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Main Areas of Research:
My research concentrates on the evolution of the post colonial state in the international system. The main focus of this work on the developing world is the state in the Middle East, specifically Iraq.
I have travelled to Iraq frequently both before and after regime change. I was last in Iraq in March and April 2008, in Baghdad , Anbar and Tel Afar and in April 2007 in Baghdad , Mahmudiyah, Latifiyah, Yusufiyah and Barsa.
To date my main research projects have looked at:
- The shift from the colonial to the post colonial with the birth and evolution of the state in Iraq.
- The use of coercive diplomacy in the post cold war world.
- How the application of sanctions on Iraq transformed the state, society and the economy.
- The Bush doctrine, the reordering of international relations and intervention in ‘rogue’ states.
- The causes and consequences of regime change in Iraq.
- The descent of Iraq into civil war.
- The development of American Counter insurgency doctrine and its application to Iraq.
Courses Taught:
- The comparative politics of the Middle East Year 2
- Themes and issues in the comparative politics of the Middle East Year 3
- Democratisation and the autonomy of the state in the Middle East MA in Global and Comparative Politics
External affiliations:
Senior Fellow for the Middle East, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London .
Fellow, LSE IDEAS, Centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy, London School of Economics and Politics Science.
Fellow, Cold War Studies Centre, London School of Economics and Politics Science, London .
Member of the journal editorial board, Intervention and state building .
Member of the editorial board, Contemporary Arab Affairs .
Major Publications:
Books
Inventing Iraq: the failure of nation building and a history denied, (paperback edition, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 1-260.
Iraq’s Future: the aftermath of regime change, Adelphi paper 372 (London: Routledge and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2005) p 1-72.
Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change, (edited with Steven Simon) (London and Oxford: Oxford University Press and the IISS, 2003), pp. 1-178.
Globalisation and the Middle East, Islam, Economics, Culture and Politics, (edited with Richard Higgott) (London and Washington: Royal Institute for International Affairs and the Brookings Institution, 2002), pp. 1-208.
Journal articles
‘Stephen Hemsley Longrigg and his contemporaries: Oriental Despotism and the British in Iraq: 1914-1932’, Maghreb-Machrek, (Forthcoming, 2010).
‘The failure of sanctions and the evolution of international policy towards Iraq 1990-2003’, Contemporary Arab Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 1, (January 2010), pp. 82-90.
‘Coming face to face with bloody reality: Liberal common sense and the ideological failure of the Bush Doctrine in Iraq’, International Politics, Vol. 46, No. 2/3, March 2009, pp. 253-275.
‘ Iraq and the next American President', Survival , Vol. 50, No. 5, 2008, pp. 37-60. [Published in Arabic by the Iraq Centre for Strategic Studies, 2009].
‘The causes of US failure in Iraq ' , Survival , Vol. 49, No. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 85-106.
‘The Sardinian, the Texan and the Tikriti: Gramsci, the comparative autonomy of the state in the Middle East and regime change in Iraq’, International Politics, Vol. 43, No. 4. 2006, pp . 4 53–473 .
‘Iraq: the contradictions of exogenous state building in historical perspective’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2006, pp. 187-200.
‘Iraq transitions: from regime change to state collapse’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4-5, pp.705-721.
‘Sovereign Iraq?’ Survival, 46/3, Autumn 2004, pp.39-58.
‘US intervention and possible Iraqi futures’, Survival, 45/3, Autumn 2003, pp.103-122.
Chapters in edited volumes
‘Grand ambitions and far-reaching failures: the United States in Iraq ' in David Ryan and Patrick Kiely (eds.), The United States and Iraq : Policy-Making, Intervention and Regional Politics ( London and New York : Routledge, in press, 2008).
‘US foreign policy and the Middle East, a chapter in Mick Cox and Doug Stokes (eds.), US Foreign Policy , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press, 2007) pp. 214-235.
‘Iraqi transitions: from regime change to state collapse', in Sultan Barakat (ed.), Reconstructing Post-Saddam Iraq , (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 141-157.
‘ Iraq : the contradictions of exogenous state building in historical perspective', in Mark T. Berger (ed.), From Nation-Building to State-Building ( London : Routledge, Research in Comparative Politics Series,‘State collapse and the rise of identity politics’, in Markus Bouillon, David Malone and Ben Rowsell (eds.), Preventing another generation of conflict, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, in press, 2007) ), pp. 23-39. [Reprinted in Montserrat Guibernau and John Rex (eds), The Ethnicity Reader, (Polity Press: Cambridge, forthcoming, 2009)].
‘War and resistance in Iraq: from regime change to anarchy’, in Raymond Hinnebusch and Rick Fawn (eds.), The Iraq war, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Press, 2006), pp. 211-224.
‘Trying to reconstitute the Iraqi State: what role for Europe’, in Ivo Dalder, Nicole Gnesotto and Philip Gordon (eds.), The Crescent of Crisis; U.S.-European strategy for the Greater Middle East, (Washington: Brookings Press, 2006), pp. 123-141.
‘War and Resistance in Iraq: from regime change to anarchy’, in Raymond Hinnebusch and Rick Fawn (eds.), The Iraq War, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Press, in press, 2005).
‘Iraq and the perils of regime change; from international pariah to a fulcrum of regional instability’, in Christian Hanelt, Giacomo Luciani, Felix Neugart (eds.), Regime Change in Iraq. The Regional and Transatlantic Dimensions, (Florence: European University Institute, 2004), pp. 65-82.
‘International obligation, domestic pressure and colonial nationalism; the birth of the Iraqi state under the Mandate system’, in Nadine Meouchy and Peter Sluglett with Gerard Khoury and Geoffrey Schad, (eds.), The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspective, (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 143-164.
(With Steven Simon), ‘Introduction’, in Toby Dodge and Steven Simon (eds.), Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change, (London and Oxford: Oxford University Press and the IISS, 2003), pp. 9-20.
‘Cake walk, Coup or Urban Warfare: the Battle for Iraq’, in Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change, pp. 59-75.
‘The Social Ontology of Late Colonialism: Tribes and the Mandated State in Iraq’, in Faleh Jabar and Hosham Dawod (eds.), Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East, (London: Saqi, 2003), pp. 257-282.
‘Introduction: “9/11”, Islam, the Middle East and Globalisation’, in Toby Dodge and Richard Higgott (eds.), Globalisation and the Middle East, Islam, Economics, Culture and Politics, (London and Washington: Royal Institute for International Affairs and the Brookings Institution, 2002), pp. 1-9.
‘Bringing the bourgeoisie back in: globalisation and the birth of liberal authoritarianism in the Middle East’, in Globalisation and the Middle East, Islam, Economics, Culture and Politics, pp. 169-187.
(With Richard Higgott), ‘Globalisation and its discontents: the theory and practice of change in the Middle East’, in Globalisation and the Middle East, Islam, Economics, Culture and Politics, pp.13-35.
(With T. Tell) ‘Peace and the politics of water in Jordan’, in J.A. Allen (ed.), Water, Peace and the Middle East: Negotiating Resources in the Jordan Basin, (London: Tauris Academic Press, 1996), pp. 169-184.
Occasional papers
An Arabian Prince, English Gentlemen and the Tribes East of the River Jordan. Abdullah and the Creation and Consolidation of the Transjordanian State, (London: Centre of Near and Middle Eastern Studies Occasional paper 13, SOAS, 1993), pp. 1-39.
Unrefereed papers
‘Iraq’s new ruling elite’, Soundings, No. 41, March 2009, pp. 88-99(12).
Review Essay, ‘How Iraq was lost', Survival , Vol. 48. No. 4,Winter 2006-07, pp. 157-172.
‘The British Mandate in Iraq, 1920-1932’, The Middle East online series 2: Iraq 1914-1974, (Reading: Thomson Learning EMEA Ltd, 2006).
‘External pressure and democratisation in the Middle East’, a debate with Jana Hybaskova, NATO Review, Spring, 2005.
‘Iraq after Brahimi: sovereignty, democracy or chaos?’ Paper presented at The United States, Europe and the Wider Middle East workshop, 27-29 June 2004, Centre de Politique de Securite, Geneva
(With Giacomo Luciani and Felix Neugart), ‘The European Union and Iraq: Present Dilemmas and Recommendations for Future Action’, June 2004.
‘The invasion of Iraq and the reordering the post colonial word’, Newsletter of the British International Studies Association, (No. 79, January 2004).
‘Iraqi futures and order in the Middle East’, The Middle East in the shadow of Afghanistan and Iraq workshop, Centre de Politique de Securite, Geneva, 4-6 May, 2003.
‘Consequences and implications of US military intervention and regime change in Iraq’, Intervention in the Gulf workshop, International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Gulf Research Centre, Dubai, 15-17 February, 2003.
Journalism
‘If we move in, we have to stay committed', Independent on Sunday, 3 May, 2009.
‘The disaster of Basra is all too likely to be repeated', The Guardian, 15 April, 2009.
'Despite the optimism, Iraq is close to the edge ’, The Observer, 21 December, 2008
‘What happened to our obligation to Iraq ?', The Independent on Sunday , 14 October 2007
‘Failing in Baghdad – The British did it first', The Washington Post , 25 February, 2007.
‘ Iraq : the only solution left', The Times , 5 October, 2006.
‘ Iraq : What an unholy mess', Sunday Express , 4 June, 2006.
‘Quitting: as bad as invading’, The Independent on Sunday, 20 November, 2005.
‘E is for election. E is for exit’, The Independent on Sunday, 30 January 2005.
‘The politics of the playground is obstructing peace in Iraq’, Independent on Sunday, 25 April 2004.
‘An Iraqi in cyber space’, Times Literary Supplement, 24 October 2003.
‘A grim wake-up call for US in the fight to build democracy’, The Guardian, 29 October 2003.
‘Iraq and the Bush Doctrine’, The Observer, 24 March 2002.
Other:
Expert witness to the Iraq Inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot: ‘What accounts for the evolution of international policy towards Iraq 1990-2003?’ 5 November, 2009.
‘What were the causes and consequences of Iraq’s descent into violence after the initial invasion?’ 10 November, 2009.
Interview with Foreign Policy magazine, ‘ Seven Questions: Is the Surge Working in Iraq?
Testimony before the House of Commons Select Committee on Defence, 26 June 2007.
Testimony before Channel Four's Iraq Commission: 7 June 2007.
Testimony to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, 4 May 2004.
