Dissertation evolves into foreign policy text
What started out as his doctoral dissertation has, 10 years later, turned Dr. Marc O’Reilly into a published author. The result, O’Reilly’s exhaustively researched Unexceptional: America’s Empire in the Persian Gulf, 1941-2007, is the first serious effort to review the development of American foreign policy in the Persian Gulf from World War II to the occupation of Iraq.
In the book, O’Reilly concludes that America’s efforts at empire building in the Gulf are not that different from those of its great power predecessors. One reviewer wrote of Unexceptional “… comprehensive, judicious, readable, and above all timely. Americans looking for the real story of how the U.S. blundered into Iraq should begin their inquiry here.” In late 1999, while he was a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut, O’Reilly began research for the book. Shortly after he joined the Heidelberg faculty to teach political science in the fall of 2001, he signed a contract to turn his research into a book. Now published, he said he expects the book to be used as a text in upper-level college courses about American foreign policy.
In the pre-9/11 days, the topic of empires wasn’t regularly discussed or written about. But America’s imposing military presence and political role in the Middle East confirmed for O’Reilly that he could make a case that America had built an empire in that region, much like the regional British and Ottoman empires of the past. He maintains that global events, as well as developing geopolitical and economic interests, prompted the U.S. to intensify its involvement in that region.
Americans, he said, haven’t given much thought to what makes an empire. “Is it size? Is it military prowess? Is it foreign presence? If China had military bases in 100 countries, how would we interpret that? As a great military threat,” he added. “It is a double standard and makes for very dangerous thinking” for Americans who typically live in the present.
The Canadian-born O’Reilly said the overarching goal of the book is not to criticize the U.S. or the foreign policies of the Presidents Bush; rather, it is his take on the creation, evolution and outcome of the U.S. empire in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Americans, he said, make dangerous assumptions “that everyone wants to be like them. … American democracy works for America, not necessarily for other countries. … It would appear that the U.S. uses the idea of democracy to further its imperial aim.”
The onset of the Persian Gulf War necessitated an additional chapter in Exceptional – one not found in the original dissertation, O’Reilly said. While he was finishing the manuscript, he was simultaneously traveling the lecture circuit, talking about his admittedly controversial theory about U.S. empire building. He also taught an Honors seminar at Heidelberg based on the book.
O’Reilly is currently collaborating with ’03 alumnus Wesley Renfro, a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut, on a piece comparing both Bush administrations and foreign policy.
Posted on June 24, 2008