MESOP TODAYS ANALYSIS : “Reset, Negotiate, Institutionalize: A Phased Middle East Strategy for the Next President”

(Ilan Goldenberg, Center for a New American Security)

“The greatest threat to all of these interests is the instability afflicting the region. Therefore, the primary objective of any U.S. regional strategy should be to pursue greater stability. This approach comes with a number of caveats. First, expectations have to be reasonable. The problems afflicting the region mean that any strategy will take time to show results and will lead not to a complete transformation but incremental improvement.

Second, American investments need to be proportional to U.S. interests in the region. This means avoiding major land wars and resource-heavy policies that crowd out other national priorities. The United States must recognize that it does not have complete control over many of the actors and factors in the region and that there could be a number of unpredictable complications that the United States cannot control. Finally, this approach does not dive deeply into the internal governance and institutional challenges facing the region. The states of the region will also have to consider whether their own internal governance models can meet the needs of their people and lead to sustainable stability in the long term. This paper focuses primarily on the more immediate challenges of security relations between states and strategies to address situations in which the state has collapsed.” Read all http://www.cnas.org/reset-negotiate-institutionalize?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=%2AMideast%20Brief#.VxjN4PmLTIX