But unfortunately, the United States has failed to provide public security goods in the Middle East, since entering the new century. With the Iraq war, the United States actually fought a war that it should not have waged, since the war destroyed Iraq's domestic order; it withdrew troops at an inappropriate time, since Iraq's security forces were far from prepared; it refused in November 2013 to aid Iraq's Maliki government with arms inappropriately, since at that moment Iraq was in need of them. As a result, Iraq has become a harbor of extremists.

In addition, the U.S. support for Syria's rebels worsened the country's domestic security, and the chaos became a fertile soil for the growth of radical Jihadists. The United States also failed to broker any meaningful peace agreements between Israel and Palestine. Its unconditional support for Israel resulted in Israel's unwillingness for concessions and Palestine's frustration with the negotiations and the peace process itself. The United States neither successfully contained Iran nor reached reconciliation with it.

The decline of U.S. power in the region also made the United States an unworthy leader. As a result of the mistakes mentioned above, the United States is losing its soft power in the region, and its prestige is being undermined. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars cost the United States tremendous strategic resources, which have reduced its overall strategic capability. And Barack Obama even wants to shift its strategic resources to the Asia-Pacific region. The resources the United States can allocate for the Middle East are decreasing greatly.

Consequentially, the last five years have witnessed the reluctance of the United States to take care of regional affairs as a result of frustration. Barack Obama's administration decided to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan; it was unwilling to launch a military intervention in Syria, which would have been the right decision, thus producing another disaster; and only decided on a symbolic strike on ISIS after two Americans were beheaded by the radical Jihadists.

And what's more, the pattern of military intervention by external powers as a means to address regional issues is also worthy of reflection. The success of the Gulf War in 1991 might have encouraged Senior Bush's successors to deal with regional issues using military means. But history has proven that success of the Gulf War cannot be duplicated, since the Gulf War only had a limited objective, that is, driving back Saddam's forces.

The lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq wars indicated that the overuses of forces and unreasonable objectives would eventually quagmire the external powers. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars aimed at transformations of political systems.

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