This book is organized around the premise that conventional political and diplomatic concepts cannot fully explain the situation in the Middle East and that the usual instruments of statecraft do not reliably attain their intended goals.

Well before events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe dramatized the rapidity with which a new political world is evolving and before the Gulf War sharpened the focus on the Middle East agenda, scholars and policymakers alike were searching for different concepts for addressing the intractable problems facing the Middle East. Even though the re