Arabs, Turks, and Persians: Geopolitics and Ideology in the Greater Middle East

For decades, the Greater Middle East has been a leading challenge to American foreign policy. This vast region - ranging from North Africa in the west to Afghanistan in the east, and from the borders of Central Asia down to the Horn of Africa in the south - has been a cauldron of turmoil that has affected not just American interests, but generated threats to the American homeland.

The multitude of challenges in this region has led to some confusion. What should be the focus of U.S. policy in the Greater Middle East?

This book explores this state of affairs and its implications by delving deeper into how the current geopolitics of the Greater Middle East came to be. A first few chapters look back to the history of the region and the historic rivalries among Turks, Arabs and Persians up to the end of the Cold War. The book then examines the main current power centers of the region - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It then turns to the geopolitical competition among them in recent years, starting with Iran's efforts to build an "Arc of Domination" across the region.

The book covers the advance of Islamists following the Arab Upheavals, the civil war among the Sunnis from 2013 to 2018, America's pendulum swings with regard to Iran policy, and the reshuffle of the region following Turkey's turn in a more nationalist direction. Finally, the book ends with an attempt to draw out implications for America's approach to the geopolitics of the Greater Middle East.

SVANTE E. CORNELL is Research Director of the American Foreign Policy Council's Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington D.C., and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm, Sweden. Cornell was educated at the Middle East Technical University and Uppsala University. He formerly served as Associate Professor at Uppsala University and at Johns Hopkins-University-SAIS, and is also a Policy Advisor with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences.