Schwab's work is five-part analysis of US policy and strategy in the Persian Gulf from 1990-2003. He begins the work by analyzing the prominence of the Persian Gulf in US global strategic thinking during the last decade of the Cold War. By that time, gulf oil had secured a paramount place in the minds of the Reagan and Bush administrations. Part two dissects the relationship that individuals and regional governments in the Persian Gulf shared with the US. Here, Schwab also examines US perceptions of those entities and demonstrates how they helped shape US policy and define the status of those nations in the eyes of US policymakers. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the paradigm shifted dramatically. Part three examines US decision-making in the period immediately after that invasion.

The Gulf wars and American foreign relations -- The Persian Gulf and the late Cold War -- The first Gulf war -- The interregnum: Clinton and the Gulf -- The third act: George W. Bush and the Gulf -- The second Gulf war -- The liberal technocratic order in the Persian Gulf.