The End of Ambition : America's Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East

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 th