Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama
by Dennis Ross
Why You'll Love This
Every U.S. president since Truman has clashed with Israel behind closed doors — and the man who watched it happen for thirty years finally explains why the relationship survived anyway.
- Great if you want: insider access to decades of high-stakes Middle East diplomacy
- The experience: dense and methodical — more policy seminar than page-turner
- The writing: Ross writes like a diplomat: precise, even-handed, occasionally dry
- Skip if: you want narrative drama over analytical depth
About This Book
For decades, American presidents have declared their commitment to Israel while simultaneously debating whether that alliance complicated broader Middle East strategy. Dennis Ross, who spent nearly thirty years shaping U.S. policy toward the region, reveals how the "unbreakable bond" between Washington and Jerusalem was actually forged through friction, calculation, and persistent disagreement — and how each administration wrestled with the same fundamental tensions, often arriving at strikingly similar conclusions.
What makes this book particularly rewarding is Ross's rare vantage point: he isn't reconstructing history from archives alone but drawing on direct participation in the debates he describes. The result reads less like a conventional diplomatic history and more like an insider's guided tour through the contradictions and pressures that quietly shaped seven decades of policy. His prose is clear and purposeful, and his structural approach — moving administration by administration — allows readers to spot recurring patterns that no single presidency could see in itself. The cumulative effect is genuinely illuminating, offering readers a framework for understanding headlines that otherwise seem disconnected from their historical roots.