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Jeremi Suri, Paul Thomas Chamberlin. The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order., The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 5, December 2013, Pages 1495–1496, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.5.1495
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For all the attention focused in recent years on the Middle East, the contemporary history of the region receives too little attention. Many writers meditate on the sweeping “long history” of ethno-religious conflict and foreign intervention, or they dissect the minutiae of recent events in Israel, Iraq, Syria, and other societies. Paul Thomas Chamberlin's book offers a breath of fresh air. He analyzes the years between 1967 and 1973, examining the rise of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO): “the world's first globalized insurgency” (p. 3).
The PLO placed the future of the stateless Palestinian population at the center of international politics. Chamberlin shows how this happened, and he elucidates a crucial dynamic in the international history of the late twentieth century: the rise of influential, and sometimes violent, non-state actors. Chamberlin writes that “Palestinian fighters pioneered an innovative strategy of revolutionary struggle designed to exploit the transnational terrain of the emerging global order” (p. 258).
