ROPES OF SAND: America's Failure in the Middle East

by Wilbur Crane Eveland ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 1980

As an army intelligence agent, and later a CIA operative, Eveland spent the 1950s--the formative years of American Middle East policy--getting a snake'seye-view of U.S. actions in that new center of world attention. After 1959, he did some part-time work for the Agency and stayed in touch with old contacts in the Arab countries. But rather than assessing U.S. policies (as the title suggests), he has written--in the main--another memoir of a spy. Still, amid the minutiae of daily doings, Eveland does make some judgments, pronouncing the ""Eisenhower Doctrine"" of opposition to Communist subversion of the Middle East a major mistake. Eveland, like many go-betweens, is very sympathetic to various Arab causes; and the reduction of Mideast troubles to simple anti-communism he sees as a failure to deal with real issues. Foremost among these is the Arab-Israeli impasse--which might have been resolved long ago, according to Eveland, had the U.S. pressured Israel to accede to Arab demands. (Eveland's repeated error in treating the Jews simply as adherents of a faith suggests that his knowledge and sympathy end at the Jordan River.) In the last event, as Eveland sees it, the U.S. went wrong when it labeled Communism, and not Israel's ambitions, as the enemy in the Middle East. While rightly stressing that Washington was insensitive to the differences between Arab states and to local problems, Eveland is shockingly sanguine about his simple solution.

Pub Date: May 19, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION