Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH) is running a pile-on over this Fourth of July question: Has the American era in the Middle East ended? It's in response to the arguments of Richard Haass, Fareed Zakaria, and others, that America just doesn't have the pulling power it once had in the Middle East. There are twelve outstanding contributions in the MESH discussion at the moment. The sweeping consensus is that this sort of declinism is a cyclical fashion, and that America isn't finished in the Middle East--not by a long shot. Read the entire post.

Below is my own contribution. Not only do I think the American era hasn't ended. I suggest that America hasn't even begun to fight.

America’s era in the Middle East has only just begun. Until 2003, the United States was positioned off-shore, attempting to manage the region through diplomacy, aid, arms sales, and the occasional cruise missile. Since the Iraq invasion, the United States has immersed itself in the nitty-gritty of engineering the reconstruction of a major Arab state. In the process, it has made just about every possible mistake, but it has also learned almost every possible lesson, and we see the results in gains made in Iraq. The knowledge acquired in Iraq, by trial and error, has put the United States on par with Britain and France at the height of their sway over the Middle East.

The Middle East is full of what America wants and needs: dictatorships to be broken, oil to be explored and exported, a religion in need of reformation. For Americans, the Middle East will never be analogous to southeast Asia, no matter how sticky it gets. But it probably won’t ever get that sticky: the region is sufficiently fragmented that the United States will never manage to enrage everyone at once. The United States is likely to remain on-shore in the Middle East, overtly or behind a veil, for a long time to come.

Only Americans can put an end to the American era, by talking themselves out of it. Elie Kedourie, in his famous essay “The Chatham House Version,” showed how the spread of declinism in Britain’s political elite forced the country’s total and abject abandonment of every British position in the Middle East. The drums of retreat are now being pounded by the American equivalents of Arnold Toynbee. But when Britain pulled up stakes, it knew the vacuum would be filled by America. If we leave, it will be Iran. (Haass has called Iran “a classic imperial power.”) Here is my prediction: America won’t let it happen.

R.R. Hamilton - 7/10/2008

You say that we:

(1) still support Arab dictatorships;
(2) ignore chronic MidEast problems, and;
(3) have biased policies against that area.

(1) All but one Arab lands are ruled by dictatorships -- dictatorship, corruption, and torture seem to be to the Arab what baseball, hotdogs, and apple pie are to America. Do you really want America to oppose the Arab culture that produces these things?

(1a) The only Arab land that isn't a dictatorship is Iraq. I hope you would see the hypocrisy of complaining about both dictators and Iraq at the same time.

(2) What are these "chronic problems"? Or did I already identify some?

(3) Of course we are going to have "biased policies against that area." That area is full of dictatorships -- the ultimate enemies of free people. We tend to be biased in favor of democracies, whether they are in the Mideast or anywhere else in the world.

Arnold Shcherban - 7/7/2008

This Haass' quote could have cracked up Margaret Thatcher, famous (or infamous) for her indifference to the best of jokes.

Arnold Shcherban - 7/7/2008

The American interference in Mid-East
surely has not ended, but to say it has just begun is to completely ignore 60 (at the least) last years of pertaining history.

omar ibrahim baker - 7/5/2008

Kramer's piece is "honest" in every respect except that it does NOT call America's presence in the Middle East by its proper name: "imperialism"!

With the fiasco of WMD, Abu Ghraib, Falluga and Black water, which inaugurated the “American Era”, part and parcel of America's legacy, culture and heritage I see no reason why Kramer should shy away from naming it by its proper name!

taher a khalil - 7/4/2008

we have to admit that our policy is an important part of our problems in the middle east, poor vision and lack of respect to the culture and some hidden agendas of exploitation contribute to this. We still support dictatorships, ignore chronic problems and having biased policies against that area need to be changed before we get it right