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The Pre-Islamic Middle East:

History

Sicker, Martin

Ancient Civilizations

Praeger

The Making of a Pariah State takes the reader behind the flamboyance and apparent irrationality of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to expose his attempt to impose national cohesion on the Arab, Muslim, and Third World elements under his leadership. Addressed to the general reader interested in foreign affairs, this timely and unique book provides a coherent framework for understanding why Libya is involved in international terrorism and the danger Qaddafi poses to the Third World and the West.

The Making of a Pariah State: The Adventurist Politics of Muammar Qaddafi

Africa

In his provocative analysis of Soviet goals in Southwest Asia, particularly Iran, Sicker argues that Soviet imperialism in this area exhibits a remarkable consistency from tsarist times to the present. Directly challenging prevailing beliefs of diminished Soviet interest in Iran or the Persian Gulf, Sicker asserts that the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, their history of interest in the area, and the region's growing geopolitical significance all enhance the probability of a Soviet move to bring Iran into its sphere of influence. Moreover, Sicker demonstrates Soviet goals in the area are long term and are not subject to revision as a consequence of temporary setbacks or a change in Soviet leadership. Students and policymakers will find The Bear and the Lion both a realistic appraisal of the importance of Iran to the Soviet Union and a comprehensive historical analysis of the roots of that interest.
Sicker begins by examining the era of tsarist expansionism, demonstrating that Russia's strategic interest in Iran can be traced back as far as the reign of Peter the Great. He goes on to examine Iran's emerging strategic importance during the 19th century, exploring the geopolitical importance of Iran to the Soviet Union both before and after the discovery of oil there. Subsequent chapters trace during the Second World War, the era of Muhammad Reza Shah, and the Khomieni regime. Based on his analysis, Sicker concludes that Soviet imperialism is very much a reality in the region and that this constitutes a serious threat to the territorial integrity and political independence of Iran, and to U.S. interests in the area.

The Bear and the Lion: Soviet Imperialism and Iran

Legal Theory & Systems

Written for students of Middle Eastern politics and other readers who seek to understand why a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict still seems so remote, this book examines how the question of physical security has constituted the most fundamental concern of Israel since the country came into being in 1948. The author's immediate purpose is to provide the reader with the necessary background to understand why Israel has proved reluctant to agree to the numerous peace plans and processes proposed over the years, demonstrating that--at least from the predominant Israeli perspective--each of these plans posed unacceptable risks to Israel's security.
Sicker shows that there has been a remarkable consistency in actual security policy throughout Israel's history, regardless of which party was in power and irrespective of the significant differences in declared policy between the country's left and right governments. He explains why Israel has consistently refused to define the limits of its territorial claims in advance of peace negotiations and explores the influence of the concept of `land for peace' from its origins in the 1947 UN partition plan to the present. Challenging the conventional wisdom, Sicker argues that there is no solid evidence that the Arab states are prepared to accept the legitimacy of Israel and that until this happens there is little likelihood of peace. Further, he asserts that there are no territorial concessions that Israel can realistically offer that will satisfy the Arabs and that peace, therefore, depends upon a fundamental change in the Arab view of Israel's claims. By offering a clear and unequivocal outline of the stakes involved, Sicker enables readers to better evaluate both past, present, and future developments in this strategically critical region.

Israel's Quest for Security:

Military

Its existence is a reality of everyday life, yet the notion of the state is not well understood. How did the state originate and what is the source of its authority? This is the primary focus of Martin Sicker's Genesis of the State. Sicker does not consider this as just another academic question: The citizen's moral obligation to obey the state is intimately related to the legitimacy of the state's authority and the latter depends largely on its sources. This work examines several major approaches to the question of the genesis of political authority that are reflected in the works of a wide range of philosophers and thinkers throughout the ages. Sicker concludes his work with a serviceable contemporary answer.
Sicker draws upon western and non-Western sources to illustrate the diverse formulations of theories on the genesis of the state. His intent is to promote insight into the true nature of the state and the basis for its intrusion into our individual and societal lives. Towards this effort, he discounts the conventional notion which treats the several theoretical formulations as overlapping developmental stages of political theory. Social contract, partriarchal, divine, force, and organic theories of the state are all still thriving in political practice if not in the academy. Sicker opens with a discussion of the definition of the state. Having established this common ground, subsequent chapters consider the several primary theoretical approaches to the genesis of the state and political authority.

The Genesis of the State

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Sicker provides a synthesis from a wide range of sources that have not previously been integrated to present an unromanticized recapitulation of the events and personalities that led to the troubled birth of modern Israel. Much historical writing on modern Israel, Sicker asserts, is apologetic and editorially filtered in conformity with a traditional Zionist historiography that tends to obscure as much as it reveals. As a result, the emergence of modern Israel is shrouded in a mythology that has little or no place for inconvenient facts or dissonant voices. Sicker examines the nature of the struggles within the Zionist community over the national idea and its implications, and the evolving interactions of that community with the external political environment. This leads him to assign a far more significant role to the so- called right-wing movements than is usually allotted to them in the traditional left-oriented historiography and a more critical assessment of the Zionist leadership.
He shows that virtually every major problem faced by contemporary Israel, a half-century after it came into existence, was foreshadowed by the events and circumstances that precipitated and conditioned its emergence. Sicker examines the seemingly irreconcilable differences between the left and right extremes of the political spectrum; between the religious community and the secular; and between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists. Today, a half-century later, these same issues are causing an increasing polarization of Israeli society, with uncertain ramifications for the future.

Pangs of the Messiah: The Troubled Birth of the Jewish State

Middle East

Sicker examines the early stages of the process by which Palestine, an obscure and relatively miniscule backwater of the Ottoman Empire, became a critical factor in the history and convoluted politics of the modern Middle East. In doing this, he describes relevant aspects of the history of Palestine in the little known and poorly understood period from the Napoleonic intrusion in the Middle East to the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginnings of British rule. Developments in this period are analyzed within the geopolitical context of the rivalries among the great European powers that were decisive factors in the modern history of the entire Middle East.
During this period the emergence of a Jewish nationalist movement abroad served as a catalyst for the social and economic transformation of Palestine prior to the British entry into the area during World War I. It involved the unique attempt to reify the national aspirations of a people who, for the most part, lived outside the territory toward which those aspirations were directed. It also represented the previously unprecedented involvement of representatives of nongovernmental organizations in serious international political negotiations. How Palestine was reshaped by the various forces acting upon it during the period discussed is a key to understanding the subsequent history of the area. An important guide for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the Middle East generally and Palestine in particular.

Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922

Holtzbrinck

Sicker explores the political history of the Middle East from antiquity to the Arab conquest from a geopolitical perspective. He argues that there are a number of relatively constant environmental factors that have helped condition-not determine-the course of Middle Eastern political history from ancient times to the present. These factors, primarily, but not exclusively geography and topography, contributed heavily to establishing the patterns of state development and interstate relations in the Middle East that have remained remarkably consistent throughout the troubled history of the region.In addition to geography and topography, the implications of which are explored in depth, religion has also played a major political role in conditioning the pattern of Middle Eastern history. The Greeks first introduced the politicization of religious belief into the region in the form of pan-Hellenism, which essentially sought to impose Greek forms of popular religion and culture on the indigenous peoples of the region as a means of solidifying Greek political control. This ultimately led to religious persecution as a state policy. Subsequently, the Persian Sassanid Empire adopted Zoroastrianism as the state religion for the same purpose and with the same result. Later, when Armenia adopted Christianity as the state religion, followed soon after by the Roman Empire, religion and the intolerance it tended to breed became fundamental ingredients, in regional politics and have remained such ever since. Sicker shows that the political history of the pre-Islamic Middle East provides ample evidence that the geopolitical and religious factors conditioning political decision-making tended to promote military solutions to political problems, making conflict resolution through war the norm, with the peaceful settlement of disputes quite rare. A sweeping synthesis that will be of considerable interest to scholars, students, and others concerned with Middle East history and politics as well as international relations and ancient history.

The long era of Muslim political ascendancy that began in a small region of western Arabia reached its pinnacle some nine hundred years later with the siege of Vienna by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1529. Suleiman then concluded that, given the increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, Muslim expansionism in Eurasia had run its course. The subsequent decline of Ottoman power also meant, in effect, the decline of political Islam, which had been intimately bound to it for centuries.
As Sicker shows, the problems faced by the Ottoman Empire were also faced by the Persian Empire and both underwent an extended period of political decline and territorial retrenchment in the face of imperialist pressures from Europe and Asia. The greatest challenge to the world of political Islam came from Western Europe, especially France and Great Britain. The Ottoman and Persian empires assumed a global importance in the 19th century, not because of anything in them of intrinsic economic value, but because of their geopolitical and geostrategic significance. They became, in effect, a buffer zone separating Europe from the wealth of the East, at a time when European imperialism was on the march in Asia. It thus came about that the rivalries of the Great Powers, most especially those of Great Britain, France, and Russia, were played out in the Middle East. This book will serve as a vital resource for students, scholars, and other researchers involved with Middle East History, Political Islam, and Modern European History.

The Islamic World in Decline: From the Treaty of Karlowitz to the Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire

In the view of Dr. Martin Sicker, it was with the emergence of Islam that the combination of geopolitics and religion reached its most volatile form and provided the ideological context for war and peace in the Middle East for more than a millennium. The conflation of geopolitics and religion in Islam is predicated on the concept of jihad (struggle), which may be understood as a crescentade, in the same sense as the later Christian crusade, which seeks to achieve a religious goal, the conversion of the world to Islam, by militant means. This equates to a concept of perpetual war with the non-Muslim world, a concept that underlays Muslim geopolitical thinking throughout the thousand-year period covered in this book. However, as Sicker amply demonstrates, the concept often bore little relation to the political realities of the region that as often as not saw Muslims and non-Muslims aligned against and at war with other Muslims.The story of the emergence and phenomenal ascendancy of the Islamic world from a relatively small tribe in sparsely populated Arabia is one that taxes the imagination, but it becomes more comprehensible when viewed through a geopolitical prism. Religion was repeatedly and often shamelessly harnessed to geopolitical purpose by both Muslims and Christians, albeit with arguably greater Muslim success. Islamic ascendancy began as an Arab project, initially focused on the Arabian peninsula, but was soon transformed into an imperialist movement with expansive ambitions. As it grew, it quickly registered highly impressive gains, but soon lost much of its Arab content. It ended a millennium later as a Turkish―more specifically, an Ottoman―project with many intermediate transformations. The reverberations of the thousand-year history of that ascendancy are still felt today in many parts of the greater Middle East. A comprehensive geopolitical survey for scholars, students, researchers, and all others interested in the history of the Middle East and Islam.

The Islamic World in Ascendancy: From the Arab Conquests to the Siege of Vienna

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sicker, Martin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sicker, Martin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sicker, Martin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Pre-Islamic Middle East:

The Making of a Pariah State: The Adventurist Politics of Muammar Qaddafi

The Bear and the Lion: Soviet Imperialism and Iran

Israel's Quest for Security:

The Genesis of the State

Pangs of the Messiah: The Troubled Birth of the Jewish State

Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922

The Pre-Islamic Middle East:

The Islamic World in Decline: From the Treaty of Karlowitz to the Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire

The Islamic World in Ascendancy: From the Arab Conquests to the Siege of Vienna