Out of Arabia

I have a piece in this week's roundtable in Bitterlemons International, on US foreign policy in the Middle East after the Arab spring. In it I make a radical argument (at least within foreign policy circles, outside of Chalmers Johnson and Andrew Bacevich anyway) that America needs to end its imperial posture in the Middle East, that the Arab spring provided an opportunity to articulate this and that Obama failed to do so clearly in his speech.

I call this argument "Out of Arabia" and the piece is here. The other contributions are by Dan Kurtzer, Joel Beinin and Chuck Freilich, and all but Kurtzer's are fairly critical of the Obama administration. Kurtzer's piece argues that Obama introduced a new idea of individual self-determination in his recent speech, with possible far-reaching consequences. All are worth a gander.