The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post - Cold War Order

Abstract

THE GLOBAL OFFENSIVE: THE UNITED STATES, THE PALESTINIAN LIBERATION ORGANIZATION, AND THE MAKING OF THE POST - COLD WAR ORDER Paul Thomas Chamberlin New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 (xi + 324 pages, bibliography, index, illustrations, maps) $36.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paper)Reviewed by Sara AwartaniPaul Thomas Chamberlin's The Global Offensive tells the diplomatic story of the "increasingly international question of Palestine" (75). His work seeks to transcend parochial narratives of Palestinian history by illuminating the role of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the construction of the contemporary world order. In charting the PLO's formative years (1967-1975), Chamberlin's arguments are twofold: First, the PLO appropriated the language and military tactics of a variety of national liberation forces, placing the struggle for Palestinian self-determination within a framework of Third World movements. Second, in responding to the emergent "political fact" that the PLO was the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people, the United States enacted a three-pronged approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict: bolstering military aid to regional allies; exploiting tensions between Soviet-Arab alliances; and isolating the PLO from diplomatic solutions to the problem of Palestine. While the book does a fine job of laying out the ways in which the United States tried to subvert the PLO's success at every turn, it ignores why Palestinians would make such critiques of colonial oppression in the first place.Chamberlin draws upon archival records of the US government to highlight how the PLO was an active participant in the international political arena, documenting the extent to which the United States reacted to-rather than solely shaped-the changing nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nowhere is this dynamic better illustrated than in the context of the United Nations. According to Chamberlin, the United Nations was a forum in which formerly peripheral nations formed solidarities and viewed the United States in an increasingly critical light. As such, the United Nations provided an important platform for the PLO to garner international sympathy for Palestinian self-determination. Chamberlin suggests that Fatah mobilized the language of the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights to demand international recognition of Palestinian dignity in the face of Israeli occupation. The PLO's acquisition of international support complicated US efforts at the United Nations throughout the period. Such was the case of Security Council debates on Israeli attacks against Syria and Lebanon in retaliation for PLO-led actions, such as the Munich murders in 1972. The United States issued the sole veto against a resolution condemning Israel, while the majority of nations, including those recently decolonized, interpreted Israeli retaliation as proof of "aggressive expansionist policies"-a charge substantiated by the reality of the 1967 occupation (165).In the eyes of the United States, the PLO came to "embody the threat of transnational radicalism everywhere" (93). Yet it is not solely through the perspective of the United States that Chamberlin succeeds in conveying the PLO as dynamic actors in the creation of contemporary history. Despite the absence of a formal Palestinian state archive, Chamberlin weaves together PLO-issued political newspapers, flyers, and posters alongside communiques and formal diplomatic correspondence. The narrative that emerges from these archival materials refuses to frame Palestinians as mere political pawns of Israel, the United States, or the surrounding Arab governments, but rather insists on presenting them as political actors fashioning their own foreign policies."As they tapped into the transnational culture of Third World liberation," writes Chamberlin, "Palestinian fighters became adept at traversing the revolutionary networks of the Cold War international system and became a cause celebre for progressive movements around the world" (6). …