Michael Oren’s objective is a comprehensive survey of the US-Middle East relationship. It is an outstanding book in many respects and, given its 604 pages of text, is a concise, chronological presentation of fascinating, and sometimes bizarre, events, and characters which have shaped the present relationship.

The title – Power, Faith, and Fantasy – is appropriate: The cyclical raw and reluctant exercise of US power; and the nascent power of the Middle East which has emerged in the past two decades; religious faith, which is the motivation for 21st Century American evangelical involvement in the Middle East and the predicate for the modern state of Israel, and fantasy – a romantic vision of Arabia which has been shattered by the reality of suicide bombers and roadside bombs.

Oren avoids using 18th and 19th Century historical parallels to explain the political instability and bloodshed of the 21st Century. However, Oren provides the layman reader with objective information to better understand contemporary events.

The book highlights US naiveté regarding the Middle East. For many Americans, the US-Arab-Islam relationships sprouted overnight after 9/11. We tend to forget that the US engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian prime minister in 1953. We may not remember that in 1946 Saudi King Saud gave preference to the US, rather than Britain, for oil drilling rights, because hospitals established by US Protestant missionaries had provided healthcare for the King and his family.

Beginning in the late 18th Century – the first phase of the US experiment with democracy – the Barbary Pirates (modern day Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) captured US merchant vessels, demanded protection and money, and held US crews for ransom. This series of events, which was finally resolved by US force in 1815, is replete with historical parallels.

President Washington wanted to take military action against the Barbary Pirates. However, the US had very few warships, the public mood of America was isolationist, and the debate between the president and Congress regarding foreign affairs policymaking primacy was unresolved. The concept of federalism versus states’ rights was also unresolved. The fragile US economy was dependent on its foreign trade with the Middle East – US rum for Turkish opium (one vice for another). The elimination of the threat of the Barbary Pirates by US Naval forces unified the American states, gave primacy in international relations to the chief executive, overcame isolationism, enabled the establishment of a robust standing military force and established the US as a world power. It also anticipated the difficulty of creating an effective coalition. The Europeans, who were also hassled by the Barbary Pirates, paid protection money in ransom which they called "tribute."

The US-Middle East relationship has been a continuous cycle of idealism and disenchantment. The US has failed to be clear and honest about its motives and to understand and interpret the culture and motivation of the Middle East. For example, US foreign policy did not adapt rapidly from the Cold War with the Soviet Union to the Holy War with much of the Middle East. The US supported an Iraqi dictator against the Iranian theocracy in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The US supported anti-US Islamist fundamentalists in their fight against the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan.

One of the persistent and thorny issues in the Arab world is the existence of the State of Israel. The prevailing and non-negotiable perspective of much of the Arab world is to push the Jews out of the region. The foothold of Israel in the region began in the 1840s with the religious vision and intense hard work of essentially American Protestant Zionists who established schools and hospitals. They sought to restore Palestine as a Jewish homeland, not because of their love for Jews, but to fulfill the biblical dictum for the second coming of the Messiah.

Although by 1939, Middle East oil had become a major component of the US economy, the US had not intervened in the region, politically, diplomatically, or militarily in significant scale since the time of the Barbary Pirates. This changed rapidly in World War II when the German army advance threatened the US oil supply. US dependence on Middle East oil imports has blurred US foreign policy regarding the Middle East. The US has tolerated and encouraged dictators and unsavory characters because of the geologic coincidence of vast oil reserves in the region. We forget that the US supported the independence from imperial powers and colonial rule for the modern states of Libya, Syria, and Iran, and has suffered from the consequence of the proverb, "No good deed goes unpunished."

US policymakers and the American public are beginning to take the Middle East and Islam seriously. No longer is the US perception of the region skewed by fantasy – altruistic Shriners wearing fezzes (who founded the marvelous Shriners Children’s Hospital in Denver) and the movie actor Rudolph Valentino’s "I am the Sheik of Araby … into your tent I creep."

The author concludes, "Weighing the good and bad, the US has brought far more beneficial than adverse change to the Middle East and has caused significantly less harm than good."

The theme of this issue of the National Strategy Forum Review is asymmetry. The best example of this has occurred in the Middle East where latent Islamic power has confounded US primacy. •