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Irene Gendzier's critically acclaimed, wide-reaching analysis of post-World War II U.S. policy in Lebanon posits that the politics of oil and pipelines figured far more significantly in U.S. relations with Lebanon than previously believed. In 1958 the United States sent thousands of troops to shore up the Lebanese regime in the face of domestic opposition and civil war. The justification was preventing a coup in Iraq, but recently declassified documents show that the true objective was to protect America's commercial, political, and strategic interests in Beirut and the Middle East. By reevaluating U.S.-Lebanese relations within the context of America's collaborative intervention with the Lebanese ruling elite, Gendzier aptly demonstrates how oil, power, and politics drove U.S. policy and influenced the development of the state and the region. Featuring a new introduction in which Gendzier discusses the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the remarkable continuity of U.S. foreign policy from 1945 to the present, Notes from the Minefield continues to be the standard text on this topic

I appreciate the effort of Jeff D. Colgan to grapple with the material presented in my study of the formative years of US policy in Palestine and Israel given his interest in oil policy. However, the analysis of the origin of the US–Israel oil connection is not designed as a warning to oil companies or as a preface to oil nationalizations in the Arab world, which sometimes appears to be Colgan's prime concern in his review. The analysis offered in Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine and the Foundations of US Policy in the Middle East is about the transformation of Palestine at a time that coincided with the decolonization struggles across North Africa and the Middle East in which US officials recognized the importance of Palestine and its potential through the period including and following Israel's emergence.

This updated edition of the influential Development Against Democracy is a critical guide to postwar studies of modernisation and development. In the mid-twentieth century, models of development studies were products of postwar American policy. They focused on newly independent states in the Global South, aiming to assure their pro-Western orientation by promoting economic growth, political reform and liberal democracy. However, this prevented real democracy and radical change. Today, projects of democracy have evolved in a radically different political environment that seems to have little in common with the postwar period. Development Against Democracy, however, testifies to a revealing continuity in foreign policy, including in justifications of 'humanitarian intervention' that echo those of counterinsurgency decades earlier in Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Irene L. Gendzier argues that the fundamental ideas on which theories of modernisation and development rest have been resurrected in contemporary policy and its theories, representing the continuity of postwar US foreign policy in a world permanently altered by globalisation and its multiple discontents, the proliferation of 'failed states,' the unprecedented exodus of refugees, and Washington's declaration of a permanent war against terrorism.

Gendzier replies to comments made by Peter Hahn (2002) on her contribution to a roundtable sponsored by Diplomatic History entitled "On the Road to & from September 11th." She emphasizes that America needs to question US policy in the Middle East.

This paper, generated in response to Diplomatic History's call for scholars of US diplomacy & US-Middle Eastern policy to participate in a roundtable, "On the Road to & from September 11th," argues that after the September 11 (2001) terrorist attacks the Bush administration reworked its Middle East policy. A new policy of unilateralism & indifference towards international institutions emerged. Secrecy & conformity became the chosen methods of the president & his advisors. The "war against terrorism" was launched in such a way that the impact of past policies was no longer considered, human & social welfare became unimportant, & political consequences were ignored. Most importantly, the human side of the conflict was censored. The following case studies are presented to illustrate the historically self-interested nature of US foreign policy: (1) US support for Saddam Hussain before the Gulf War; (2) political & commercial relations between the US & Afghanistan both before & after September 11; & (3) Israeli, Palestinian, & US analysts' views concerning the Oslo accords. K. Larsen