America's Middle East: The Ruination of a Region is the latest book from Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), Marc Lynch. The monograph tackles everything from the Gulf War to Gaza and offers a compelling critique of how and why Washington ensnared itself in the region.
In a review of the volume, David D. Kirkpatrick, New Yorker staff writer and former New York Times Middle East correspondent, explains: "No one is better equipped than Lynch to tell this tragic story, written with passion, precision, honesty and courage."
After Hamas’ shocking 2023 attack on Israel, the United States stood firmly behind Israel’s near-genocidal war on Gaza, despite widespread moral outrage and significant damage to Washington’s global agenda. But Gaza is only the latest paradox in thirty-five years of Middle East policy. How did this pattern develop, why can’t policymakers learn from repeated Middle Eastern calamities, and what does Gaza’s destruction mean for America’s place in the world?
America's Middle East charts the United States’ disastrously failed approach to the post–Cold War Middle East, where aspirations for US leadership and a calm region have only produced war, instability and humanitarian catastrophe. Lynch exposes the failure of each president’s efforts to transform the Middle East in America’s image, or pivot away from the region; Washington’s refusal to take seriously the views of Middle Easterners; and its fantasy of forging a regional order ‘without’ the Palestinian issue.
Moving between American politics and Middle Eastern realities, this incisive account explains why US policy has not changed despite its horrifying human costs, from Iraq, Lebanon and Syria to Iran, Yemen and Libya.
To learn more, visit Hurst Publishers.