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Former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, has called for fresh thinking in U.S. foreign policy and foreign engagements after the wars in Iran and Afghanistan cost the U.S. about one trillion dollars. He says the U.S. should avoid single issue engagement, get the participation of other countries, and increase common ground on a host of issues which concern most of the major nations in the world. This is why we have a G-20 and not a G-8, says Hagel. This policy also helps the U.S. by having other countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East take up some of the responsibilities that would otherwise fall disproportionately on the U.S., and lets the U.S. devote attention to strengthening the domestic economy which underpins strength in world affairs. On Iran he sees continuing talks as the better approach to coming up with a solution, for which he has come under criticism from some Republicans.

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Pultizer prize winning journalist for reporting on the Middle East, Karen Elliott House, reports on Saudi Arabia and Middle East following the Arab Spring and the changes in the Middle East. A vast demographic of young people is stuck in the region facing an impasse of poor leaders, internal divisions, and lack of jobs or economic opportunity, following a failed Arab Spring. Their aspirations for a better life on hold.

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Fomer Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says America needs to take up a vigorous foreign policy in his book "Worthy Fights." Both Panetta and Hillary Clinton, and Gen. Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Petraeus of the CIA, supported U.S. taking a strong stand in Syria by supporting Syrian opposition forces in the summer of 2011 and were overruled by president Obama and his election advisers because of the approaching 2012 election. Here Mark Landler provides more insights into Hillary Clinton's deeply held belief shared with Panetta that the U.S. had to take strong action where necessary to deter foes, to get into the ring to use Panetta's expression. The U.S. support for action in Libya to support Britain and France comes from the efforts of Clinton, and any lack of followup one of president Obama's errors in foreign policy. In April 2016 president Obama said that he considered his failure to followup in Libya to help the new Libyan government his biggest mistake in his presidency. Here Mark Landler looks at Hillary Clinton's entire career as showing a conviction and belief on the need for action where necessary in the U.S. global engagement. Compared to the bluster of the candidates Trump, Cruz and Sanders, with little experience to back this up in their careers in real estate, law or the Senate , Landler says Clinton is the last remaining hawk. Here he describes Hillary Clinton's contact and empathy for the troops from her trip to the American base in Tuzla, Bosnia, in March 1996. In fact many have forgotten that Yugoslavia is what it is today after the Milosevic years and the ethnic wars with Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, members of the EU and Serbia negotiating to enter EU, because of the bombing campaign taken by Bill Clinton through NATO in 1999 to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and peacemaking following the Bosnian War using diplomat Holbrooke to negotiate the 1995 Dayton Accords. Here Landler describes the meetings with Gen. Keane who pushed for the troop surge that worked in Iraq under president George W. Bush. Clinton supported Keane's proposal made in April 2015, for a no-fly-zone in Syria that would help opposition forces till a settlement could be negotiated. Keane pointed out to Clinton that there was a flaw in Obama's policies- that negotiation would work only if the no-fly-zone was used to support opposition forces. By the end of 2015 Hillary Clinton publicly adopted this position. During a period when Americans are weary of foreign entanglements but understand the need to provide leadership where needed, Hillary Clinton, provides a balance between the pendulum swinging too sharply in one direction in the Bush years and in another direction in the Obama years, says Landler. A view also articulated by Leon Panetta, who was chief of staff for President Clinton during the Bosnian conflict and the Dayton Accords, where the U.S. showed strength of purpose in war and also in negotiating the peace without major entanglements....

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Nouri al-Maliki, prime minister of Iraq, on his vision for Iraq after the American withdrawal in 2011. Iraq's role as one of many democratic countries in a new Middle East and a new Arab region. He sees combining and expanding the powers of the provinces, while preserving unity of Iraq, as a way around the demands for more autonomy in the provinces. He also sees a policy in which Iraq turns down foreign interference in Iraq as the best way moving forward. He sees a building boom in Baghdad, as a millon homes are built for low income families and the country draws foreign investment.

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Libyan lawyer and human rights activist Azza Kamel Maghur, fled earlier this year to Canada with his 3 year old daughter. He writes about the people of Tripoli rising up against the Gaddafi regime. At the same time rebels were closing in on Tripoli in the third week of August 2011. He describes the Al Zuhur neighborhood of Tripoli on the day when the evening call to prayer from the Ben Nabi and Buhmeira mosques rang out longer than usual. This time a signal for people to take to the streets. Some of the youth were shot by snipers from rooftops of buildings. The struggle to free Tripoli was taking place. The carefully planned signal was coordinated with the rebels advance and NATO airstrikes. It enabled the rebels to advance quickly into the city.

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Shavit, a senior columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, says the conditions for peace in the Middle East exist in the changing political and social landscape after the Arab Spring and the social protests in Israel. This was reflected in the emergence of a new party with popular support in the recent Israeli elections. Both movements are focussed on internal changes within society- Arab societies and Israeli society. This creates new opportunities says Shavit for a quiet movement and contacts betwen the people in the Middle East to improve living conditions and democracy. This is more firmly grounded than past efforts because it is based on popular sentiment, and less dependent on failed negotiations between the leaders in the Middle East. He points to failures in decades of such negotiations and finds a more promising atmosphere in the general feeling in the Middle East that focusses on the region's problems in inequality, jobs, infrastructure, and opportunity.

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The war in Syria enters a new phase in Feb. 2013 with the effort to send heavy weaponry to moderates and the Free Syrian Army and shift the focus of the war to the south and Damascus. The source of the weapons are moderate Muslim nations, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Quatar, and western nations.

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Timur Kuran, a Professor at Duke, sees the lack of civil society, and shariah law that does not encourage the growth of institutions of civil society that are organized as corporations, as two major handicaps in the development of democratic society and institutions in the Middle East.