One big disappointment is the end of Trump’s approach to the Middle East: modest, realistic, completely without illusions.

/THREAD/

I like to recount this story. Last year, an “expert” from a certain right-of-center think tank came to pitch her white paper on “Remaking the Middle East” OR SOME SUCH RIDICULOUS TITLE.

As she was jabbering, I flipped back to the footnotes section of her glossy, expensively printed paper. And I noticed that NOT ONE of her sources was in Arabic or Persian. All were just cites to WaPo and FP opeds, basically. Huh!

How could she talk about REMAKING US STRATEGY blah blah when she clearly didn’t read Arabic or Persian? Then I flipped to the substance and noticed a subhead to the effect that US STRATEGY IN MENA HAS BEEN TOO TIED TO PRESERVING STATE STRUCTURES.

To say, after the events of 2003 to 2016, that the US has been *too worried* about preserving the state system, is sheer madness.

Anyway, I have a great fear that these bipartisan / uniparty neoliberal mediocrities will once more get to destabilize, say, Egypt or Jordan out of a blinkered commitment to abstract ideas divorced from history and good sense.