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Bringing the United States Back into the Middle East

It has been all too common to criticize the Obama administration for a lack of strategic vision in responding to the Arab uprisings. While such criticism may be valid, it is time to move beyond critique and articulate not just a bold vision, but one that policymakers can realistically implement within very real economic and political constraints. During the remainder of its second term, the Obama administration has an opportunity to rethink some of the flawed assumptions that guided its Middle East policy before the Arab Spring—and still guide it today. Chief among these is the idea that the United States can afford to continue turning a blind eye to the internal politics of Arab countries so long as local regimes look out for a narrow set of regional security interests. With so much policy bandwidth focused on putting out fires, the United States has neglected the important task of thinking about its longer-term engagement in the region. Crisis management is the most immediate concern for policymakers, but it’s not necessarily the most important. Instead of providing an overarching framework for a new democracy push in the Arab world, President Obama’s response to the Arab uprisings in places like Egypt, Libya, and Syria has been purposely careful and modest—episodic rather than strategic. This is partially due to exogenous events; it is an unfortunate accident of history that the Arab uprisings happened just as the United States and Europe were in the throes of crisis and self-doubt, after the Iraq war and economic recession. These events have given the United States reason to pause before launching into transformational strategies, especially in a region like the Middle East. The phrase “leading from behind” has become the pejorative description of choice for critics of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. But this term—itself reportedly coined by an administration official—does capture an important shift in U.S. policy. Nina Hachigian and David Shorr have come closest to defining what ties together the