a multitude of tyrants and dictators whose corruption and record of human rights abuses make Putin look like a small-time mob boss. This search for ‘stability’ above all things was rejected by millions in the Arab Spring who finally had enough of their life-tenured, but stable, dictators (the fallout, of course, remains to be seen). Consistent backing of the wrong horse in the Middle Eastern stability derby (Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Yemen’s Salih, Egypt’s Mubarak and even a young Saddam Hussein) has made American talk of freedom and democracy in the region hard to take seriously. Perhaps the time is right for America to welcome greater Russian involvement in order to relieve some of the strain on American global policing efforts and let America unwind some of its own foreign policy hypocrisy. Even if America did not wish to welcome Russia, the writing is on the wall. America’s signaled desire to ‘rebalance’ away from the Middle East and ‘pivot’ to Asia will leave a power vacuum in the region that other rising powers, including Russia (and China), will seek to fill. That is the way of the international system and no amount of rhetorical railing against ‘American decline’ will alter the present reality. Alternatively, America could retain its regional preeminence with a massive infusion of military investment and extended deployment in the region, but most Americans rightly believe that the price is too high and other domestic or geostrategic priorities must take precedence.
America has conceived of itself, since the seventeenth century, as the proverbial ‘City upon the Hill’. At least that has been its rhetoric and basis for believing in its own exceptionalism, which Putin recently chided it for in the New York Times. Indeed, unlike America’s rather self-important image, Russia is not prone to making such claims aboutbeing an ‘indispensable’ nation. Despite American rhetorical rejection of empire, America has a sprawling overseas military presence with which to back up its own notions of the way ahead for the Middle East. In contrast, it should be quite clear from even the
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