Editor's Note:

Some observers believe that in the remaining two years of his second term, US President Barack Obama will not push harder in Asia but will look to his diplomatic legacy in the Middle East. With the threats from the Islamic State (IS), will the US stay as the biggest stakeholder, or will it pull back strategically in the Middle East? Global Times (GT) reporter Chen Chenchen talked to Martin Indyk (Indyk), vice president and director for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution who served as the US special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from 2013 to 2014, on these issues.

Martin Indyk Photo: Chen Chenchen/GT

GT: Do you think that Obama will settle his diplomatic legacy in the Middle East?

Indyk: Obama does not see the Middle East as a place where good things can happen. He has two issues that he would like to promote there. One is the curbing of Iran's nuclear program. He's got negotiations going there, but it's not clear whether he can achieve that. That will depend on the Iranians' showing flexibility.

And the second issue is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where he would like to see a legacy of peace. But he is quite skeptical now of whether that's possible. Having tried again - I was involved there - we failed again. So the rest is just very complicated, very difficult. Obama doesn't want to have to take on the responsibility of trying to build order out of chaos in this region.

The "pivot to Asia" is a thing that would mark a strategic legacy for him. He doesn't want to play the strategic game in the Middle East any more. Strategically, he is much more interested in building a positive relationship with Asia, where the future lies.

So I think he would like to spend his last two years in building a positive relationship with China.

GT: In the long term, what's US role in the Middle East?

Indyk: Our longest wars there were huge expense of blood and treasure for no visible gains. Now we are back in Iraq. We try to leave Afghanistan, but there is an old saying about the Middle East, if you don't visit the Middle East, it will visit you.

There's a desire to get out, but leaving a vacuum would mean it will be filled by bad actors who will come to threaten us. Now we're back, and we will try to lead an alliance to deal with the terrorism threat from the IS. But there's a bigger challenge to create stability out of growing disorder in that region. That's a much bigger task, and it's much more difficult.

We'll be involved, but our objectives will be limited. We'll try to limit the objectives. We don't want to get involved in another land war, we don't want to put troops on the ground, we don't want to try to play the great game. We just want to protect our interests. We try to contain it, and then defeat it, but not try to turn it into a whole new effort at recreating the Middle East into our vision of a region of peace that's democratic and free.

We tried that, we failed. And I don't think there's any support for it.

GT: Was there a failure in predicting the rise of the IS, or did the US purposely ignore it for the sake of seeing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed?

Indyk: First of all, in my experience of 35 years as an analyst of the Middle East I know very, very few people who have predicted anything, war, peace revolution. There's a reason for that. The crosscuts or the undercuts are so intense, complicated and difficult to read from a distance that prediction is just very difficult. The failure to predict the development is just something you have to take for granted when you face such a complicated situation.

I do think that we purposely took our eyes off the ball. We purposely turned our backs, because we didn't want to be involved in. The IS was there, it was just another Syrian jihadist group, there were four or five of them. So we really weren't paying attention.

We were focused on ending wars in the Middle East, not starting new ones. So that's how it happened. So it wasn't any failure of prediction, it was a determined desire to look elsewhere.

GT: In Obama's last two years, will the biggest achievement in the Middle East be an improved US-Iran relationship?

Indyk: It's possible, but it depends on whether an agreement can be reached between the US and Iran. Most close observers consider it highly unlikely. I don't know. We won't know until the very last moment. Both sides take a very tough position on deciding whether to compromise. And in both countries, domestic politics constrain the ability for compromise.

There are other places in which Iran's policies are very problematic for the US. Its support for Hezbollah, its support for Hamas, it's quite antagonistic toward our allies in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel. So I don't imagine some great detente between the US and Iran.

GT: How do you see anti-US sentiments in the Middle East? There are complaints that the US just topples the dictators they don't like, but makes friends with those they like. How do you see the double standards?

Indyk: As China rises and it becomes a power with growing responsibilities, it also will discover double standards. It's a cheap shot used by people who try to score a point.

But the world is very complicated. We have different standards in different places. So what? We approach different problems in different ways, and basically everybody else does that too. I don't take that seriously.

It's a strange thing that they hate when we lead, and they hate us even more when we don't lead. So the whole world has a double standard when it comes to the US.

And what is very interesting about the way in which the world has reacted to a sense that the US is withdrawing is that everybody is saying, you still need to lead.

Even China would like to see the US play a leading role, particularly in the Middle East.