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22 January 2021

Biden Doesn’t Need a New Middle East Policy

By James F. Jeffrey

As with the past eight U.S. presidents, much of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy was dominated by the broader Middle East. Despite talk of ending “forever wars” and pivoting to Asia, core national interests have repeatedly drawn the United States back to the region.

In many ways, Trump’s priorities in the Middle East differed little from those of his two predecessors: eliminating weapons of mass destruction, supporting U.S. partners, fighting terror, and facilitating the export of hydrocarbons. In other ways, however, his administration—in which I served as envoy for both Syria and the coalition to counter the Islamic State (also known as ISIS)—oversaw a notable paradigm shift in the U.S. approach to the region. Both U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama pursued transformational campaigns in the Middle East based on the erroneous belief that by burrowing politically and militarily into

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