Referring to the “past, present, and future” may sound trite, but it succinctly defines the three distinct parts of Cook’s pleasingly short yet ambitious and persuasive book.
Past: Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that Washington “successfully secured its interests in the Middle East throughout the Cold War. Those interests were preventing the disruption of oil exports from the region, helping to forestall threats to Israeli security, and, during the Cold War, containing the Soviet Union.”
Present: Since the Cold War’s end, however, the U.S. record has been a disaster. Starting with the Clinton years, the U.S. government “sought to transform politics and society in the Middle East,” which amounted to a grotesque over-reach. Indeed, he argues that from the perspective of 2024, “many of the ideas and assumptions that functioned as pillars of U.S.-Middle East policy over the preceding three decades were little more than ambition-fueled delusions.”
Future: Reviewing the two eras, Cook concludes that “when the United States sought to prevent ‘bad things’ from happening to its interests, it succeeded. However, when Washington sought to leverage its power to make ‘good things’ happen in the service of its interests, it often failed.”
Washington now needs to climb down from the past thirty years’ over-reach—but not to pull out, as a hodge-podge of leftists, isolationists, and libertarians demand. Washington needs “a vision for its role in the Middle East that dispenses with idealist romance about remaking the world in favor of a strategy based on prudence, discretion, and a balance of resources.” Cook calls his approach prudential conservatism and defines it as choosing priorities “based on interests that are achievable at an acceptable cost.”
As the chapter titled “back to the future” suggests, this means stop trying to fix the Middle East and revert to Cold-War policies “intended to prevent ‘bad things’ from happening to American interests.” Cook concludes by ticking off those interests: access to oil, assuring Israel’s security, effective counterterrorism, stopping the proliferation of WND, facing climate problems, and dealing with Russia and China.
Stated so baldly, who dares disagree? Cook persuasively shows how a historical grounding offers a way forward. Would other policy briefs have comparable knowledge, clarity, and vision?
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
