Undeterred by the ferocity of recent naval warfare, I had something to say about US Middle East policy in The National Interest recently. It’s essentially an elaboration of this post, in which I presented a comprehensive policy program which will, at least, never be beaten for succinctness.

Given that I was publishing in The National Interest, I didn’t raise any questions about the assumptions implicit in the term “national interest”. But, for the CT audience, I’ll spell out that nothing in my argument changes if you replace it with “US ruling class interest” or similar. The Middle East policy views and objectives of the US ruling class (however defined) are just as incoherent and unachievable as those of the US polity as a whole.

Opening para gives the flavor

The foreign-policy debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is expected to spend a lot of time on the attacks on embassies in Libya and Egypt, which were either sparked by an absurdly bigoted anti-Islamic film or used this film as cover for a pre-planned terror attack. Whatever its value as a debating point, this episode has laid bare the bipartisan incoherence of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.