The U.S. Presence in the Middle East

The United States has been the preponderant power in the Middle East for over four decades, expending vast amounts of blood, treasure, and national attention on an overlapping set of sometimes unclear objectives. President Biden’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan has revived debate as to the future of the U.S. presence in the Middle East: What should the United States aim to achieve? How, and in what timeframe?

The CSIS Middle East Program is engaged in a number of efforts to think through a revised toolkit of U.S. statecraft in the region. The project will aim to propose brand new tools of statecraft as well as rethink existing foreign policy tools. The effort will comprise a podcast miniseries focusing on the U.S. experience with its policy toolkit in the Middle East since the Cold War; a seminar series with U.S. government, think tank, and private industry practitioners to generate and evaluate new ideas; and a report to convey findings. The podcast miniseries will be released starting in the spring of 2022.

This project is made possible through general support to CSIS.

Most Recent