Neither stability nor change in the post-colonial Arab world can be fully understood without considering the international context, and American Foreign policy in particular. However, the exact nature of the US's presence in the Arab world has reached a crossroads. The book traces the US's "power of persuasion" in the Arab Middle East from the onset of the War on Terror up to the Arab Spring. Focusing on Syria, it explores the limits of a US "smart power" amid the emergence of a growing indigenous "soft power" whose ire is directed not only at Assad's regime, but also at the violence perpetrated or enabled by the international community, headed by the US.