MER Article The Most Obscure Dictatorship The camera avoids faces, except those of the plainclothes police. The black-and-white images are hazy, jumpy. They evoke the antiquated style of negatives that have escaped the censor and customs searches. “This could be any country,” says the commentator -- Chile under Gen. Pinochet, or Burma under Alain Gresh • 16 min read
MER Article Hidden Death There may be more landmines deployed per person in Kurdish Iraq (population around 3.5 million) than in any other region in the world. A 1993 State Department report estimates that the Iraqi army laid 3 to 5 million mines there during the Iran-Iraq war and in the months leading up to the 1991 Gulf w Joe Stork • 1 min read
MER Article Shock Troops for the New Order The various components of a modern military establishment are like gamblers at a casino. Every now and then someone gets hot and goes on a roll. In recent years the military equivalent of a winner on a roll has been US Special Operations Forces. During the 1980s, special operations, along David Isenberg • 10 min read
MER Article Making War Difficult: Cooperative Security in the Middle East John Steinbruner is director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Joe Stork and Yahya Sadowski spoke with him in March 1992. Could you describe the concept of cooperative security? How is it different from collective security? They are not mutually exclusive, b Joe Stork, Yahya Sadowski • 9 min read
MER Article Reversing the Middle East Nuclear Race “The Middle East has entered the nuclear age,” said Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens in October 1991, as he surveyed the region’s strategic environment in the aftermath of the Gulf war and just days before the opening session in Madrid of the Arab-Israeli peace talks. [1] Arens may merely have b Yezid Sayigh • 17 min read
MER Article Scuds versus Butter Contrary to the common wisdom in Washington, most Arabs are poor, rational and interested in arms control. Declining oil prices, rising population, economic mismanagement and foreign policy adventurism have wreaked havoc with the economies of the Middle East, while local arms races have steadily raised the price of providing for Yahya Sadowski • 34 min read
MER Article From the Editors In the pages that follow, our authors envision a set of compelling scenarios that could halt and reverse the ratchet wheel of militarization in the Middle East. Yahya Sadowski sees in the worsening material circumstances of most states of the region an unusual opportunity for arms control, as governments seek The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control David Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919-1939 (Manchester, 1990). In the recent war with Iraq, US air superiority was crucial in minimizing the US (and other allied) casualties, preparing the ground for a swift advance by land forces. The Middle East, and particularly Vinay Lal • 3 min read
MER Article New Enemies for a New World Order There is considerable evidence that the Bush administration saw the Persian Gulf war of 1990-1991 as, among other things, the conflict that could define a new politico-military strategy for the 1990s. The war with Iraq would be the emblematic contest for the post-Cold War period, what the Korean War Joe Stork • 18 min read
MER Article Iraq's Military Power: The German Connection Even before the current confrontation in the Gulf, Iraq was an extremely militarized country, preoccupied with internal and external “security threats. ” When I traveled to Iraq in early 1990, I was struck by the extent of militarization in parts of the country. The whole of Iraqi Kurdistan was cove Jochen Hippler • 14 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 Behind the Chemical Weapons Campaign Once again, world attention is caught by the specter of villainous Arabs, brandishing weapons. In the mid-1970s it was the oil weapon. Today it is chemical weapons. In both cases the weapon is wielded discreetly by the United States itself. In both cases, the main threat is to the people of the Thir Diana Johnstone • 8 min read
