The Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa

THE GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Mark Gasiorowski, ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2014. 530 pages, $54.00.Mark Gasiorowski served as the sole editor of the present seventh edition of this collection. Its individual chapters, each written by a country specialist, cover states from Iran in the East to Morocco in the West. It also contains a chapter on "The Palestinians," not the "State of Palestine." The United Nations granted Palestine non-member observer state status in 2012. By then, it had already received state recognition by over 90 countries. By September 2015, 136 countries (over 70% of UN member states) had granted it state recognition. This collection, however, follows the US-Israeli minority position by not identifying Palestine as a state. Nonetheless, Glenn E. Robinson, the author of "The Palestinians" chapter, penned a well-written, informative contribution on the subject.The collection opens with an introductory chapter by Gasiorowski covering the history, geography, socioeconomic conditions, and domestic politics of the region. He makes reference to Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program, but is silent on Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal. A serious omission, since Israel is the only country in the vast region of the Middle East and North Africa that actually possesses nuclear weapons. He also mistakenly states that Constantinople, conquered by the Ottomans in 1453, was "the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire" (p. 5). Actually, the Byzantine city of Trabizond on the Black Sea outlasted Constantinople; it was not conquered until 1461.Each country chapter follows a similar organizational structure: a historical overview, discussion of socioeconomic and geopolitical factors, followed by sections on foreign policy and future prospects. All chapters are accompanied by country maps, which unfortunately too often lack place names that appear in the text. The book covers events up to 2012 only. Because so much has happened in the region since then, the book is now seriously outdated. Nonetheless, most authors have done an excellent job presenting information to that point. Especially impressive is Jill Crystal's presentation of the historic and political complexities of the Eastern Arabian States of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates all in one chapter!One exception to this praise is the Israel chapter by David H. Goldberg. It is so unbalanced and one-sided that readers could easily regard it as proIsrael propaganda literature. He maintains that Iran has a nuclear weapons program and nuclear weapons facilities, even though their existence had not been confirmed by neutral inspection agencies, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency. …