A clear-headed vision for the United States' role in the Middle East that highlights the changing nature of US national interests and the challenges of grand strategizing at a time of profound change in the international order.
Following a long series of catastrophic misadventures in the Middle East over the last two decades, the American foreign policy community has tried to understand what went wrong. After weighing the evidence, they have mostly advised a retreat from the region. The basic view is that when the United States tries to advance change in the Middle East, it only makes matters worse.
In The End of Ambition, Steven A. Cook argues that while these analysts are rightly concerned that engagement drains US resources and distorts its domestic politics, the broader impulse to disengage tends to neglect important lessons from the past. Moreover, advocates of pulling back overlook the potential risks of withdrawal. Covering the relationship between the US and the Middle East since the end of WWII, Cook makes the bold claim that despite setbacks and moral costs, the United States has been overwhelmingly successful in protecting its core national interests in the Middle East. Conversely, overly ambitious policies to remake the region and leverage US power not only ended in failure, but rendered the region unstable in new and largely misunderstood ways.
While making the case that retrenchment is not the answer to America's problems in the Middle East, The End of Ambition highlights how America's interests in the region have begun to change and critically examines alternative approaches to US-Middle East policy. Cook highlights the challenges that policymakers and analysts confront developing a new strategy for the United States in the Middle East against the backdrop of both political uncertainty in the United States and a changing global order.
In The End of Ambition, Steven A. Cook charts the course of the United States' encounter with the Middle East from the mid-twentieth century through the present day. Looking back, Cook makes a bold claim: the US was--despite setbacks and moral costs--successful. That record of achievement began to unravel in the early 1990s when policymakers embarked upon a set of overly ambitious policies to remake the Middle East. Cook highlights that calls to withdraw from the region are rash given the important interests the US maintains in the region. Yet, he also underscores how those interests are changing and explores alternatives to America's current approach to the Middle East against the backdrop of political uncertainty in the United States and a changing global order.
Following the end of the Cold War, the trajectory of American policy in the Middle East has been steered by a set of bipartisan, hubristic assumptions about American power, culminating with a series of strategic setbacks that have fueled cries for reducing America's footprint in the region. Prudent, compelling, and sober, Cook has authored an impressive book that skillfully refutes those arguing for the necessity of retrenchment and withdrawal, while also highlighting the shortcomings of successive administrations' overly ambitious approach to Middle East policy. This captivating work outlines a roadmap for scholars, students, and policymakers seeking to craft American strategy for a region that is vitally important to America's national security.
