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Best regards, Andrew Stewart Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.msu.edu> > Date: August 7, 2016 at 11:34:55 AM EDT > To: h-rev...@h-net.msu.edu > Subject: H-Net Review [H-War]: Asaadi on Razoux, 'The Iran-Iraq War' > Reply-To: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.msu.edu> > > Pierre Razoux. The Iran-Iraq War. Translated by Nicholas Elliott. > Cambridge Belknap Press, 2015. Illustrations. xviii + 640 pp. > $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-08863-4. > > Reviewed by Robert Asaadi (University of Minnesota) > Published on H-War (August, 2016) > Commissioned by Margaret Sankey > > Pierre Razoux's The Iran-Iraq War ambitiously sets out to address > what the author frames as the unanswered questions of the Iran-Iraq > War. These can be classified into two primary categories: cause and > duration. First, the book is concerned with understanding the cause > of the war. Causal analysis of war is perhaps the oldest and most > robust field of inquiry in International Relations, with scholars > taking Thucydides's analysis of the causes of the Pelopennesian War > as one of the discipline's foundational texts. While the book does an > excellent job highlighting the motives and interests of the > belligerent states, particularly in the Iraqi case, it would have > benefited from a more sustained treatment of the remote causes, or > structural factors, that gave rise to the particular domestic > political actors that occupy a position of prominence as the movers > of history in Razoux's analysis. > > This prioritization of immediate causes over remote causes mirrors > the tendency among some social scientists who embrace either a > strictly rationalist epistemological approach or a thin > constructivist approach which prioritizes agency over structure. War, > as is the case with other forms of collective violence, necessarily > involves both the strategic calculus of influential actors and the > constraining and enabling effects of the already existing social and > political structures in which these actors are situated. A > shortcoming in Razoux's analysis is that he overestimates the degree > to which these actors, as either opportunists, power-maximizers, or > revolutionary ideologists, were the makers of their own history, and > he underestimates or ignores the deeper structural conditions that > functioned as the conditions of possibility for the emergence of > these actors in the first instance. For example, the book's third > chapter "How Did It Come to This?" sets out to show that "the > Iran-Iraq War resulted first and foremost from the desire for > confrontation of two men with conflicting ambitions, Saddam Hussein > and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini." These leaders, according to Razoux, > were then able to mobilize Iraqi and Iranian society to war because > of their societies' latent ancient hatreds and, as he puts it, their > "ancestral rivalry" (p. 45). In a mere twenty-two pages in this > chapter, Razoux somewhat clumsily reconstructs the history of the > region from the early sixteenth century to the onset of the Iran-Iraq > War. This partial analysis is ultimately unpersuasive as an appraisal > of the structural factors that instead needed to be considered in > greater depth when asking what caused the Iran-Iraq War. Furthermore, > the repetition of the Orientalist trope of primordialism as a causal > motivation for war seems misplaced in his otherwise well-measured > analysis. > > The book's second question aims to explain the war's duration. Why > did this bloody and costly war last eight years, making it the > longest war of the twentieth century? In contrast to the somewhat > banal observation that the war was caused by leaders who wanted it, > the book's explanation for the war's duration is given much more > sustained analysis and cuts across the three images of analysis of > international politics (individual, state, and international). Razoux > effectively outlines how the logic of Cold War balancing and the > simple profit motive of arms manufacturers alongside regional balance > of power dynamics and the domestic political peculiarities of Iran > and Iraq coalesced to perpetuate the hostilities. Appendix F, > "Foreign Military Assistance," is particularly instructive in this > regard, as it catalogues the specific forms and amounts of military > assistance both Iran and Iraq received throughout the course of the > war, which helped sustain the conflict. > > Overall, the book is a significant contribution to the existing > scholarly literature on its subject for several reasons. First, > Razoux's meticulous archival research gathers and organizes a copious > amount of primary source data. For example, the book provides a > systematic accounting of Iranian and Iraqi military personnel and > assets. Particularly in its incorporation of audio transcripts of > meetings between Iraqi officials (the "Saddam audiotapes"), Razoux's > work is successful in correcting the bias toward analysis of the > American perspective in existing accounts of the Iran-Iraq War. > > Second, the text usefully unpacks the phases of the war, providing > greater depth of analysis than many of the existing accounts. The > conventional story narrates that Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, > and that Iraqi forces experienced early successes until Iran reversed > the tide in 1982-83, when Iran put Iraqi forces on the back foot as > the front shifted westward back across the border into Iraqi > territory for the remainder of the war. While this account is not > inaccurate, neither is it fully complete. Razoux addresses this > aporia by providing a more comprehensive and contextualized appraisal > of the events of the war. > > Lastly, Razoux is largely successful in the yeoman's task of making > connections between the military events of the war and the broader > political context in which it took place. This is perhaps the book's > most significant achievement. Military historians, political > scientists, and those interested in the contemporary political > dynamics of Iran, Iraq, and the broader Middle East would benefit > from a close reading of this work. > > Citation: Robert Asaadi. Review of Razoux, Pierre, _The Iran-Iraq > War_. H-War, H-Net Reviews. August, 2016. > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=45851 > > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States > License. > > -- _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
