Is The US Washed Up In The Middle East?

That is the question addressed by Middle East Strategy at Harvard, which offers a number of short essays on the question.

MESH marks the Fourth of July by asking this question: Is the American era in the Middle East over? The argument was first made by Richard Haass in an article published in 2006:

The American era in the Middle East… has ended…. It is one of history’s ironies that the first war in Iraq, a war of necessity, marked the beginning of the American era in the Middle East and the second Iraq war, a war of choice, has precipitated its end…. The United States will continue to enjoy more influence in the region than any other outside power, but its influence will be reduced from what it once was.

The theme continues to reverberate in a new article by Haass on “nonpolarity,” and in Fareed Zakaria’s book The Post-American World, which announces “the end of the Pax Americana.” (”On every dimension other than military power—industrial, financial, social, cultural—the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from U.S. dominance.”)

Has the American era ended in the Middle East? Is the obituary premature? Is it all hyperbole? Or maybe there never was an American era to begin with? MESH has asked a number of distinguished authorities for their views.

The responses range from cautiously to boldly optimistic.

Check it out.

Technorati Tag: Middle East.