Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online Volume 1, Issue 1 | Page 51

2/2/2016

Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

Engaging Extremists: Trade-offs, Timing and Diplomacy
By: I.W. Zartman
G.O. Faure, editors
Engaging Extremists: Trade-offs, Timing and Diplomacy. Washington. United States Institute of Peace, 2011. 311pp.
$24.95. ISBN: 978-1601270740.
Volume: 1 Issue: 1
April 2013
Review by
Seth J. Frantzman, PhD
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Israel
As a new decade has dawned under the leadership of U.S. President Barack Obama, there has been some hope that the acrimony of the Bush years
and the War on Terror would recede. However the number of terrorist incidents has not been declining greatly; in Nigeria and elsewhere, random
and complex terrorist attacks continue to take numerous lives. In this volume, editors I. William Zartman of Johns Hopkins University and Olivier
Faure of the Sorbonne, seek to examine strategies and trade-offs associated with negotiating with terrorist organization and extremist groups.
The most important hurdle the Zartman and Faure identify is how a state can overcome the knee-jerk feeling that negotiating is a type of
concession, a failure. “Negotiating with terrorist organizations is not talking with the devil. It