Eleven Years after 9/11

The Icarus Syndrome by Peter Beinart Few books capture the transformation of America’s foreign policy and the nation’s psyche in the hours and months after the attacks on 9/11, and contextualize these events in the wider history of America’s foreign relations. Written in an eloquent and thoughtful style and markedly different from the other literature that has come out in the past decade or so, Beinart’s work should be read by anyone interested in American foreign poli...

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Reading Syria

1. Malik Mufti, Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq (Cornell University Press, 1996) Mufti provides one of the best overviews of Syria prior to the rise of Hafiz al-Assad. It importantly shows Syria’s central role in the contest for political influence and identity in the region in the 1950s and 1960s, and why Syria was at the centre of the Arab Cold War. His analysis is essential for understanding why the Assads created such a regime in Syria, and how...

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