Critical Issues Facing the Middle East / Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies (PDF)

JAMES A. RUSSELL is Senior Lecturer, Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, USA.

'A timely and readable compendium of informed expertise; bridging the divide of internal and external security; addressing the sources of Middle East insecurity from the interdisciplinary perspectives of economics, politics, history, international relations and religion. To cope with such a variegated security environment the sources of potential instability and conflict are broken into their constituent parts, developing a holistic focus that pierces the fog in shedding new light of the impending Middle East storm. Having no equal it will readily find its utility on student reading lists and the shelves of practitioners, commentators and critics.

- Glen M. Segell, FRGS, Director, Institute of Security Policy.

"Critical issues in Middle East Security challenges the conventional wisdom that the driving search for Middle East is, or should be, a purely military consideration. Although current events in Iraq and elsewhere give good reason to rest comfortably with such a notion, the book's authors dig deeper to probe the underlying sources of the region's current and coming challenges. Critical Issues is an important contribution, by important scholars, and deserves a wide readership by those concerned with the seemingly unending cycle of conflict roiling the Middle East."

- Rachel Bronson, author of Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia, Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Studies, Council on Foreign Relations