BOOK
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“Spheres of Intervention is a richly researched, perceptive, and skillfully crafted book about a diplomatic relationship that has powerfully shaped Middle Eastern politics down to our own day. Resourcefully mining recently declassified US government documents, and incorporating Arabic- and French-language sources seldom found in Anglophone accounts, Stocker provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment we have of official US involvement in the Lebanese civil war of 1975–1976.”
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“[A]s civil conflicts and proxy wars have moved from Lebanon to Syria, Lebanon still bears the consequences of the fallout, now hosting over 1.1 million Syrian refugees (one quarter of the total number), and struggling with the problems that a huge influx of refugees into a small country brings. The history that Stocker presents in Spheres of Intervention — as well as the intriguing questions he poses — are still pertinent, and could be used to inform current US policy.”
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“Scholars of U.S. foreign policy, the international history of the Middle East, and the Cold War will all find much of value in this book, which casts a thoughtful light on the causes and implications of the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon.”
Spheres of Intervention: US-Lebanese Relations and the Collapse of Lebanon (1967-1976)
Cornell University Press, 2016
My first book, Spheres of Intervention: US-Lebanese Relations and the Collapse of Lebanon (1967-76) addressed the role of US foreign policy in the process that led to the outbreak of Lebanon’s civil war. I argue that the United States helped to push Lebanon’s feuding groups into conflict by providing false hope that they would come to the rescue, by providing some active assistance to militia groups, and (most importantly) by helping to prevent a resolution to the status of the Palestinian people.
Drawing on tens of thousands of pages of declassified materials from US archives and a variety of Arabic and other non-English sources, my book provides a new interpretation of Lebanon’s slide into civil war, as well as insight into the strategy behind US diplomatic initiatives toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.