Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment?

• Author: Ruzicka, Cory
• Position: Book review

Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment?

By Fawaz A. Gerges

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 304 pages, ISBN 9780230113817, $28 Hardcover.

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WITHIN Fawaz Gerges text, The End of America's Moment?-Obama and the Middle East, the author endeavors to examine President Obama's implementation of inherently stagnant policies towards the highly volatile and rapidly evolving Middle East. Furthermore, Gerges elaborates on the manner in which the globalists and the Israel-first school succeed in shaping public opinion in the United States about the Middle East and how this process perpetually cripples Obama.

Gerges embarks on his assessment by offering a multitude of contextually-rich historical examples and utilizes them to elucidate how the US has precipitated its own fall from dominance within the region. As the book progresses, the author demonstrates that Obama has enacted policies which not only possess no redeemable modern value but also merely serve to continue the realist agenda implanted by previous administrations. He further extends his argument during the concluding portions of the piece by explaining how Obama's adoption of an "anti-doctrinal doctrine" is indicative of a perennial culture of inflexibility and disconnection towards the modern Middle East.

As the piece unfolds, Gerges explains that America's course of self-destruction cannot be attributed to any particular instance but is rather the culmination of five decades of gradual attrition embodied by egregious policy miscalculations. The most detrimental of which include: US support for the establishment of the state of Israel, the 1953 coup against the popularly elected Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, the strong support for Israel after the Six-Dar War in 1967, the oil embargo of 1973, the Iranian revolution of 1979, and the resulting hostage crisis and America's military intervention in the Gulf in 1991, which resulted in permanent stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia (p. 31). The author stipulates that each individual incident is a microcosm, which offers crucial insight into the motives of President Obama and his administration.

First and foremost, the establishment of the state of Israel signaled the beginning of an era of great polarity in US-Arab relations. Prior to 1948, President Truman was strongly urged to consider the ramifications of antagonizing the Arab population. However, relentless pressure from Zionist groups coupled with the...