MER Article The Closing of the Arabian Frontier and the Future of Saudi-American Relations In 1893, the University of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner traveled to the Chicago world’s fair to deliver the most famous paper in the annals of the US historical profession. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” turned “the fact of conquest” into the myth of pioneers settling Robert Vitalis • 20 min read
MER Article Arms Supplies and Military Spending in the Gulf While not as great as it had been in the recent past, the role of arms and military spending in the societies and economies of the Gulf states is still much larger than in any other area of the world. It was not until after the Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf war that these states felt that they cou F. Gregory Gause • 6 min read
MER Article Oil, Gas and the Future of Arab Gulf Countries The political and economic structures of the Arab Gulf countries have been surprisingly resistant to change. The resilience of the “old political deal” between royal families and traditional elites -- the ‘ulama’, tribal leaders, urban merchants and technocrats -- can be attributed to three main factors. First, the institutional, tribal Fareed Mohamedi • 11 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Fall 1997) The Arabian Peninsula has yielded few contemporary images as vivid as the 1991 Gulf war. The clean, virtual-reality fireworks display of 1991 has been revised only marginally by reports on Gulf war syndrome and accounts of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh’s military commendations for burying sur Sheila Carapico • 5 min read
