Unexceptional

Unexceptional: America's Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007 examines U.S. policy vis-^-vis the Persian Gulf since the Second World War. It asserts that the American experience in this strategic yet volatile region known for its plentiful oil and gas can be best understood as an unexceptional imperial endeavor similar in kind to that of the British, Ottoman, and other empires in previous centuries. Since 1941, the U.S. empire in the Gulf has achieved successes such as Operation Desert Storm and the invasion of Iraq. Setbacks have included the Iranian Revolution and the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Given these and many other events, which this book spotlights, America's Gulf empire has undergone repeated expansion and contractiona typical imperial pattern. The result has been a cycle of waxing and waning U.S. influence in a critical region of the world. Until its occupation of Iraq, the United States practiced informal empire in the Gulf rather than colonialism. Currently, however, the formal empire established by the United States in Iraq jeopardizes the overall American position in the Gulf, which seemed unassailable in early 2003.

Marc O'Reilly's exhaustively researched book is the first serious effort to review the development of American policy in the Persian Gulf from World War II to the occupation of Iraq. His conclusion—that the American efforts at empire building in the Gulf are not that different from those if its great power predecessors—is a welcome antidote to both the political rhetoric surrounding the Iraq issue and to the pervasive assumptions about American exceptionalism which continue to dominate most of our debates about American foreign policy., Marc J. O'Reilly has crafted a welcome addition to the current debate on the nature of U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf while also providing new insights into American Middle east policy since World War II....Unexceptional will be of interest to those concerned with the current debate on U.S. imperial status and those interested in examining the continuity between past U.S. actions in the Persian Gulf and the current Iraq war....O'Reilly's project succeeds....Ultimately, Unexceptional succeeds because the interpretive framework is both relevant to contemporary debates and a provider of new insights into past U.S. actions without being marred by presentism., The book has several notable strengths....The research is prodigious, and the scope is ambitious....O'Reilly should be commended for his panoramic and bold analysis of the region. We benefit from detailed, area studies work in the field of world politics....His study should inspire more works of this kind., Marc J. O' Reilly offers a thickly researched assessment of the evolution of the 'Persian Gulf Empire' of the United States since 1941 . . . The book offers a good starting point for a comprehensive assessment of US foreign policy towards the Gulf region., Unexceptional is, in fact, an exceptional book: comprehensive, judicious, readable, and above all, timely. Americans looking for the real story of how the United States blundered into Iraq should begin their inquiry here.

Marc J. O'Reilly is assistant professor of political science at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, OH, where he teaches courses on U.S. foreign policy, international relations, and related subjects.