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This chapter explores the origins of the U.S. military’s complex relationship with the Gulf Arab monarchies, especially with the Saud royal family, following the Second World War. A more permanent U.S. military basing presence was never an inevitable conclusion and depended upon a combination of shifting national security dynamics and U.S. military and economic aid packages. This chapter examines the key domestic opposition groups influenced by pan-Arab nationalism that threatened the monarchy versus external security factors, including threats emanating from the Hashemite Kingdom and a rising Soviet Union. Though pan-Arab nationalism played a certain role in stimulating domestic instability in Saudi Arabia, three separate regional factors played a more influential role in determining the Saud monarchy’s decision to permit the continued U.S. military basing presence: Hashemite threats to invade the kingdom, the ongoing Buraimi Oasis crisis between Great Britain and the Trucial Shaykhdoms, and the Suez Canal crisis.

This chapter examines the events that led to the eventual basing termination and expulsion of the U.S. military from its Saudi bases in 1962. With fewer external security concerns by the early 1960s, the Saud monarchy turned its attention to domestic politics and rising concerns regarding Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s influence over pan-Arab national groups in the kingdom. By the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, domestic security concerns grew to a new high as the U.S. military’s presence exacerbated attacks on the legitimacy of a monarchy under mounting domestic pressure. Opposition groups portrayed the United States as an imperial occupying force, helping erode the power and damage the image of the monarchy domestically. The Saud monarchy appeared concerned about its survival and its association with the U.S. military and terminated its long-term basing contract in the spring of 1962.

This chapter discusses the way that the regime used its institutions and authoritarian systems to propagate its Ba’thist interpretation of religion. The chapter discusses the differences between Islamism and Ba’thist ideas about Islam. It demonstrates that the latter was interpreted through the lens of Arab nationalism. The rhetoric and symbols that the regime employed were embedded within authoritarian structures that were not always visible to the public. These structures were necessary to police the boundaries of acceptable religious discourse because the Ba’thist interpretation of Islam was not a traditional interpretation of the religion. Therefore, the regime needed to prevent critical discourse on Ba’thist Islam that would expose it as significantly different from the ways in which the religion had traditionally been interpreted in the region. This policing took place not only in mosques but also in the media and in textbooks for schools.

This chapter evaluates in detail the emergence, construction, and reconstruction of Palestinian identity in relation to the 1948 trauma of “al-Nakba.” It also argues that the experience of dislocation is foundational for Palestinian identity. The events of 1948, which have been referred to as al-Nakba, form the promptest reason for the failure of development of Palestinian nation-state. The al-Nakba presented a crucial rhetorical shift, rather than the beginning or ending of an era. This term was first introduced in 1948 by one of the chief theorists of Arab Nationalism, Constantine Zurayk. It is found that the experience of al-Nakba and the rhetorical shift that accompanied it did not impact all Palestinian Arabs. Moreover, the reductive transformation of the Palestinians into a single group worsened those who lived the al-Nakba experience of their “Palestinianness”.

This chapter provides an account of Norman Anderson’s participation in World War II and his influence on Britain’s approach to the ‘Libyan Question’. It places Anderson’s involvement in Britain’s intelligence services and his organization of covert operations amongst prominent Libyan exiles in its cultural, religious and political contexts and shows how Anderson’s wartime experience shaped his views of Arab nationalism and provided him a degree of prestige in the Arab world. During the war, Anderson partnered with members of the Sanusi Order, a Sufi Muslim order popular in North Africa. After the war, he helped advocate for an independent Libyan state under British protection with the head of the Sanusi Order serving as head of state in a constitutional monarchy.

This chapter looks at the history of Ottoman Palestine from the late 18^th century up to the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, focusing on the historic ties to the land of both Palestinians and Jews. It then looks at why both communities welcomed the revolution, adopting a sense of Ottoman civic identity. However, rather than bringing the two communities together, Ottomanism did the opposite, placing the two communities on a track of conflict, with each community taking steps to “claim the homeland.”

Chapter 1 investigates Lebanese Armenians’ triangulations and balancing acts vis-à-vis the Lebanese state, its wider Arab environment, and the Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic (ASSR) around the time of Lebanon’s independence in the mid 1940s. I pursue this inquiry by closely analyzing Armenian language newspapers published in Beirut. These often ideologically opposed newspapers, the leftist Ararad, the communist Joghovourti Tzain, the capitalist yet supporter of the Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic (ASSR) Zartonk, and the firmly right-wing nationalist Dashnak Aztag reflected the issues of interest of the day. I explore four themes. The first is Armenians’ position in and vis-à-vis the Lebanese polity as well as vis-à-vis Syria. A second concerns language, and specifically the multiple roles of Arabic and its relationship with Armenian. The next one has to do with the ambiguities of spaces relevant for Armenians in and beyond Lebanon, including the ASSR. And a last one concerns the fascinating political positioning of the church that, although conservative, felt forced to support communist Armenia and the USSR as the ASSR’s protector.