America’s Middle East
Dato 17. desember 2025 11:00 – 12:15
REGISTER HERE!
The United States stood firmly behind Israel’s war on Gaza following Hamas’s 2023 attack. This led to widespread moral outrage and significant damage to Washington’s global agenda.
Gaza is nevertheless only the latest paradox in thirty-five years of American Middle East policy. How did this pattern develop? Why cannot policymakers learn from repeated calamities in the region? And what does the destruction of Gaza mean for America’s place in the world?
Marc Lynch charts the US approach to the post-Cold War Middle East, where aspirations for US leadership and a calm region have instead produced war, instability, and humanitarian disasters. Lynch exposes how each president’s effort to transform the Middle East — whether to remake the Middle East in America’s image, to pivot away from the region, or to build a regional order without addressing the Palestinian question—has failed.
At the seminar, Marc Lynch will present his new book. After the presentation, there will be a panel discussion featuring Lynch (GWU), Tine Gade (NUPI), and Jørgen Jensehaugen (PRIO), moderated by Erik Skare (NUPI).
Dr. Marc Lynch is a professor of political science and director of Middle East Studies at The George Washington University, founder of the Abu Aardvark blog, and author of The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East and The New Arab Wars: Anarchy and Uprising in the Middle East.
The event will be held at NUPI from 11:00 to 12:15, and it will be streamed to our YouTube channel. You do not need to register if you follow the event online. The book launch is organized by the Research group on peace, conflict, and development.
