A hard-hitting assessment of Obama's current foreign policy and a sweeping look at the future of the Middle East.
The 2011 Arab Spring upended the status quo in the Middle East and poses new challenges for the United States. Here, Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's top Middle East scholars, delivers a full picture of US relations with the region. He reaches back to the post-World War II era to explain the issues that have challenged the Obama administration and examines the president's responses, from his negotiations with Israel and Palestine to his drawdown from Afghanistan and withdrawal from Iraq. Evaluating the president's engagement with the Arab Spring, his decision to order the death of Osama bin Laden, his intervention in Libya, his relations with Iran, and other key policy matters, Gerges highlights what must change in order to improve US outcomes in the region.
Gerges' conclusion is sobering: the United States is near the end of its moment in the Middle East. The cynically realist policy it has employed since World War II-continued by the Obama administration--is at the root of current bitterness and mistrust, and it is time to remake American foreign policy.
"Sensible recommendations are woven through every chapter of the book for the next US administration"
YaleGlobal Online
"For students of the region, journalists, policy-makers, or others interested in developing a nuanced understanding of US foreign policy towards the Middle East today, at a time when the sun seems to be setting on the US' 'unipolar moment', Fawaz Gerges' Obama and the Middle East could not have come at a better time."
LSE Review of Books
"In a thorough and clear manner, Gerges takes the reader through each of the major challenges the Obama administration has had to face in the Middle East, highlighting where the man of 'hope' and 'change' failed, and where the president has simply been a prisoner of history."
