![](http://cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/files/styles/large_s/public/book_cover_image/9780197578575.jpg.webp)
The End of Ambition
America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East
![](http://cdn.cfr.org/sites/default/files/styles/large_s/public/book_cover_image/9780197578575.jpg.webp)
A clear-headed vision for the United States' role in the Middle East that highlights the changing nature of U.S. national interests and the challenges of grand strategizing at a time of profound change in the international order.
- Book
- Foreign policy analyses written by CFR fellows and published by the trade presses, academic presses, or the Council on Foreign Relations Press.
Following a long series of catastrophic misadventures in the Middle East over the last two decades, the American foreign policy community has tried to understand what went wrong. After weighing the evidence, they have mostly advised a retreat from the region. The basic view is that when the United States tries to advance change in the Middle East, it only makes matters worse.
In The End of Ambition, Steven A. Cook argues that while these analysts are rightly concerned that engagement drains U.S. resources and distorts its domestic politics, the broader impulse to disengage tends to neglect important lessons from the past. Moreover, advocates of pulling back overlook the potential risks of withdrawal. Covering the relationship between the United States and the Middle East since the end of World War II, Cook makes the bold claim that despite setbacks and moral costs, the United States has been overwhelmingly successful in protecting its core national interests in the Middle East. Conversely, overly ambitious policies to remake the region and leverage U.S. power not only ended in failure, but rendered the region unstable in new and largely misunderstood ways.
More on:
While making the case that retrenchment is not the answer to America’s problems in the Middle East, The End of Ambition highlights how America’s interests in the region have begun to change and critically examines alternative approaches to U.S.-Middle East policy. Cook highlights the challenges that policymakers and analysts confront in developing a new strategy for the United States in the Middle East against the backdrop of both political uncertainty in the United States and a changing global order.
More on:
In the Press
Opinion: After the war in Gaza, America’s relationship with Israel has to change. Here’s how
Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times
The U.S. Needs a New Purpose in the Middle East
Courtesy of Foreign Policy