The Vital Triangle: China, the United States, and the Middle East

October 20, 2008 9:28 PM

"The Vital Triangle: China, the United States, and the Middle East"- seeking to understand the effects of the China-Middle East relationship on the United States, the U.S. Middle East relationship on China, and the Sino-American relationship on the Middle East. Book excerpts (Chapter 1) (Chapter 3). Interview with Jon Alterman, co-author. Via the very useful SUSRIS.
posted by Burhanistan (4 comments total)

There also happens to be a ton of other good content on that site.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:35 PM on October 20, 2008

This looks really interesting Burhanistan, thanks.
I've only read the interview so far and will save the book extracts for later; I was left wondering if Alterman's view of Chinese reluctance to become involved in the Middle East had been altered at all by the recent success of Chinese companies in winning Iraqi oil concessions. I do think he's right that policy thinkers here are always concerned to diversify China's dependence on any one partner or region for all strategic resources, not just oil, which of course just seems like common sense. Anyway, my nugatory understanding aside, Googling to see if Alterman had written on the subject more recently I came up with this link to a free PDF download of his whole book.
I'm hardly policy wonk enough to know what it all means, but another (tangentially?) related story this week was further Sino-Pakistani cooperation on nuclear power following hard on the heels of a similar US-India deal. Slight hints of regional power jockeying?
posted by Abiezer at 12:02 AM on October 21, 2008

Jon Alterman at Sourcewatch.

Interesting post.
posted by sien at 4:27 AM on October 21, 2008

Interesting stuff; thanks for the post!
posted by languagehat at 10:29 AM on October 21, 2008