escalation into al Christopher Paine • 24 min read
MER Article From the Editors (January 1983) Judging from events of the past year, the 1980s will be a time for survival. The scale and intensity of “small” wars, the priorities of militarism, the plans for military intervention by the big powers and the escalation of the nuclear arms race afflict virtually the entire planet. These threats gro The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Letters While I was extremely glad to see a wealth of factual information in your recent issue "Horn of Africa: The Coming Storm" (MER 106), I was bothered by the fact that Halliday, Molyneux and, to a much lesser extent, Gilkes see Ethiopia continuing to move in a revolutionary direction “toward socialism. (Author not identified) • 2 min read
MER Article The Syrian Labor Movement ‘Abdallah Hanna, al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya fi Suriya wa Lubnan, 1900-1945 [The Labor Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1900-1945] (Damascus: Dar Dimashq, 1973). Elisabeth Longuenesse • 6 min read
MER Article The Importance of Bodyguards Power in Syria today is based on a narrow, clannish system, more akin to what was described by Ibn Khaldoun 600 years ago than to Western “development theory” or “the non-capitalist road.” Family ties are key. In the Syrian army, a major can have more power than a general if he is, like Mouin Nasif, Gerard Michaud • 9 min read
MER Article Social Bases for the Hama Revolt During the first week of February 1982, serious fighting broke out in Syria between residents of the north-central city of Hamah and the government’s armed forces. A Syrian army raid on a number of buildings that were suspected of being hideouts for local cells of the Muslim Brothers precipitated th Fred H. Lawson • 18 min read
MER Article Salah al-Din al-Bitar's Last Interview We met in Paris, in a small office on the top floor of a building looking out on a courtyard. Salah al-Din al-Bitar answered my questions in what was to be his last recorded interview. The year before, he had founded al-Ihya’ al-‘Arabi, the publication named after the movement that preceded the Baat Marie-Christine Aulas • 10 min read
MER Article Syria's Muslim Brethren Who are the Muslim Brethren in Syria? What is their significance socially? How are they related to Syria's social structure? What is the social meaning of their ideas and values? Are these ideas and values responses to distinguishable conditions and interests of one or more identifiable social group Hanna Batatu • 29 min read
MER Article The Asad Regime and Its Troubles Syria, under continuous Baathist rule since 1963, has relinquished its image of the 1950s and early 1960s as a peculiarly ungovernable and unstable state. Next year the regime hopes to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. A good measure of its maturity is that a majority of Syrians were born after t Alasdair Drysdale • 30 min read
