Irene L. Gendzier presents incontrovertible evidence that oil politics played a significant role in the founding of Israel, the policy then adopted by the United States toward Palestinians, and ...subsequent U.S. involvement in the region. Consulting declassified U.S. government sources, as well as papers in the H.S. Truman Library, she uncovers little-known features of U.S. involvement in the region, including significant exchanges in the winter and spring of 1948 between the director of the Oil and Gas Division of the Interior Department and the representative of the Jewish Agency in the United States, months before Israel's independence and recognition by President Truman.
Gendzier also shows that U.S. consuls and representatives abroad informed State Department officials, including the Secretary of State and the President, of the deleterious consequences of partition in Palestine. Yet the attempt to reconsider partition and replace it with a UN trusteeship for Palestine failed, jettisoned by Israel's declaration of independence. The results altered the regional balance of power and Washington's calculations of policy toward the new state. Prior to that, Gendzier reveals the U.S. endorsed the repatriation of Palestinian refugees in accord with UNGA Res 194 of Dec. 11, 1948, in addition to the resolution of territorial claims, the definition of boundaries, and the internationalization of Jerusalem. But U.S. interests in the Middle East, notably the protection of American oil interests, led U.S. officials to rethink Israel's military potential as a strategic ally. Washington then deferred to Israel with respect to the repatriation of Palestinian refugees, the question of boundaries, and the fate of Jerusalem--issues that U.S. officials have come to realize are central to the 1948 conflict and its aftermath.
I appreciate the effort of Jeff D. Colgan to grapple with the material presented in my study of the formative years of US policy in Palestine and Israel given his interest in oil policy. However, the ...analysis of the origin of the US–Israel oil connection is not designed as a warning to oil companies or as a preface to oil nationalizations in the Arab world, which sometimes appears to be Colgan's prime concern in his review. The analysis offered in Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine and the Foundations of US Policy in the Middle East is about the transformation of Palestine at a time that coincided with the decolonization struggles across North Africa and the Middle East in which US officials recognized the importance of Palestine and its potential through the period including and following Israel's emergence.
The Question of Development Gendzier, Irene L.
International journal of political economy,
04/2018, Letnik:
47, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Development policies and accompanying theories were an integral part of postwar U.S. foreign policy, designed to deal with the challenges of decolonization and the emergence of independent Third ...World states. They provided a model for the transition from traditional to modern societies that relied on the works of economists, sociologists, and political scientists, who formed part of the informal collective of modernization scholars identified with major academic institutions. Their objectives were closely aligned with those of U.S. foreign policy. Under very different national and global circumstances, there has been a revival of development and modernization policies that rest on claims of American "exceptionalism" and the commitment to export democracy. In practice, the implementation of such policies has less to do with promoting democracy than assuring compatible political and economic alignments in the states involved. The article that follows offers a critical analysis of the origins and nature of development and modernization policies in both postwar and later years.
This updated edition of the influential Development Against Democracy is a critical guide to postwar studies of modernisation and development. In the mid-twentieth century, models of development ...studies were products of postwar American policy. They focused on newly independent states in the Global South, aiming to assure their pro-Western orientation by promoting economic growth, political reform and liberal democracy. However, this prevented real democracy and radical change. Today, projects of democracy have evolved in a radically different political environment that seems to have little in common with the postwar period. Development Against Democracy, however, testifies to a revealing continuity in foreign policy, including in justifications of 'humanitarian intervention' that echo those of counterinsurgency decades earlier in Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Irene L. Gendzier argues that the fundamental ideas on which theories of modernisation and development rest have been resurrected in contemporary policy and its theories, representing the continuity of postwar US foreign policy in a world permanently altered by globalisation and its multiple discontents, the proliferation of 'failed states,' the unprecedented exodus of refugees, and Washington's declaration of a permanent war against terrorism.
Does history matter? Over the course of the past few months the Obama administration has abandoned its putative efforts to engage Israel and the Palestinians in peace talks after their collapse in ...the face of Israel's continued settlement building on the West Bank. At the popular level and in the mainstream media, the response was one of familiar frustration with the allegedly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In practice, the core issues have remained the same for over 60 years, with the role of the United States and U.S. interests, including defense industries -- major components in perpetuating the conflict -- expanding over the course of that period. But when did it all begin? The mainstream media provide few answers to such questions, as they have been complicit in maintaining a high level of ignorance about Israel, the Palestinians and, more generally, the Middle East and U.S. policy in the region. Adapted from the source document.
Reveals the extent of US complicity in maintaining the Lebanese regime in the face of domestic opposition and civil war. This book discusses the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 as well as the Iraqi ...revolution of 1958. It also provides an examination of the foundations of US policy in the Middle East.
This new, updated edition of the influential Development Against Democracy is a critical guide to postwar studies of modernisation and development. In the mid-twentieth century, models of development ...studies were products of postwar American policy. They focused on newly independent states in the Global South, aiming to assure their pro-Western orientation by promoting economic growth, political reform and liberal democracy. However, this prevented real democracy and radical change. Today, projects of democracy have evolved in a radically different political environment that seems to have little in common with the postwar period. Development Against Democracy, however, testifies to a revealing continuity in foreign policy, including in justifications of ‘humanitarian intervention’ that echo those of counterinsurgency decades earlier in Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Irene L. Gendzier argues that the fundamental ideas on which theories of modernisation and development rest have been resurrected in contemporary policy and its theories, representing the continuity of postwar US foreign policy in a world permanently altered by globalisation and its multiple discontents, the proliferation of ‘failed states,’ the unprecedented exodus of refugees, and Washington’s declaration of a permanent war against terrorism.
