Description
An RSAA webinar with Steven A Cook.
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.
But with conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, complex and critically important relationships with key regional players like Saudi Arabia and the myriad ways in which the region is linked to global geopolitical, economic and security issues, is withdrawal really an option for the United States?
This event will explore the challenges that policymakers, analysts and the incoming President of the United States must confront in developing a new strategy for the United States in the Middle East, this against the backdrop of a changing global order and America’s changing interests in the region.
Steven A. Cook is Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies and director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy. Cook is the author of the recently published book, The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East among several other titles.
Cook is a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine and prior to joining CFR, was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (2001–02) and a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1995–96).
