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Over the past half-century, Americans have watched their country extend its military power to what seemed the very ends of the earth. America's might is felt on nearly every continent - and even on its own streets. Decades ago, the Wars on Drugs and Terror broke down the walls separating law enforcement from military operations. A World of Enemies tells the story of how an America plagued by fears of waning power and influence embraced foreign and domestic forever wars. Osamah Khalil argues that the militarization of US domestic and foreign affairs was the product of America's failure in Vietnam. Unsettled by their inability to prevail in Southeast Asia, US leaders increasingly came to see a host of problems as immune to political solutions. Rather, crime, drugs, and terrorism were enemies spawned in "badlands" - whether the Middle East or stateside inner cities. Characterized as sites of endemic violence, badlands lay beyond the pale of civilization, their ostensibly racially and culturally alien inhabitants best handled by force. Yet militarized policy has brought few victories. Its failures - in Iraq, Afghanistan, US cities, and increasingly rural and borderland America - have only served to reinforce fears of weakness. It is time, Khalil argues, for a new approach. Instead of managing never-ending conflicts, we need to reinvest in the tools of traditional politics and diplomacy.

A sobering account of how the United States trapped itself in endless wars—abroad and at home—and what it might do to break free.Over the past half-century, Americans have watched their country extend its military power to what seemed the very ends of the earth. America's might is felt on nearly every continent—and even on its own streets. Decades ago, the Wars on Drugs and Terror broke down the walls separating law enforcement from military operations. A World of Enemies tells the story of how an America plagued by fears of waning power and influence embraced foreign and domestic forever wars.Osamah Khalil argues that the militarization of US domestic and foreign affairs was the product of America's failure in Vietnam. Unsettled by their inability to prevail in Southeast Asia, US leaders increasingly came to see a host of problems as immune to political solutions. Rather, crime, drugs, and terrorism were enemies spawned in "badlands"—whether the Middle East or stateside inner cities. Characterized as sites of endemic violence, badlands lay beyond the pale of civilization, their ostensibly racially and culturally alien inhabitants best handled by force.Yet militarized policy has brought few victories. Its failures—in Iraq, Afghanistan, US cities, and increasingly rural and borderland America—have only served to reinforce fears of weakness. It is time, Khalil argues, for a new approach. Instead of managing never-ending conflicts, we need to reinvest in the tools of traditional politics and diplomacy

America's Dream Palace examines the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and the origins and expansion of Middle East studies and expertise from World War I to the Global War on Terror. It analyzes the transition from the private knowledge of American missionaries and Orientalist scholars adapted for government use in the First and Second World Wars to the privatized knowledge of think tanks with close ties to the U.S. national security establishment in the late and post-Cold War periods. The book draws on extensive research at national, university, and foundation archives in the United States, the United Kingdom, Lebanon, and Egypt. It demonstrates that the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 ultimately led to the growth and diversification of Middle East studies. An unintended consequence of this expansion was strained relations between academia and the government, which contributed to, and was compounded by, decreased federal funding for area studies. By the 1980s, these factors led to a perceived decline in the field, while think tanks garnered increased attention and influence. The author contrasts the post-September 11 expansion of the national security bureaucracy and the predominance of think tanks with attempts to marginalize university-based Middle East studies centers and scholars

This dissertation examines how U.S. foreign policy shaped the origins and expansion of Middle East studies and expertise. For over sixty years the United States has considered the area called the "Middle East" to be vital to its national security interests, and governmental and academic institutions have been essential pillars in support of this policy. America's involvement in the Middle East has matched its rise as a global superpower and I argue that U.S. foreign policy significantly influenced the production and professionalization of knowledge about the region. I demonstrate that passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 ultimately led to the growth and diversification of the field. Moreover, my dissertation contends that an unintended consequence of this expansion was strained relations between academia and the government, which contributed to and was compounded by decreased federal funding for area studies. By the late and post-Cold War periods, I assert that these factors led to a perceived decline in the field while private think tanks garnered increased attention and influence.Drawing on research completed at national, university, and foundation archives, I explain how key governmental and non-governmental institutions collaborated to promote Middle East studies and expertise. I examine early American attempts to produce contemporary regional expertise through different wartime agencies and programs during the First and Second World Wars. In particular, I focus on the Inquiry, a group of scholars created to help President Woodrow Wilson prepare for the Versailles Peace Conference, as well as the Office of Strategic Services and the Army Specialized Training Program. I assert that the example of these initial efforts and their alumni helped establish the institutional precursors for the development of area studies. During and after the Cold War, I analyze how the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency coordinated with the Middle East studies programs at Princeton and Harvard and supported the American Universities of Beirut and Cairo. I also discuss the coordination of private foundations and academic societies with governmental agencies as well as their funding and support of area studies programs before and after the NDEA. This includes the activities of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies. I conclude that different regimes of knowledge production and cultures of expertise related to the Middle East have emerged over the past century. While these regimes have often intersected and competed for supremacy, I contend that U.S. foreign policy interests and goals have had a predominant influence on the contested ways knowledge is produced, communicated, and consumed. I demonstrate that the terminology and associated geographical representations inherent in U.S. foreign policy discourse has been adopted and promulgated by academic scholarship on the Middle East. Thus, revealing that even when Washington's policies are contested by area experts its interests have already been subsumed into existing discourse on the region. While university-based Middle East studies were successful in expanding and enhancing the U.S.'s knowledge about the region and producing potential candidates for government service, I assert that the foreign policy and intelligence establishments developed their own processes for collecting and analyzing information and trends which benefited from but were independent of academic scholarship on the Middle East. Furthermore, I argue that think tanks emerged at the expense of university-based Middle East studies programs by actively pursuing research agendas in support of U.S. foreign policy objectives in the region.