The scholarly Foreign Affairs opines that George W. Bush’s disastrous war marks an end of an era in the Middle East for the United States.

In the November/December 2006 issue, Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in an article titled,“The New Middle East”: “

[T]he American era in the Middle East, the fourth in the region’s modern history, has ended. Visions of a new, Europe-like region — peaceful, prosperous, democratic — will not be realized. Much more likely is the emergence of a new Middle East that will cause great harm to itself, the United States, and the world.”

Haass summarizes the article with this: “The age of U.S. dominance in the Middle East has ended and a new era in the modern history of the region has begun. It will be shaped by new actors and new forces competing for influence, and to master it, Washington will have to rely more on diplomacy than on military might.”