The Dispensable Nation

February 25, 2013
irectionless” White House strategies jeopardize the nation’s credibility and interests, argues the author in this stinging critique of America’s Middle-East policy. Nasr (The Shia Revival), dean of the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies and a former State Department adviser, attacks the Obama administration’s vacillation between militarized counterinsurgency and hasty troop pullouts in Afghanistan, fixation on drone strikes that infuriate allies, and drift towards disengagement with the Middle East. What America needs instead, he argues, is a long-term commitment to diplomacy, economic aid, and rapprochement with regional powers that might yield breakthroughs in settling the Afghanistan conflict, curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and nudging Arab nations towards stability and democracy. Nasr’s vivid firsthand account of White House policymaking depicts a tug-of-war between an insecure President embracing counterproductive hardline policies to avoid looking weak, and far-sighted State Department hands pushing compromise and negotiations. (Richard Holbrooke, Nasr’s boss at the State Department, comes off as a diplomatic genius.) The author’s shrewd, very readable analyses of byzantine Middle Eastern geo-politics are superb, but his main rationale for an intense engagement with the region—America must stay in to keep China out—is underwhelming. Readers may end up feeling that an Obama pullback from the Middle East might not be as misguided as the author thinks. Agent: Susan Rabiner, the Susan Rabiner Literary Agency.

Starred review from March 15, 2013
The dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies pens an insider account of the Obama administration's diplomatic fecklessness in the greater Middle East. Drawing from his decades of scholarship and specifically from his two-year tenure as senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke, the president's special adviser to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Nasr (Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What it Will Mean for Our World, 2009, etc.) accuses the Obama White House of lacking any strategic vision for the Middle East and abandoning diplomacy and economic engagement in favor of shortsighted, tactical maneuvers driven by domestic politics and opinion polls. He charges the administration with preferring the advice of the military and intelligence agencies over its own foreign policy experts, a misguided approach that has bewildered our friends in the region and needlessly antagonized our enemies. He fleshes out his indictment with chapters devoted to Afghanistan, where talks with the Taliban were never seriously considered; Pakistan, where we failed to develop any strategy to end that country's double-dealing; Iran, where sanctions and blustering war talk bid fair to turn that nation into a version of North Korea; and Iraq, where our withdrawal has done little to lessen sectarian animosities that threaten to reignite. Nasr blasts the administration's failure to capitalize on the genuine opportunity offered by the Arab Spring, where we've cheered from the sidelines the fall of dictators with no real plan to help assure that what follows will be an improvement. The author insists he's writing more in sorrow than in anger, fearful that this broadside will be employed as a "political bludgeon," but it's likely that critics--and, perhaps, especially supporters who expected the wielding of "smart power" under Obama--will happily seize on this picture of a foreign policy in disarray. An informed, smoothly argued brief that will surely rattle windows at the White House.

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November 1, 2012

Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former State Department adviser for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Nasr has a bone to pick with the Obama administration. Fearing reaction at home and terrorists abroad, he argues, it missed the chance to strengthen relationships in the Middle East, even as China and Russia have patiently extended their influence there. Meanwhile, we keep friending the wrong friends and send in drones, making Arab nations increasingly angry. As a best-selling author (e.g., The Shia Revival), Nasr should write persuasively for the everyday reader.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.