War Studies

Date of recording: 24/09/2018 Description: On the 24th of September, the Department of War Studies and the Conflict, Security and Development Research Group welcomed Jeff Colgan, Associate Professor at Brown University, for his talk titled, 'Should the US withdraw from the Middle East.' According to Prof. Colgan, ‘over the past 25 years, US foreign policy outcomes in the Middle East have gone from more or less acceptable to downright awful.’ Arguably, the most notable US foreign policy failure in the region was the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but to this day, US success in the Middle East is further challenged by complex conflicts, including those in Afghanistan and Syria, and is also impacted by the presence of terrorist organizations within Middle Eastern states faced with instability. Due to undesirable and costly outcomes in the past, many in Washington DC have contemplated whether the US should withdraw from the Middle East. However, if the US were to withdraw, this decision could not only impact US