Let us now consider the contrast: U.S. policy’s complexity bordering on self-contradiction and the incoherence between its operations and any concept of success.

U.S. policy does not pursue any objective which, if achieved, would serve its interest in a way comparable to how Russia would be served by becoming the Fertile Crescent’s arbiter. The wish of many U.S. policy makers to prevent Iran from becoming the area’s hegemon does not qualify. If this were more than one wish among others, the U.S. government would not be transferring upward of $100 billion to Iran and facilitating its commerce or cooperating with Iran to fight ISIS in former Iraq.

By the same token, if the U.S. government treated destroying ISIS or securing hegemony for itself over the area as Putin treats his objectives, it would be dealing with its local partners—the Turkish, Saudi, and Iraqi governments, and the Kurds and militias of all kinds—as the dominant rather than as the subordinate party. The U.S. government ends up not focusing on its own interests because it confuses them with those of it local partners. Thus does it confuse means with ends.

U.S. policy has also made “stability”—maintaining the territorial integrity of the region’s states—an end in itself, thus sacrificing fruitful relationships with the individual ethnic and religious groups that compose the Middle East.