The Arabists: The Romance of an American EliteFree Press, 1993 - 333 pages Here is the untold story of an inbred, gifted, and powerful elite of families and friends who dominated America's relations with the Middle East for over a century. Known to Foreign Service colleagues as "the Arabists", these were the men and women who had spent much of their lives, usually with their families, living in the Arab world as diplomats, military attaches, intelligence agents, and educators. Descended from the missionaries, scholars, and explorers who first ventured into the region - an offshoot of the WASP elite that ruled America during the nineteenth century - the Arabists were an exclusive caste linked by complex social, institutional, and family ties. Thoroughly at home in Arab cultures and often enjoying relations of longstanding intimacy with the monarchs and ruling elites of Arab countries, these American expatriates lived a charmed lifestyle that has become a source of intense nostalgia among the Arabists themselves as well as a symbol of their romance with Arab culture and increasing isolation from American society and interests. The Arabists dominated American policy and shaped our perception of the Arab world throughout the colonial and interwar periods. But after World War II, the diplomatic corps began to change, reflecting the country's new ethnic and social diversity. Kaplan describes the impact of this change within the State Department, showing how the advent of Irish Catholics, Jews, and Harvard-trained regional experts created internal pressures that slowly loosened the Arabists' grip on Middle East diplomacy in the postwar period. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, and other official and private sources, Kaplan reconstructs the hundred-year history of theArabist elite, and traces their decline against the background of this social transformation. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 39
Page 108
... military coup , court - martialed , and shot . The next military regime re- started the process of scheduling new national elections , which in fact took place later in 1949. But the ballot results were just as fractured as in 1947 ...
... military coup , court - martialed , and shot . The next military regime re- started the process of scheduling new national elections , which in fact took place later in 1949. But the ballot results were just as fractured as in 1947 ...
Page 266
... military situation vis - à - vis Iran , and it was no time for him to alienate a superpower . The very danger of Khomeini's forces overrunning Iraqi defenses , thereby threatening pro - American regimes throughout the Arab world , was ...
... military situation vis - à - vis Iran , and it was no time for him to alienate a superpower . The very danger of Khomeini's forces overrunning Iraqi defenses , thereby threatening pro - American regimes throughout the Arab world , was ...
Page 291
... military state , perhaps he could establish military - to - military con- tacts with Iraqi generals as a way to get some kind of a handle on this dangerous and unstable regime . Around the same time , according to Rich- ard Straus of ...
... military state , perhaps he could establish military - to - military con- tacts with Iraqi generals as a way to get some kind of a handle on this dangerous and unstable regime . Around the same time , according to Rich- ard Straus of ...
Contents
Three generations Three wars Three marriages | 1 |
Dream | 11 |
Home to Lebanon | 13 |
Copyright | |
17 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Akins ambassador to Saudi American April Glaspie Arab country Arab nationalism Arab world Arabists Aviv Baghdad Bayard Dodge became Beirut Bill Stoltzfus Bliss British cables Cairo career Christian Cluverius colleagues College Coon Crane culture Custis Damascus David Department desert Doughty Eagleton Eastern Egypt Eli Smith Falashas Feisal Foreign Service French FSOs Glaspie's going Hermann Eilts Hume Horan Iran Iranian Iraq Iraq's Iraqi Islam Israel Israeli Jerry Weaver Jerusalem Jewish Jews Jidda Kelly Khartoum Killgore Kissinger knew Kuwait later Lawrence Lawrence's learn Arabic Lebanon lived Loy Henderson Maronites Middle East military mission missionaries Moslem NEA assistant secretary never officer Palestine Palestinian Parker peace Philby political president Protestant regime Roy Atherton Sadat Saddam Saudi Arabia says Shiite Sisco Six-Day War Soviet staff Sterner Sudan Sudanese Syria Talcott Seelye U.S. ambassador U.S. diplomats U.S. embassy United Veliotes wanted Washington Western Wiley William Yemen