At pivotal moments in our history, America has courageously concluded that a central tenet of its foreign policy, conceived with the best intentions, simply isn’t working. Hard though it’s been for this proud and mighty nation to admit failure, trading a losing strategy for a fresh course has brought such triumphs as the Nixon-Kissinger pacts with China that isolated the Soviet Union and helped to end the Cold War. Today, America faces just such a reckoning in the Middle East. Our objective is clear: halting the spread of terrorism that’s headed for our shores, threatening mass murder in our suburban shopping malls, city tunnels, and crowded parks. With the Middle East in chaos—as though a raging desert sirocco is destroying all sense of order——the US should make a radical, historic shift in its outreach towards the Arab world. Given the reluctance of America and its Western allies to launch a military offensive, it’s impossible to know when peace will be restored. But right now, while the battles rage, the US can take decisive diplomatic steps to stem the poverty and despair that makes the Middle East a breeding ground for radical Islamic terrorism. America should forge alliances with a new generation of Arab leaders whose principal goal is improving the daily lives of their people. Providing jobs and raising hope among the region’s impoverished youth is the best protection for the world’s wealthy nations, from America, to Europe, to the Arabian Peninsula. Once peace is restored, the US should take the lead in establishing a 21st century “Marshall Plan” of economic aid to durably lift living standards in the Middle East’s poorest areas. So what went wrong? For decades, the U.S. has pursued a misguided policy I'll call “embrace and abandon.” It started with the “embrace:” recruiting and financing leaders who were blatantly autocratic, yet at the time qualified as America’s allies. Then, the U.S. invariably exhorted these strongmen to champion revolutionary democrati