This study will examine the crisis in the Middle East, using Alan R. Taylor's The Superpowers and the Middle East as the primary source. The study will include consideration of the background of the conflict (primarily between Israel and the Arab nations, plus Iran), the problems existing as of early 1992, the possibility for success in the ongoing peace process, the changing role of the superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union), and the future of the Middle East.
It would be useful to turn first to the end of Taylor's book in order to discover how relevant his book is in early 1992. In the final paragraph in the book, Taylor writes that "The 1990 Gulf crisis and the war that followed demonstrated . . . the ability of unresolved regional problems to disrupt the political equilibrium in the Middle East . . . The Indigenous social forces are powerful, and . . . the grievances they experience cannot be ignored. The failure of the superpowers to grasp this in the past only aggravated the situation . . . The magnitude of the crisis should be the best guarantee of a very different approach to the Middle East in Washington and Moscow" (Taylor, 1991, p. 198).
This paragraph indicates the author's excellent and crucial insight that the superpowers, with all their power, could not and cannot control the Middle East as much as they may wish to. The most powerful forces at work in the Middle East are social forces indigenous to the region, and if the superpowers or any other entity wishes to affect the situation in the Middle East, those internal social forces must be considered first and last. Second, the paragraph reveals the instability of the world in general---the Soviet Union no longer exists as a sovereign nation, but instead has undergone an incredible revolution which has resulted in the independence of its former republics linked together in a Commonwealth of Independent States. Prior to the demise of the Soviet...