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The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century
Traces the history of the present political problems in the Middle East, including the text of the Camp David agreements, and analyzes the factors which will determine future peace
201 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1979
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About the author
William R. Polk
30 books50 followersWilliam R. Polk taught Arabic literature and history at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, served on the Policy Planning Council under President Kennedy, negotiated the Egyptian-Israeli Suez ceasefire, and founded the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. He has written nineteen books.
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August 10, 2025
The Elusive Peace, published in 1979, presents a history of the Middle East that is very much a product of its time. Coming out just a year after Edward Said’s seminal work Orientalism, it represents the classic model of the Middle East as a problem needing to be solved and a product of political and economic factors, with only limited attention paid to social history. With that said, as a work published with a classroom audience in mind, its objective was to provide context for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the uninitiated. Keeping that in mind is an important part of understanding the book’s value, as is placing its author in the context of his role as a political consultant and civil servant who was personally involved in the diplomacy surrounding conflicts in the Middle East.
The book begins with a brief introduction that outlines foundations, including his goal of educating people about the conflict from the perspective of an involved party. The remainder is divided into three parts, albeit with only the first two being substantial and the third serving as more of an extended conclusion. Part One is directed towards providing an understanding of the Middle East as a whole, beginning with a chapter on the importance of “memory” until the age of nationalism. Here, he emphasizes the role of the Jewish and Muslim religions in the pre-modern Middle East. Despite approaching the subject from a more traditional perspective, he presents a relatively more positive and balanced perspective of Arabs and Muslims than many of his contemporaries.
Chapter two concerns the rise of nationalism, and tracks how memory and religion were negotiated with new conceptions of the nation. Here Polk focuses on Zionism and Arab nationalism, and how imperial machinations put the two at odds during World War I. They were on the opposite ends of chapter three’s subject, “The Struggle for Independence”, and not only contested for the same pieces of land, but had to maneuver around the hegemonic interests of the great powers. The fourth chapter, “The Growth of Capacity”, examines this struggle from an economic perspective to balance out the political focus of previous sections.
Part Two picks up with Israel and the Zionist movement having come out on top at the same time that new powers – the United States and the Soviet Union – came to dominate global politics after World War II. The Cold War brought new dynamics and interests that further complicated the situation, with the conflict over capitalism and socialism turning Israeli and Arab interests into tools that could be played against each other. In chapter six, the author acknowledges that the conflict was only “cold” in the United States and the USSR, and that the Middle East was a key physical battlefield for the conflict to play out. He places Israel, Palestine, and Egypt in particular into this context and shows how regional nationalisms became exploitable in the broader global conflict.
Chapter seven brings in Polk’s personal intervention as he explores the role of American democracy in resolving the conflict. Here his writing starts to become less historical and more pragmatic as his objective of using history as a tool to solve the contemporary conflict moves to the foreground. His eighth chapter takes a brief look at the role of Lebanon in the regional conflict, but is more hopeful about the Civil War’s resolution than the reality that came to be. Chapter nine looks at the relationship between Begin and Sadat, but is again more optimistic than the circumstances played out, as he could not predict Sadat’s assassination a few years later and the loss of Sadat’s potential in ending the conflict.
The final part, consisting of two chapters, looks forward from these historical ideas, beginning with “Potential for the Future”. Here, Polk takes a realistic survey of the economic resources of the Middle East and comments on how he feels they will impact political developments. The eleventh chapter, his official conclusion, does not summarize what was written previously, but attempts to answer three questions, one of which is about prospects for peace and two of which are about the role of the Middle East’s energy recourses in the global economy. His response to the first issue is that peace is possible, but that it will require shifts in mentalities from both sides and the acknowledgement that the alternative (i.e. violence) is less preferable. As to the second, particularity relevant given the oil crises of the 1970s, his argument is that the United States needs to find alternative sources of energy but, given the low likelihood of this happening in the near future, argues that this will give the Middle East more leverage in resolving regional conflicts.
Overall, The Elusive Peace accomplishes what it sets out to do: contextualize the contemporary regional conflict through a historical lens of politics and economics. Without delving too deeply into the social context, however, it is only able to paint a partial picture and, within a few years, developments, some predictable and some not, made his analysis and conclusions obsolete. Thus, while I would not say that there is anything particularly “wrong” about this work, as its scope was always limited, there is ultimately not much value in it for either scholars or casual readers, as the conflict has been covered much better (and with updated information) in the many decades since.
The book begins with a brief introduction that outlines foundations, including his goal of educating people about the conflict from the perspective of an involved party. The remainder is divided into three parts, albeit with only the first two being substantial and the third serving as more of an extended conclusion. Part One is directed towards providing an understanding of the Middle East as a whole, beginning with a chapter on the importance of “memory” until the age of nationalism. Here, he emphasizes the role of the Jewish and Muslim religions in the pre-modern Middle East. Despite approaching the subject from a more traditional perspective, he presents a relatively more positive and balanced perspective of Arabs and Muslims than many of his contemporaries.
Chapter two concerns the rise of nationalism, and tracks how memory and religion were negotiated with new conceptions of the nation. Here Polk focuses on Zionism and Arab nationalism, and how imperial machinations put the two at odds during World War I. They were on the opposite ends of chapter three’s subject, “The Struggle for Independence”, and not only contested for the same pieces of land, but had to maneuver around the hegemonic interests of the great powers. The fourth chapter, “The Growth of Capacity”, examines this struggle from an economic perspective to balance out the political focus of previous sections.
Part Two picks up with Israel and the Zionist movement having come out on top at the same time that new powers – the United States and the Soviet Union – came to dominate global politics after World War II. The Cold War brought new dynamics and interests that further complicated the situation, with the conflict over capitalism and socialism turning Israeli and Arab interests into tools that could be played against each other. In chapter six, the author acknowledges that the conflict was only “cold” in the United States and the USSR, and that the Middle East was a key physical battlefield for the conflict to play out. He places Israel, Palestine, and Egypt in particular into this context and shows how regional nationalisms became exploitable in the broader global conflict.
Chapter seven brings in Polk’s personal intervention as he explores the role of American democracy in resolving the conflict. Here his writing starts to become less historical and more pragmatic as his objective of using history as a tool to solve the contemporary conflict moves to the foreground. His eighth chapter takes a brief look at the role of Lebanon in the regional conflict, but is more hopeful about the Civil War’s resolution than the reality that came to be. Chapter nine looks at the relationship between Begin and Sadat, but is again more optimistic than the circumstances played out, as he could not predict Sadat’s assassination a few years later and the loss of Sadat’s potential in ending the conflict.
The final part, consisting of two chapters, looks forward from these historical ideas, beginning with “Potential for the Future”. Here, Polk takes a realistic survey of the economic resources of the Middle East and comments on how he feels they will impact political developments. The eleventh chapter, his official conclusion, does not summarize what was written previously, but attempts to answer three questions, one of which is about prospects for peace and two of which are about the role of the Middle East’s energy recourses in the global economy. His response to the first issue is that peace is possible, but that it will require shifts in mentalities from both sides and the acknowledgement that the alternative (i.e. violence) is less preferable. As to the second, particularity relevant given the oil crises of the 1970s, his argument is that the United States needs to find alternative sources of energy but, given the low likelihood of this happening in the near future, argues that this will give the Middle East more leverage in resolving regional conflicts.
Overall, The Elusive Peace accomplishes what it sets out to do: contextualize the contemporary regional conflict through a historical lens of politics and economics. Without delving too deeply into the social context, however, it is only able to paint a partial picture and, within a few years, developments, some predictable and some not, made his analysis and conclusions obsolete. Thus, while I would not say that there is anything particularly “wrong” about this work, as its scope was always limited, there is ultimately not much value in it for either scholars or casual readers, as the conflict has been covered much better (and with updated information) in the many decades since.
Displaying 1 of 1 review