A Financial Times Best Book of the Year

Forcefully persuasive, The Dispensable Nation is a game changer for America as it charts a course in the Muslim world, Asia, and beyond. Vali Nasr shows how the Obama administration missed its chance to improve U.S. relations with the Middle East by continuing to pursue its predecessor’s questionable strategies there. Nasr takes readers behind the scenes at the State Department and reveals how the specter of terrorism and the new administration’s fear of political backlash crippled diplomatic efforts to boost America’s foundering credibility with world leaders. Meanwhile, the true economic threats, China and Russia, were quietly expanding their influence in the region. Nasr argues that, as a result of the U.S.’s flawed strategy, a second Arab Spring is brewing—not a hopeful clamor for democracy but rage at the United States for its foreign policy of drones and assassinations.

Vali Nasr is Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the bestselling author of The Shia Revival and Forces of Fortune. From 2009 to 2011, he served as Senior Advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. A Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributor to Bloomberg View, he lives in Washington, D.C.