H-Diplo Roundtable XIX, 18 on America's Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State

Osamah Khalil’s America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State is a welcome addition to existing scholarship on the United States and the Middle East. In fact, this book speaks to scholarship across various subfields, including: Diplomatic History, International Relations, and Middle Eastern Studies. Khalil argues that the relationships between American power and the production of knowledge on what has been characterized by successive imperial powers as the ‘Middle East’ (2, 3) are based on American preconceived, and more specifically, Orientalist perceptions. Indeed, the author contends the origins and expansion of the field of Middle East studies reflects both American national security interests in the Middle East and globally and America's evolving foreign policy in the region from World War I....