West Asia (a New American Grand Strategy In The Middle East)

By (author) Soliman, Mohammed
Description:

At the end of the twentieth century, the United States birthed a new Middle East order built on realpolitik and a stable balance of power. Three decades later that order has been destroyed. America''s disastrous invasion of Iraq along with the failed Arab Spring created a vacuum that has allowed revisionist powers to extend their influence across the region.

In West Asia, Mohammed Soliman argues that it is time for the United States to move decisively away from nation-building and get back to the business of order-building. To do so will require zooming out, in both geographical and historical terms, to build a new regional order across ''West Asia'' – from the Middle East to South Asia, connecting Europe to the Indo-Pacific via the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Working with India, Italy, Greece, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Japan, the UK and the United Arab Emirates, among others, he shows how the U.S. could lock in a new balance of power in the Eurasian supercontinent to offset China and Russia''s efforts to disrupt the status quo and create a rival system. This new strategy rests on three layered coalitions — geostrategic, hard-power, and geo-technological — that together can anchor a stable order stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. But this will require a fundamental shift in U.S. grand strategy, with ''West Asia'' at its core.

The Middle East is no more. Welcome to West Asia.

Table of contents:

Abbreviations
Preface


Introduction
Part I  Strategic Framing
Chapter 1  America and the End of the Middle East
Part II Rise of West Asia
Chapter 2  The Rise of the Arabian Gulf
Chapter 3  The Arabs, Israel, and a New Formula for West Asia
Part III     Redefining the Middle East
Chapter 4  India, the Old Middle East, and the Remaking of West Asia
Chapter 5  The Suez Corridor
Chapter 6  The Indo-Islamic Axis
Chapter 7  The Return of the Indo-Abrahamic World
Chapter 8  The Eurasian Entente
Part IV Order-Building in West Asia
Chapter 9  Geostrategic Coalition
Chapter 10 Security/Hard Power Coalition
Chapter 11 Techo-Economic Coalition
Conclusion


Notes
Acknowledgements
Index

Review quote:
"In West Asia, Mohammed Soliman redraws the map, tracing the connections from South Asia through the Middle East to Southern Europe ... Agree or disagree with his analysis, this is a work to be reckoned with."
Richard Fontaine, CEO, Center for a New American Security

"West Asia provides the road map we need to effectively advance America''s national interests."
Geoffrey Ross Pyatt, former assistant secretary of state for energy resources and former ambassador to Greece and Ukraine

"This is the strategic blueprint for the India–Middle East–Europe Corridor, written by the policy thinker who was among the first to see this geoeconomic order emerging and helped shape its intellectual foundation. West Asia offers a powerful vision of how India and the Gulf are reshaping the global map and how U.S. strategy must adapt in response."
Richard Rossow, Chair on India and Emerging Asia Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

"A groundbreaking book examining how the shift in global economic and political gravity from the Euro-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific basins requires us to rethink our notions of the ''Middle East'' and ''South Asia'' in favor of a ''West Asia'' perspective situated along an emerging Indo-Abrahamic corridor."
Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Director, National Security Program, Foreign Policy Research Institute

"From Delhi to Athens, from London to Riyadh, a new arc of strategic and econ