The definite account of how regime change in the Middle East has proven so tempting to American policymakers for decades-despite never achieving the aims it hopes to accomplish-and how it's finally time to forge a new path forward.
PHILIP GORDON is the Mary and David Boies Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region, and as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Gordon is the author of several books on foreign policy, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, and The Atlantic.
"Losing the Long Game is an engaging and provocative examination of
US regime change efforts in the Middle East. Gordon shows the
indispensability of bringing humility and historical awareness in
US foreign policy, as well as the urgent need for the United States
to cease its over reliance on military force and invest far more in
economic development, people to people engagement, and
diplomacy."
--Ambassador Samantha Power, former US representative to the UN and
author of The Education of an Idealist "Phil Gordon has written a
compelling, sweeping narrative of how American good intentions
consistently and predictably go awry in the Middle East. As a
scholar and practitioner of American foreign policy, Phil is in a
unique position to be able to connect the dots - from Iran in 1953
to Syria in 2020 - to demonstrate how both Republican and
Democratic presidents fall into the same traps when trying to force
political change on Middle Eastern societies. Each chapter is a
page-turning insider's view into American interventions gone wrong,
and the masterful conclusion, showing the common thread of hubris
linking all our mistakes in the Middle East - should be required
reading for any diplomat or military leader in training."
--Senator Chris Murphy "Philip Gordon has written what will surely
become the definitive analysis of how U.S. efforts at regime change
in the greater Middle East over the past seven decades have largely
backfired or had dismal second-order effects. Losing the Long Game
is also refreshingly concise and bracingly well-argued."
--Peter Bergen, author of Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos
"Gordon has written a devastating account of repeated U.S. attempts
to remove leaders and transform political systems from North Africa
to South Asia over the past seventy years. Whatever the intentions,
regime change simply hasn't worked. Most attempts have come at
horrific costs with unintended long-term consequences that have
further undermined the original U.S. goals. Losing the Long Game is
must reading--by someone who saw it first-hand--for all interested
in America's foreign policy and its place in the world."
--Robin Wright, author of Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion
Across the Islamic World
"An essential reflection on an enduring temptation of American
foreign policy. Phil Gordon deconstructs past mistakes and gives
clues for a better approach. A must read for US policy makers but
also readers in the Middle East puzzled by American failures."
--Kim Ghattas, author of Black Wave "With sharp insight and
refreshing candor, Phil Gordon lays bare the magical thinking which
has so often led American policymakers to assume too much about our
powers of transformation in the Middle East, and too little about
the limits of our agency. Gordon offers a compelling argument for
more pragmatism and less hubris, and for greater reliance on
diplomacy in shifting the terms of America's engagement in the
original land of unintended consequences."
--Ambassador William J. Burns, President, Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State "An
important and timely book on how the pursuit of regime change in
the Middle East since 1953 has been a disaster--with unanticipated
consequences. Written by an insider with a masterful understanding
of how American foreign policy is made, this is an urgent wake up
call to get out of the habit of believing that there are cheap and
easy ways to fix the complicated issues that the region poses."
--Bruce Riedel, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, former
senior CIA and National Security Council official, and author of
Beirut 1958: How America's Wars in the Middle East Began
"Phil Gordon has written an important history of America's pursuit
of maximalist goals in the Middle East, often with little
understanding of local conditions and hubristic assumptions about
American power to reshape foreign governments and societies. The
result is a fast-paced and timeless journey through a land of
unintended consequences. This is a book for future presidents,
policymakers, and the citizens to whom they are accountable."
--Brett McGurk, former Special Presidential Envoy for the Global
Coalition to Counter ISIS and Special Assistant to the President
for Iraq and Afghanistan "Any advocate of replacing an irritating
foreign government with one that is more congenial should read
Philip Gordon's incisive and salutary account of those cases where
it has been tried in the past and invariably gone badly wrong'"
--Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King's
College London, and author of A Choice of Enemies: America
Confronts the Middle East "Losing the Long Game recounts American
efforts over the past seven decades to get rid of annoying regimes
in the greater Middle East and to install in their place something
more to Washington's liking...his criticisms are devastating."
--Andrew Bacevich, The New York Times Book Review "Gordon, a former
White House coordinator for the Middle East, has written a book
whose depiction of policymakers' cheerful and carefree ignorance
will have his readers wincing at virtually every page."
--Foreign Affairs
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