Conversations with History: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

See the
Conversations with History Blog

See a webcast of this interview:
Telhami

See also the 2001 interview
with Professor Telhami: "U.S.
Foreign Policy and the Search
for Peace in the Middle
East"

 U.S. Foreign Policy and the Middle East: Conversation with Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland, February 25, 2003, by Harry Kreisler

This interview is part of the Institute's "Conversations with History" series, and uses Internet technology to share with the public Berkeley's distinction as a global forum for ideas.

Welcome to a Conversation with History. I'm Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies. Our guest today is Shibley Telhami, who is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, and a Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. book coverHe is the author, most recently, of The Stakes: America and the Middle East, published by Westview Press earlier this year.

  1. Oil ... Middle East oil still important ... increasingly ... China's needs ... U.S. "denial policy" ... role of the Saudis
  2. Israel ... U.S. commitment ... U.S. blame ... Bush's "instinctive" Iraq policy ... centrality of Palestinian issue to Arab identity ... the 1990s ... collapse of momentum means loss of hope
  3. Economic and Political Reform ... strategic interest ... liberalization and stability
  4. Terrorism ... lost opportunity for global support ... supply and demand ... misdefined as ideology: a means, not an end ... inconsistent U.S. antiterrorist position in Mideast ... most terrorism not Mideastern, Muslim, or Arab ... non-state terrorism empowered by globalization ... mislabeling U.S. enemies as "terrorists" ... U.S. failure to seek multilateral solutions
  5. The Bush Doctrine ... where might terrorists obtain WMDs? ... restraining factor: states easier to punish ... opposition to "might makes right" ... preemption doctrine as small-state incentive to arm ... "doing" Iraq ... Bush's Iraq focus ... U.S. muscle-flexing ... fantasy of democratizing the Mideast ... consequence of intervention: less democracy
  6. The Uses of Power ... the new media ... new consumer: the Arab ... Arab-Israeli peace ... multilateralism ... U.S. assurance of non-coercion

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