Israel’s destruction of Gaza and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran “together have dealt a death blow to the American Middle East,” writes Marc Lynch in a new essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs. Just as the 1956 Suez crisis “did not immediately end the British and French empires” in the region, the full effects of today’s conflicts will “take time to materialize.” But the old U.S.-led order is already “giving way to something new.”
The United States still has a chance to change the policies that have produced disaster, Lynch argues. If Washington is willing to stop supporting autocrats, shielding its allies from accountability, and containing its enemies with military might, it might be able to “engage with the region in a healthier way” and encourage the stability it “has claimed to want all along.”
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