Obama and the Middle East

Obama and the Middle East PDF

Author: Fawaz A. Gerges

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2012-05-22

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1137000163

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A hard-hitting assessment of Obama's current foreign policy and a sweeping look at the future of the Middle East The 2011 Arab Spring upended the status quo in the Middle East and poses new challenges for the United States. Here, Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's top Middle East scholars, delivers a full picture of US relations with the region. He reaches back to the post-World War II era to explain the issues that have challenged the Obama administration and examines the president's responses, from his negotiations with Israel and Palestine to his drawdown from Afghanistan and withdrawal from Iraq. Evaluating the president's engagement with the Arab Spring, his decision to order the death of Osama bin Laden, his intervention in Libya, his relations with Iran, and other key policy matters, Gerges highlights what must change in order to improve US outcomes in the region. Gerges' conclusion is sobering: the United States is near the end of its moment in the Middle East. The cynically realist policy it has employed since World War II-continued by the Obama administration--is at the root of current bitterness and mistrust, and it is time to remake American foreign policy.

Obama's Peace in the Middle East

Obama's Peace in the Middle East PDF

Author: Ali Abdul Rashid

Publisher: Author House

Published: 2009-05-28

Total Pages: 80

ISBN-13: 1467850152

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Historic change has come to America with the election ofPresident Obama asthe first African American president. President Obama is on a global mission to not only bridge the gap of racial divide in America, but also to bring peace to the Middle East. The Americanpeoplehas captured his vision of hope and change, and the spirit of change is sweeping the country with the rejuvenation of the American spirit. The threat of terrorism is stilla serious threat to our nation, and we mustsupport the vision of our administration to insure our peace and security.

Bending History

Bending History PDF

Author: Martin S. Indyk

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2013-09-04

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0815724470

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By the time of Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States, he had already developed an ambitious foreign policy vision. By his own account, he sought to bend the arc of history toward greater justice, freedom, and peace; within a year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, largely for that promise. In Bending History, Martin Indyk, Kenneth Lieberthal, and Michael O’Hanlon measure Obama not only against the record of his predecessors and the immediate challenges of the day, but also against his own soaring rhetoric and inspiring goals. Bending History assesses the considerable accomplishments as well as the failures and seeks to explain what has happened. Obama's best work has been on major and pressing foreign policy challenges—counterterrorism policy, including the daring raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden; the "reset" with Russia; managing the increasingly significant relationship with China; and handling the rogue states of Iran and North Korea. Policy on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, has reflected serious flaws in both strategy and execution. Afghanistan policy has been plagued by inconsistent messaging and teamwork. On important "softer" security issues—from energy and climate policy to problems in Africa and Mexico—the record is mixed. As for his early aspiration to reshape the international order, according greater roles and responsibilities to rising powers, Obama's efforts have been well-conceived but of limited effectiveness. On issues of secondary importance, Obama has been disciplined in avoiding fruitless disputes (as with Chavez in Venezuela and Castro in Cuba) and insisting that others take the lead (as with Qaddafi in Libya). Notwithstanding several missteps, he has generally managed well the complex challenges of the Arab awakenings, striving to strike the right balance between U.S. values and interests. The authors see Obama's foreign policy to date as a triumph of discipline and realism over ideology. He has been neither the transformative beacon his devotees have wanted, nor the weak apologist for America that his critics allege. They conclude that his grand strategy for promoting American interests in a tumultuous world may only now be emerging, and may yet be curtailed by conflict with Iran. Most of all, they argue that he or his successor will have to embrace U.S. economic renewal as the core foreign policy and national security challenge of the future.

US Middle East Policy in Obama’s Second Term

US Middle East Policy in Obama’s Second Term PDF

Author: Juan R. I. Cole

Publisher: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research

Published: 2013-10-16

Total Pages: 14

ISBN-13: 9948146689

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President Barack Obama in his second term faces a range of Middle East issues, including Iran, Israel and Palestine, the aftermath of the Arab political upheavals of 2011, and the implications of climate change and green energy for the US relationship with the Gulf oil monarchies. Some of his policies are likely to remain substantially unchanged from his first term, but the addition of Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to his cabinet will cause some shifts. In particular, the administration’s pivot away from the Middle East toward Asia may be slowed or reinterpreted. President Barack Obama has announced his intention of completing his military disengagement from the Middle East by winding down the Afghanistan War and withdrawing most or possibly all US troops from that country by the end of 2014. After the first decade of the 21st century, in which the United States was, for good or ill, a transformative force in Middle Eastern politics, Obama has set a much more cautious and pragmatic course for the second decade. His administration will continue to pressure Iran diplomatically and economically, but key cabinet officers have cast doubt on the utility of striking that country. Washington has signaled that it wants to avoid a military entanglement in Syria. In the first Obama administration, it announced a policy of pivoting toward Asia, and put many of its diplomatic efforts into Pacific Rim relationships. Even if this policy is moderated in the second term, Asia will certainly bulk large. Because Obama envisages a transition to an electricity and transportation grid fueled by domestic oil, wind and solar energy, he does not seem to believe that Middle-East petroleum has long-term significance for US security, and this calculation may make him less concerned about the Iranian challenge. On the other hand, he is unlikely to relinquish the US strategic position in the Gulf, which will likely remain important to the economy of America and its allies for two or three decades, even if that importance gradually declines. While the Obama team’s preference for a “rebalancing” toward Asia might be modified by Kerry’s hope that he can maintain good relations with China, it seems far more likely that the important foreign policy breakthroughs in Obama’s second term will come along the Pacific Rim than in a troubled Middle East.

Barack Obama’s Legacy in the Middle East

Barack Obama’s Legacy in the Middle East PDF

Author: Joseph A. Kéchichian

Publisher: King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS)

Published: 2015-05-01

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 6038032649

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The Obama administration’s record in the Middle East from 2008 to the present included several failed opportunities, although what stood above all else was the lack of urgency to tackle the Arab-Israeli peace process, still the enduring concern that galvanizes Arab opinion. With little hope for any prospects for a revival in the aftermath of a public row between Mr. Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it seems that Obama opted to maintain a critical distance between his administration and perennial Middle Eastern concerns. Still, three specific issues are identified in this paper that, inter alia, highlight both existing challenges and fresh ones that emerged in the aftermath of the post-2001 wars in the Middle East and the post-2010 Arab uprisings. These are the Question of Palestine and Washington’s peace process efforts, Washington’s putative rapprochement with Iran, and the ongoing civil war in Syria. The paper discusses these issues, highlights the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s views, and provides an assessment of varying perceptions between Riyadh and Washington. It concludes with a brief evaluation of security conditions on the Arabian peninsula in the aftermath of Operation Decisive Storm, launched on March 25, 2015 against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land

We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land PDF

Author: Jimmy Carter

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-02-18

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1849830657

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President Carter has been a student of the biblical Holy Land all his life. For the last three decades, as president of the United States and as founder of The Carter Center, he has studied the complex and interrelated issues of the region's conflicts and has been actively involved in reconciling them. He knows the leaders of all factions in the region who will need to play key roles, and he sees encouraging signs among them. Carter describes the history of previous peace efforts and why they fell short. He argues persuasively that the road to a peace agreement is now open and that it has broad international and regional support. Most of all, since there will be no progress without courageous and sustained U.S. leadership, he says the time for progress is now. President Barack Obama is committed to a personal effort to exert that leadership, starting early in his administration. This is President Carter's call for action, and he lays out a practical and achievable path to peace.

New Beginning in US-Muslim Relations

New Beginning in US-Muslim Relations PDF

Author: Eugenio Lilli

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-06-01

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 1137583622

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This book carries out a comparative study of the US response to popular uprisings in the Middle East as an evaluation of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy commitments. In 2009, Obama publicly pledged “a new beginning in US-Muslim relations,” causing eager expectation of a clear shift in US foreign policy after the election of the 44th president of the United States. However, the achievement of such a shift was made particularly difficult by the existence of multiple, and sometimes conflicting, US interests in the region which influenced the Obama administration’s response to the popular uprisings in five Muslim-majority countries: Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. After providing a detailed analysis of the traditional features of both US foreign policy rhetoric and practice, this book turns its focus to the Obama administration’s response to the 2011 Arab Awakening to determine whether Obama’s foreign policy has indeed brought about a new beginning in US-Muslim relations.

Losing an Enemy

Losing an Enemy PDF

Author: Trita Parsi

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 0300218168

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The definitive book on Obama's historic nuclear deal with Iran from the author of the Foreign Affairs Best Book on the Middle East in 2012 This timely book focuses on President Obama's deeply considered strategy toward Iran's nuclear program and reveals how the historic agreement of 2015 broke the persistent stalemate in negotiations that had blocked earlier efforts. The deal accomplished two major feats in one stroke: it averted the threat of war with Iran and prevented the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Trita Parsi, a Middle East foreign policy expert who advised the Obama White House throughout the talks and had access to decision-makers and diplomats on the U.S. and Iranian sides alike, examines every facet of a triumph that could become as important and consequential as Nixon's rapprochement with China. Drawing from more than seventy-five in-depth interviews with key decision-makers, including Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, this is the first authoritative account of President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement.

The Missing Peace

The Missing Peace PDF

Author: Dennis Ross

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2005-06

Total Pages: 900

ISBN-13: 9780374529802

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The Missing Peace, published to great acclaim last year, is the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever written.

Brokers of Deceit

Brokers of Deceit PDF

Author: Rashid Khalidi

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2013-03-12

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0807044768

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Winner of the 2014 Lionel Trilling Book Award An examination of the failure of the United States as a broker in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, through three key historical moments For more than seven decades the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people has raged on with no end in sight, and for much of that time, the United States has been involved as a mediator in the conflict. In this book, acclaimed historian Rashid Khalidi zeroes in on the United States’s role as the purported impartial broker in this failed peace process. Khalidi closely analyzes three historical moments that illuminate how the United States’ involvement has, in fact, thwarted progress toward peace between Israel and Palestine. The first moment he investigates is the “Reagan Plan” of 1982, when Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin refused to accept the Reagan administration’s proposal to reframe the Camp David Accords more impartially. The second moment covers the period after the Madrid Peace Conference, from 1991 to 1993, during which negotiations between Israel and Palestine were brokered by the United States until the signing of the secretly negotiated Oslo accords. Finally, Khalidi takes on President Barack Obama’s retreat from plans to insist on halting the settlements in the West Bank. Through in-depth research into and keen analysis of these three moments, as well as his own firsthand experience as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the 1991 pre–Oslo negotiations in Washington, DC, Khalidi reveals how the United States and Israel have actively colluded to prevent a Palestinian state and resolve the situation in Israel’s favor. Brokers of Deceit bares the truth about why peace in the Middle East has been impossible to achieve: for decades, US policymakers have masqueraded as unbiased agents working to bring the two sides together, when, in fact, they have been the agents of continuing injustice, effectively preventing the difficult but essential steps needed to achieve peace in the region.