Obama and the Middle East

David Jervis

Abstract


This article provides an overview of the Obama administration’s policies in the Middle East. At the outset, its priorities were to reduce the American role in the region and promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The Arab Spring introduced a number of new and novel issues that the administration had to confront. For the most part, Obama failed to reach his goals, so the final section seeks to contextualize and explain those failures.


Keywords


Barack Obama, Middle East, Arab Spring, Middle East peace

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/teka.2017.12.2.31
Date of publication: 2018-09-17 14:22:15
Date of submission: 2018-09-17 13:09:35


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