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Ambassador Chas W. Freeman Jr. is one of America's most brilliant and experienced diplomats and an outspoken advocate of diplomacy and other measures short of war to address international problems. In the first installment of this work, he trenchantly described the challenges he faced when, as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 1990, he worked with coalition partners to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. He also reflected on the origins of Washington's numerous intelligence failures in the Middle East, "the American way of war," and Washington's consistent failure in recent decades to plan for termination and a stable political end-state for the wars it has so cavalierly launched.
American's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East is a revised and updated version of that earlier work. In it, Freeman deploys his customary insight and wit to look at the significance of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the complex consequences of the Arab Spring, the special role the Middle East plays in global affairs (and in US strategy and politics), and the roles played in the region by China and other world powers.
“Chas Freeman is one of our country’s best practitioners of diplomacy, an art he argues we have neglected in favor of military options… He has given us a wakeup call. Let’s hope we hear it.”
—Hon. Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of Defense
"No diplomat of his generation has a finer intelligence, a better ear to listen, as great a willingness to pierce self-deception or as gifted a pen as Chas Freeman. Insight leaps from every page of this remarkable volume."
—Jessica T. Matthews, former president, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
"If you don’t know whether to laugh or cry about America’s bungling and ineptitude in this all-important region, you’re certain to do both reading Freeman’s rueful and iconoclastic narrative."
—Robert Dreyfuss, contributor to Rolling Stone and The Nation
"If I could, I'd get this book on the curriculum of every service academy and defense college and university. Our military will pay the price for our wrong-headed policies unless we change them. Freeman shows the way.”
—M.J. Rosenberg, veteran political commentator