Inside the Arab World

By Michael Field. Harvard University Press, 1995, 439 pp. List: $27.50; AET: $20.50.

Reviewed by Greg Noakes

Attempting to describe, analyze and explain the Arab world in its entirety is a daunting task. The tendency is to overemphasize one aspect and shortchange other avenues of investigation, or to devote too many pages to one country or region to the detriment of others. With such a broad topic, it seems writers are doomed to traffic in facile generalizations or, conversely, to bog down in excruciating detail. The reader is left with either the forest or the trees, but is seldom rewarded with a glimpse of both in the same book.

Happily, Michael Field has avoided these pitfalls. His Inside the Arab World analyzes Arab history, politics, economics, society and culture, in addition to tracing the linkages between these topics. A veteran Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times, Field takes up case studies from across the Arab world and is adept at dissecting all of them. The writer's thematic approach allows him to adjust the focus of his analytic microscope as needed, on one page zeroing in on the impact of satellite television on the Gulf emirates, for example, and on the next placing this development in the context of the larger trend toward political liberalization in the Arab world.

Field's years as a working reporter pay off for both the book and the reader. He brings a wealth of information and his own personal insight to his work, in addition to an ability to consult a wide range of contacts across the Arab world and thus sample a variety of opinion. Aside from his thorough knowledge of the region, Field is a gifted writer and his engaging journalistic style is a pleasure to read—he even manages that most difficult of tasks, being funny without being flippant. As a result, Inside the Arab World is a major accomplishment by any measure.

Michael Field begins his book with an overview of recent Arab history titled, ominously, "Failure." Field gives his reader enough historical background to establish a framework, but not so much as to deaden the senses. Rather than tick off an endless chain of events, the author prefers to delineate trends, dealing with the tides of history rather than the froth on top of the waves.

The discussions of politics, society and culture which follow are interesting, particularly his look at the issue of political legitimacy—which governments in the region have it, and which don't. The chapters on political Islam are fair and balanced, though the author is hesitant to make too many firm predictions on the future of the Islamist movement.

Field hits his stride, however, in his examination of economic trends in the region, especially the problems and perils of economic restructuring. He is a firm believer in free-market reforms and gradual democratization, and demonstrates how the adoption of the first inexorably leads to the need for the second. There can be no perestroika without glasnost, according to Field. If a government imposes economic hardship on its people, it had better be willing to increase popular participation in politics, preferably a little at a time. Field points to Jordan as an example of a successful political/economic transition, Algeria as the nightmare scenario.

This is one key to the success of the book: Field constantly relates the topic at hand to one or more relevant case studies. Only Algeria and Saudi Arabia merit their own separate chapters, but the reader will find extensive material on Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Gulf states, with an occasional aside on non-Arab Iran tossed in for good measure. Some of these studies are geared toward facts and figures, others attempt to draw conclusions about a country's political or economic prospects, and nearly all are laced with revealing and often entertaining anecdotes.

Field continues with a discussion of the Arab-Israeli peace process, with special emphasis on the Palestinian question and the factors which led to the Declaration of Principles. The material he covers will be familiar to Washington Report readers and Field breaks no new ground. Nevertheless, he has produced a concise overview of the peace process to date, as always with a focus on the larger trends behind the individual personalities and isolated incidents. Some months have elapsed since Field penned his book, but subsequent events have done nothing to disprove his prognostications.

The book ends with ruminations on "A Pragmatic Arab World" where rhetoric and ideology have given way to a more sober realism. Field argues that the Gulf war "has had more influence on the attitudes of individual Arabs and on relations between governments than any other event of the last 10 years" (p. 390), in part because it shattered the myth of "Arab unity" and enabled policymakers to do away with the fig leaf of consensus and instead look after their own pragmatic national interests. A just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would go a long way toward reinforcing this pragmatic shift, in Field's opinion. He closes with a look at the West's relations with the Arab world, including an appraisal of the ultimate effect of increased European and American arms sales to the region.

The book's flaws are minimal. Misspellings are sprinkled throughout the text and a few minor factual errors crop up now and again (the arrest date of Algerian Islamists Abbasi Madani and Ali Belhadj is several months off target and Hasan al-Banna is incorrectly identified as an Al-Azhar sheikh, not a schoolteacher, for example), but none of these mar Field's presentation or his argument.

Anyone who has suffered through too many books on the Arab world rushed into print to capitalize on some issue in the news (and thus boost sales) will be glad to know Inside the Arab World is no rush job. It is a finely crafted, moderate, well-reasoned examination of the Arab world and its prospects, written by a talented author with years of experience in the region. With this book, Michael Field has raised the bar for those chroniclers and analysts of the Arab world who will follow.

Greg Noakes is a former news editor of the Washington Report.