2009, ISBN: 9780815703419

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009. First edition. First printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good.. vii, [3], 241, [5] p. Notes. Index. Crafting a new policy toward … More...

Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009. First edition. First printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good.. vii, [3], 241, [5] p. Notes. Index. Crafting a new policy toward Iran is a complicated, uncertain, and perilous challenge. Since it is an extremely complex society, with an opaque political system, it is no wonder that the United States has not yet figured out the puzzle that is Iran. With the clock ticking on Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities, solving this puzzle is more urgent than ever. In "Which Path to Persia? " a group of experts with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings lays out the courses of action available to the United States. What are the benefits and drawbacks of airstrikes? Can engagement be successful? Is regime change possible? In answering such questions, the authors do not argue for one approach over another. Instead, they present the details of the policies so that readers can understand the complexity of the challenge and decide for themselves which course the United States should take. From Wikipedia: "Kenneth Michael Pollack, PhD (born 1966), is a noted former CIA intelligence analyst and expert on Middle East politics and military affairs. He has served on the National Security Council staff and has written several articles and books on international relations. Pollack obtained a BA from Yale University, in 1988, and went on to earn a PhD from MIT in 1996. He has served in a variety of roles in government. From 1988 until 1995, he was analyst on Iraqi and Iranian military issues for the Central Intelligence Agency. He spent a year as Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs with the United States National Security Council. In 1999, he rejoined the NSC as the Director for Persian Gulf Affairs. He also served two stints as a professor with the National Defense University. Outside of government, he worked for the Brookings Institution as the director of research at its Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He previously worked for the Council of Foreign Relations as their director of national security studies. He has also written four books, the first two of which were published in 2002. His first monograph, Arabs at War, examined the foreign policy of six Arab nations in the years between World War II and the Persian Gulf War....2007, Pollack co-authored the book Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from an Iraqi Civil War with Daniel L. Byman. This book analyzed 12 recent civil wars to derive six common ways in which fullscale ethnic civil wars "spillover" to affect neighboring states. Pollack and Byman argued that while spillover can range from modest effects to very severe problems (like causing other civil wars or triggering regional wars among neighboring states) that the early evidence so far suggested that the United States should be prepared for Iraq's potential descent into all-out civil war to be on the worse end of the spectrum. The book went on to lay out thirteen different ways that the United States and its allies might fashion a "containment" strategy for Iraq, which offered some chance of preventing all-out civil war in Iraq from destabilizing the wider Persian Gulf region in the event that American efforts to stabilize the country failed. While Pollack and Byman argued that such a containment strategy would be very difficult to make work given the historical problems of doing so and the specific problems created by previous American actions in Iraq, they also concluded that containment would likely prove America's least bad option because U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf were so important that Washington would have to try to mitigate the impact of spillover. He has written numerous articles for publications such as the Atlantic Monthly and Foreign Affairs. He has also repeatedly testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He currently teaches Security Problems of the Middle East / Persian Gulf and Military Analysis at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. Pollack's fifth book, A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East, was published in July., Brookings Institution Press, 2009, 3<

2009, ISBN: 9780815703419

Brookings Institution Press, 2009-07-13. Paperback. Good., Brookings Institution Press, 2009-07-13, 2.5