ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could not have been written without the friendship, encouragement, unflagging cheer, support, and superb professionalism of Harry Crocker, vice president of Regnery; Tim Carney, my dream editor at Regnery; and my old, dear friend John O’Sullivan, former editor-in-chief at UPI, who got the whole thing moving.

My old teacher, the late, great Professor Elie Kedourie, provided not just the fruits of his unrivaled scholarship but also his unique understanding and wisdom about a region still too much preached at and too little understood to this day. Arnaud de Borchgrave, the legendary editor and foreign correspondent, has given me the gift of his friendship as well as his astonishing sixty-plus years of experience of the region and prescient calls through all of it. It was because I worked for him for so many years at the Washington Times that I was able to accumulate the experience that I did.

Thanks also to Tobin Beck, Claude Salhani, Michael Marshall, Martin Walker, and Krishnadev Calamur, my longtime bosses, colleagues, and friends at UPI under whom I continued to roam and monitor the region and who made every day of covering these things a joy and a privilege.

Also to Holger Jensen and the late Woody West, who unleashed me on the region, to Wesley Pruden, Arnaud’s successor as editor in chief at the Washington Times, and David Jones, his long-serving and much-loved foreign editor, who sent me out there so often, to Martin Hutchison, columnist on emerging markets in the Wall Street Journal who helped me unravel so many economic conundrums, and to Senta, for priceless advice and encouragement at exactly the right time. None of the outspoken judgments in this book should be attributed to any of them.