Back to square one: the United States in the Middle East

The American military interventions in Iraq and Syria against Islamic State have brought President Obama full circle. He started out his first term with the clear purpose of extricating the United States from ten years of military involvement in the Middle East and putting an end to what he regarded as an overblown focus on the ‘global war on terror’. Now he finds himself drawn into warfare again, re-applying a counterterrorism lens to the region.