American Policy in the Middle East: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead
Great Decisions 2025 | Topic 8
Analysts of American policy in 2025 have the unusual advantage of being able to assess the new president’s likely policies against the backdrop of what he did in his first term, four years earlier. The prognosis is not positive.
Analysts of American policy in 2025 have the unusual advantage of being able to assess the new president’s likely policies against the backdrop of what he did in his first term, four years earlier. The prognosis is not positive.
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Recommended Readings
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Lisa Anderson, "The Forty-Year War: How America Lost the Middle East."
Anderson provides a sweeping account of American fortunes and misfortunes in a turbulent region.
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Daniel Byman, "Why the Middle East Still Needs America: the U.S. Military Keeps a Volatile Region from Descending into Chaos."
Byman offers little hope for change coming from within the Middle East, and thus he argues for the U.S. to remain active militarily to defend and deter.
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Steven Cook, "The End of Ambition: America's Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East."
Cook argues that U.S. policy in the Middle East enjoyed relative success from World War II until the 1990s, when it turned to broad social engineering projects, such as democratization. He argues for a return to traditional interests, such as energy security, Israel, counterterrorism, and counterproliferation, as well as climate and great power competition.
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Daniel Kurtzer, "Trump's Middle East Legacy: Arms, Autocrats, and Annexations."
Kurtzer argues that Trump tore down almost all the pillars of long-standing U.S. policy in the Middle East. Many of the policies and actions undertaken during Trump's first term remain in place.
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Robert O'Brien, "The Return of Peace Through Strength: Making the Case for Trump's Foreign Policy."
A former senior Trump advisor, O'Brien's prescription for the region is to elect Trump so that he can reprise what he did previously while in office.
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Ben Rhodes, "A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is: Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy."
A former senior Obama advisor, Rhodes argues that the U.S. must cope with a challenging Middle East, without aspiring to change things significantly.
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Steven Simon, "Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East."
Simon offers a searing analysis and critique of four decades of American involvement in the Middle East that boils down to one conclusion: finding the balance between Reagan's flamboyance and Obama's "don't do stupid sh*t." Simon believes traditional U.S. interests regarding energy and Israeli security no longer pose dangers; instead he urges focusing on Iran and counterterrorism.
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