© Columbia University Press
The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East
March, 2008
Cloth, 160 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70032-0
$24.95
"In this small but powerful book, Olivier Roy has discovered the Archimedean point from which all existing narratives of Muslim politics in the Middle East may be overthrown. This point is a simple one: that the Middle East has no political integrity of its own but is defined rather by its relationship with the West. Having dispensed with the old-fashioned narratives that still structure Leftist accounts of neo-colonialism (with their fetishism of Captain Cook-like moments of first contact between peoples), Roy is able to write a trenchant account showing how the Middle East has quite transformed the political categories of Left and Right, particularly in the United States. This has allowed him to write what is perhaps the first combined history of political thought in the West and the Middle East." — Faisal Devji, New School University, and author of Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity
"A concise and penetrating summation of the current scene." — Dexter Filkins, New York Times Book Review
"Roy offers an ironic account worthy of Jonathan Swift." — L. Carl Brown, Foreign Affairs
"Olivier Roy has been a confidante of the leading US neo-conservative strategists since his work on the Afghan resistance in the 1980s, when these same thinkers were working in the administration of President Ronald Reagan to support the mujahidin and bring down the USSR. He now delivers a lucid and decisive dismemberment of the work of these same neo-conservatives (and their interventionist Republican allies, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney) during the regime of George W. Bush. Roy calmly explains how their comprehensive misunderstanding of the threat posed by the attacks of September 11, combined with their reality-free conception of the capacities of the US government, has needlessly created a disaster. His critique extends further to include most of the shallow critiques deployed by the opposition to these policies. Roy shows how many of the liberal and leftists ideas and programs about promotion of democracy, civil society, or self-determination are based on kindred illusions. Anyone concerned about the extrication of the US and the world from this disaster should read, re-read, think about, and discuss this book." — Barnett R. Rubin, director of Studies and senior fellow, Center on International Cooperation , New York University