1. Thought-provoking piece by @stevenacook, but we have to ask whether the Middle East has ever been perceived as a "hopeful" region by Washington policymakers. Threats and dilemmas came to define places and people at the expense of all things hopeful. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/05/middle-east-end-hope-recovery-yemen-lebanon/

2. The closest Cook comes to engaging this question is by noting that "a little more than a decade ago, analysts imagined a region in which political systems were reliably authoritarian and stable."

That has long been the extent of American imagination for a region it dominates.

3. In many respects Cook's lament echoes those of people living in failed states across the region. I was reminded by @warghetti's message on the limits of resilience. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/lebanon-coronavirus-economy.html

4. But neither hope nor resilience are abstract ideas in this context.

Hopefulness is an outcome of processes of appreciable reform and development. Resilience is the ability to persist when those processes falter.

What has been the US role, concretely, in these processes?

5. Let me note that @stevenacook has focused on governance and development in his own work, as have others in DC.

But has American policymaking in the Middle East ever prioritized reform and development over a narrow conception of US national security interests?

Certainly not.

6. The problem I see with these lamentations is that they give license to policymakers who never cared about anything other that security to basically write-off the region, shirking any and all responsibility to use American power improve the lots of the people who live there.

7. If those who really care about the region just throw their hands up, the only outcome be more drones and aircraft carriers patrolling what Cook calls a "a dystopia marked by violence."

The crisis we see now in the region must spur a response other than dejection.

8. On this point, Cook ventures, "the best response by Washington might be none at all."

The sentiment is understandable, but that can't be the lesson when *we* have only really pursued clientelism and invasion and violence out of the whole panoply of policies and priorities.

9. While I agree that "those who live in it must solve the problems of the region," restraint is actually a remediation for the failures of US policy.

We can lend a helping hand, but doing so will require new actors working (hopefully) through complex processes of change.

10. Imagine the amount of good that could be done were the US to stop seeking to dominate the region, and were to choose instead to engage in the Middle East with the priorities and mechanisms that countries like Japan, Sweden, and India engage.

11. My optimism is a privilege, but I am enormously hopeful about the Middle East.

For those of us working on these issues, it seems wrong become hopeless when it is easy to remain hopeful, far away from the violence and still able contribute to the resilience of others.