In the opening of the preface to Marc Lynch’s important new work, the author acknowledges that he began writing the book “in a moment of rage” in response to US support for Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, what he recognizes as just one of a number of tragic missteps in US Middle East policy in which administrations of both parties have ignored the broad consensus of political scientists specializing in the region.
I am writing this review as the United States is entering the fourth week of its war on Iran, and I, too, am filled with rage. It would be hard to find any political scientist specializing in the Middle East who believed that the Iranian regime would easily collapse, that it would not be able to utilize a dangerous retaliatory capability, or that it could not effectively close the Strait of Hormuz.
Similarly, whether it be in regard to the invasion of Iraq, support for Israel’s wars and occupation, or the backing of Arab dictatorships, policymakers of both parties have largely dismissed our warnings that, even putting aside the important moral and legal issues, such short-sighted policies make the region less stable and actually harm long-term US interests.
This is perhaps the single most important work focusing on US Middle East policy in recent years. It is quite readable and suitable both for area specialists and those without extensive knowledge of the region.
Lynch is a professor at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University, has worked at two prominent think tanks, has served in a policy role in presidential campaigns, and has advised presidents and other top officials. Over the years, policymakers of both parties have had plenty of opportunity to consider the counsel of him and other Middle East scholars. Outside of climate scientists, it is hard to find a field in which the urgent advice of specialists has been so routinely ignored.
While largely free of the ideological baggage of some critics of US Middle East policy, Lynch does not hold back in this volume. Perhaps, at this point, it is not surprising that even a sober, professional, and well-connected scholar like Lynch now feels obliged to critically analyze US policy in ways that at one point would have come across as strident, particularly in a book with a major academic publishing house. At this stage, however, it is quite appropriate.
And, in part because he is something of a Washington insider, he is able to offer a structural and comprehensive analysis of decades of failed policies.
The book’s title, “America’s Middle East,” underscores how US primacy has fundamentally shaped Middle Eastern politics in the 35 years since the Gulf War. Lynch certainly does not blame the United States for everything and fully acknowledges how local actors have contributed to their own problems, yet he notes how Washington does share responsibility in many cases by dominating, sustaining, and shaping the environment, which makes such misrule possible.
Lynch outlines how in the three and a half decades since the United States achieved primacy in the Middle East, it has done little to bring greater justice, stability, democracy, or sustainable economic development to the region. Indeed, more often than not, it has done just the opposite.
He recognizes how, despite pro-democracy rhetoric, the United States depends on autocratic allies to advance its agenda. He also notes how US policies have helped create terrorists faster than we can kill them.
While Lynch observes both how Bush’s invasion of Iraq and a number of Trump’s policies have represented the worst manifestations of the US role in the Middle East, he emphasizes that there has been much continuity as well. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have supported repressive autocratic governments, threatened war with Iran, supported Israel’s wars and occupations, and pushed for normalization between Israel and Arab states while ignoring the fate of Palestinians.
Indeed, Lynch observes how, even under the Democratic administration of Joe Biden, the United States was virtually alone in the United Nations blocking resolutions calling for a ceasefire, attacking the integrity of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, supporting Israel’s seizure of additional Syrian territory, backing Israel’s war on Lebanon, and providing massive amounts of arms to enable that far right government to continue killing with impunity. This policy, supported by the Democratic leadership in Congress, severely damaged US standing in the world, weakening US leadership on Ukraine and other foreign policy priorities by exposing the lie to the claim that US foreign policy was rooted in support of international law and a rules-based international order. Meanwhile, at home, the Biden administration’s attacks on student anti-war demonstrators as allegedly being “anti-Semitic” helped pave the way for the Trump administration’s crackdown on higher education.
Lynch is honest and bold enough to recognize the underlying racism in US policy, which assumes the rights of Israeli Jews are more important than those of Palestinian Arabs, acts as if Arab peoples are okay with corrupt autocratic rulers, and believes that Arabs and Iranians welcome US sanctions and military intervention. As Lynch says, “they are seen as problems to be solved, audiences to be manipulated, assets to be mobilized, subjects to be studied … anything but people to be treated as fully equal human beings with rights, dreams, hopes and fears.”
He cites statements by Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Antony Blinken, along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, in which they each claim that massive destruction inflicted by Israel upon its neighbors presents a great opportunity to reshape the region. This underscores Lynch’s argument that US policy has not brought stability, and that the insistence on military solutions to complex political problems is simply not working.
This racism and the determination by both parties to suppress critical discourse on US policy have been playing out on American college campuses. At a number of points in the book, Lynch quite appropriately criticizes the targeting of anti-war and pro-Palestinian students under dubious charges of “anti-Semitism” and the ways in which supporters of Israeli policies have weaponized the term, though an acknowledgment that there is indeed some real anti-Semitism, albeit much rarer than often claimed, within some sectors of the movement might have also been appropriate.
Lynch is hardly an isolationist. He believes the United States can and should play an active role in the Middle East. He recognizes there are legitimate US security interests. And, while most of those were eliminated early in Trump’s second term, he acknowledges and speaks positively of some programs by the US Agency for International Development and other soft power initiatives.
Lynch avoids simplistic explanations for the misdirection of US policy, such as blaming the Israel Lobby or oil interests. He recognizes that the existence of a “powerfully institutionalized structure” has made it difficult to steer US policy in a more positive direction. He notes the longstanding refusal of successive administrations to take the views of Middle Easterners seriously. He also observes how, when presidents have tried to be more pragmatic—such as Obama negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran or Biden finally withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan—they are met with tremendous pushback.
The only point that did not age well was Lynch’s argument that Trump did not go to war with Iran during his first term despite pressure from Gulf states. It now appears that the Gulf sheikdoms, which had been developing a rapprochement with Iran, actually opposed the United States going to war because they correctly recognized Iran’s ability to retaliate in ways that would do them major harm.
Despite everything, Lynch believes that things can change. He notes the passing of British and French hegemony as their imperial ambitions in the Middle East became too costly in the face of popular resistance. Already, traditional US allies in the region are showing greater independence. And the remarkable shift in US public opinion in recent years regarding Israel/Palestine will likely force a change in policy eventually.
Lynch does not offer specific policy suggestions. He acknowledges that that is not the purpose of the book. However, I have seen no recent study so valuable in understanding how this destructive pattern of US foreign policy developed, why policymakers have not learned, and what it has meant for the United States’ place in the world.
