The Road to Tahrir Square
Egypt and the United States from the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak
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- 18,99 €
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- 18,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
When protesters in Egypt began to fill Cairo's Tahrir Square on January 25th—and refused to leave until their demand that Hosni Mubarak step down was met—the politics of the region changed overnight. And the United States' long friendship with the man who had ruled under Emergency Law for thirty years came starkly into question.
From Franklin D. Roosevelt's brief meeting with King Farouk near the end of World War II to Barack Obama's Cairo Speech in 2009 and the recent fall of Mubarak—the most significant turning point in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War—this timely new book answers the urgent question of why Egypt has mattered so much to the United States. The Road to Tahrir Square is the first book to connect past and present, offering readers today an understanding of the events and forces determining American policy in this vitally important region.
Making full use of the available records—including the controversial Wikileaks archive—renowned historian Lloyd C. Gardner shows how the United States has sought to influence Egypt through economic aid, massive military assistance, and CIA manipulations, an effort that has immediate implications for how the current crisis will alter the balance of power in the Middle East. As millions of Americans ponder how the Egyptian revolution will change the face of the region and the world, here is both a fascinating story of past policies and an essential guide to possible futures.
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Gardner, professor of history at Rutgers (The Long Road to Baghdad), chronicles the U.S. and Egypt's 20th-century entanglements with concision and clarity. After WWII and the retreat of British colonial influence in the Middle East, American diplomats identified Egypt as a crucial partner in the region. Administration after administration operated from the basic policy principle that "a strong Egypt meant a strong Middle East." Using the "carrot and stick" approach, the U.S. provided economic aid, military support, and CIA interference to promote stability and pliability in the Egyptian government, while largely ignoring the regime's repression of the Egyptian people. In workmanlike prose, Gardner describes the U.S.'s involvement in the negotiations over the fragile peace between Egypt and Israel, and tells of Egypt's role in the "war on terror." Pointing out the essential contradiction of our promoting a democratic Iraq while supporting Mubarak's repressive regime, Gardner concludes that the popular revolutions of the Arab spring are the only logical outcome of decades of American doublespeak. The book is a thought-provoking distillation of the convoluted dealings between diplomats and governments that calls for a new tack, in which American actions finally match our rhetoric.
