The United States may be sacrificing future natural allies in the Middle East among secularists, leaving important developments in the region to chance when it could influence them with smart policies.
What is most disturbing, perhaps, is that the U.S. government has mounted no real effort to study the internal dynamics of political Islam, even though this is arguably the first time since the Cold War that Washington has faced a serious geopolitical challenge from a rival ideology. Washington needs something analogous to the way George Kennan and other experts researched and debated the nature of Soviet communism at the outset of the Cold War.
In this week's National Journal cover story, Michael Hirsh discusses how the United States could contain Islamism in the Middle East. In this video, go inside the story with the author himself.
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