Middle East and North Africa

For around 15 years, many American leaders—including all three presidents in that period—believed that the country was too deeply entangled in trying to reorder the societies of the Middle East. They felt the more pressing challenges included rebuilding America’s industrial base and confronting the rise of China. Yet here America is, once again, fighting a war to reorder a society in the greater Middle East. And like in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, this war seems unlikely to turn out quite as its proponents may hope.

Why does this keep happening?

For around 15 years, many American leaders—including all three presidents in that period—believed that the country was too deeply entangled in trying to reorder the societies of the Middle East. They felt the more pressing challenges included rebuilding America’s industrial base and confronting the rise of China. Yet here America is, once again, fighting a war to reorder a society in the greater Middle East. And like in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, this war seems unlikely to turn out quite as its proponents may hope.

Why does this keep happening?

To understand the present, look at the past—at the only country in modern history whose global reach matched that of the United States. Britain at the turn of the 20th century was the world’s sole superpower. The British Empire’s share of global gross domestic product in 1870 was roughly 25 percent—about the same as the United States’ today—and London was the world’s financial capital. Britain had thwarted Napoleon’s bid to rule the European continent and Russia’s effort to expand more into Southeastern Europe during the........

© Foreign Policy