Volume 56, Number 13 · August 13, 2009
Blundering in the Mideast with Prince Bandar
By Brian Urquhart
A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East— from the Cold War to the War on Terror
by Patrick Tyler
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 628 pp., $30.00
Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East
by Rashid Khalidi
Beacon, 308 pp., $25.95
Can a negotiatior for a Middle East settlement be both objective and produce results? Can a national negotiator ever be completely objective? How much does it matter? Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN's famously principled second secretary-general, wrote personal guidelines for his task that included the following: 'If, while pleading another's cause, you are at the same time seeking something for yourself, you cannot hope to succeed.'[1] A corollary for the Middle East might read: 'And if you do not have materially substantial means of persuasion, you cannot hope to succeed either.'
Review, 4072 words
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