Conviction & Credence

The recent Gulf War may be over, but the issues that made the Middle East so volatile a region still remain. Melvin Friedlander addresses many of these crucial issues by looking at how US administrations from Nixon to Bush have tried with little success to attain the goal of peace in the Middle East, how values have operated in the search for solutions, and how failed US policies have depended too much on the conventional wisdom of power politics. Any viable peace initiative, asserts Friedlander, must be informed by a new wisdom , a populist approach now emerging in the region, that makes a concern for human rights foremost. It is in this way that the US value system, with its roots in the concepts of equality and liberty, can be the basis of effective US efforts toward negotiating peace in the Middle East.