Introduction

Extract

For much of the modern era the Middle East has been beset by war. From imperial intervention to regional struggle, the reach of war has left few untouched. The region's geography, the rise and fall of its most powerful institutions, and the pressing challenges of daily life remain entangled with war and its legacies. Middle Eastern wars are most often explained in terms of struggles for land and other resources, autocratic machinations, and clashes over identity and religion. All of these are true. But war is never the same everywhere. In important ways these broad frameworks hollow out the complexity and scale of war, and why it matters so much. What else is there to say about “war”? Rather than the political forces that drive it, the essays here are interested in and suggestive of the productive power of war, the ways it has transcended the battlefield and become normalized socially, politically, and environmentally. In particular, the contributors reflect on the role of experts, technical expertise, and the science of war in the making of new social, political-economic, and cultural relations across the region in the century following the start of World War I.