Craig Daigle is a historian of U.S. foreign relations who specializes in the history of the global Cold War, U.S.-Middle East relations, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.  Particularly, he investigates questions of international diplomacy in the twentieth century Middle East, American relations with the Muslim world, national security strategy, and strategies of conflict resolution. He is the author of The Limits of Détente: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969-1973 (Yale University Press, 2012), and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War (2014).

Daigle's current book project, Rebuilding the Gulf: The Environmental Legacy of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, explores the international efforts to combat one of the largest man-made environmental disasters recorded: the Kuwait oil fires and the oil spill into the Persian Gulf. This project draws on archival research from the Environmental Protection Agency; the World Health Organization; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and highlights the role that multinational corporations and non-state actors, including firefighters and U.S.-based oil well control corporations, played in helping rehabilitate the ecosystem in the Persian Gulf region after the Gulf War. This project is the recipient of the 2020-2021 Rifkind Center Faculty Fellowship. 

Daigle is also increasingly interested in the relationship between the Arab-Israeli Conflict and the growth of the U.S. military and strategic presence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region since the late 1970s. He is currently completing a manuscript entitled Camp David and the Remaking of the Middle East, which contends that the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreements not only had roots deep in Cold War politics and transformative regional developments during the long 1970s, including the Libyan, Ethiopian, and Iranian Revolutions, the Lebanese Civil War, but also laid the foundation for the rapid growth of the U.S. military presence in the greater Middle East over the following decades.

In addition to authoring several chapters in edited collections, he has also published articles and essays in the Washington Post, Diplomatic History, Cold War History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Reviews in American History, and the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

Ph.D George Washington University

M.A. James Madison University

B.A. University of Maryland at College Park

HIST 78500  Arab-Israeli Conflict

U.S. Foreign Relations; Global Cold War; Arab-Israeli Conflict, Modern Middle East, Environmental History. 

• The Limits of Detente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969-1973 (Yale University Press, 2012). Link.

• The Cold War: A New History (under contract with Yale University Press)

Edited Volumes

• The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War, with Artemy Kalinovsky (London: Routledge, 2014). Link. 

• Foreign Relations of the United States, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2011). Co-Editor. Link.

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

• “The United States and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-1979,” in Christopher R.W. Dietrich, ed., A Companion to U.S. Foreign Policy, Colonial Era to the Present (Blackwell-Wiley, forthcoming)
• "Sadat's African Dilemma: Libya, Ethiopia, and the Making of the Camp David Accords," Cold War History (February 2019). Link.

• "The Loser of the Camp David Accords," Washington Post, September 19, 2018. Link. 

• “Beyond Camp David: Jimmy Carter, Palestinian Self-Determination, and Human Rights, Diplomatic History (November 2018).

• The 1970s: The Great Transformation in American Foreign Relations,” State of the Field Review Essay, Reviews in American History (March 2018). Link. 

• “America’s Greater War for the Middle East,” State of the Field Review Essay, International Journal of Middle East Studies  (November 2017). Link.

• “Nixon and Egypt” in The Nixon administration and the African Continent: Decolonization and the Cold War, 1969-1974, edited by Antonio Donno and Giuliana Iurlano (Milan, Italy: Franco Angeli, 2016)

• "A Crescent of Crisis: The Middle East, 1978-1983," in Lorenz Luthi, ed., The Regional Cold Wars in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East: Crucial Periods an Turning Points (Stanford University Press, 2015). Link. 

• "The Era of Detente," in The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War (2014)

•  "Explanations for the End of the Cold War," with Artemy Kalinsovky, in The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War (2014)

•  "Peacemaking as Interstate Diplomacy: Samuel Lewis, with Tamara Wittes (Brookings), in Mona Fixdal, ed., Ways Out of War: Peacemaking in the Middle East and Balkans (Palgrave Macmillian, 2012). Link.

• "The Russians Are Going: Sadat, Nixon and the Soviet Military Presence in Egypt, 1971," Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 1 (March 2004): 1-15. Link.

Works in Progress

• Rebuilding the Gulf: The Environmental Legacy of the Persian Gulf War (book manuscript)
• Camp David and the Remaking of the Middle East (book manuscript)

Book Reviews and Review Essays

• Review of The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East, by Guy Laron, American Historical Review (June 2018). Link. 
• Review of “Israel in the American Mind: The Cultural Politics of US-Israel Relations, 1958-1988,” by Shaul Mitelpunkt, Diplomatic History (Forthcoming)
• Review of Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s, by Salim Yaqub, H-Diplo Roundtable Review 19: 2 (September 2017). Link. 
• Guy Laron, The Origins of the Suez Crisis: Postwar Development Diplomacy and the Struggle Over Third World Industrialization, 1945-1956. H-Diplo Roundtable. Link.
• Yigal Kipnis, 1973: The Road to War, H-Diplo Review Essay. Link.
• Avi Raz,The Bride and the Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June 1967 War, in H-Diplo Roundtable. Link.
• Paul Thomas Chamberlin, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order," in H-Diplo Roundtable. Link.
• Paul Thomas Chamberlin, "Schönau and the Eagles of the Palestinian Revolution: Refugees, Guerillas, and Human Rights."," H-Diplo Review. Link.
• Isabella Ginor and Gideon Ramez, Foxbats Over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War, in Cold War History 9:4 (November 2009). Link.