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Mr. Brennan opened his remarks by describing his experience in the Middle East as a college student in 1975. As an American, he felt generally respected and welcomed wherever he traveled because many in the Middle East held the United States in high regard, considering it a beacon of modernity and a nation to be emulated. However, this changed dramatically during the course of the 1980s and 1990s, as public opinion of the US became increasingly negative as a result of the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

During the Cold War, the United States was perceived in the Muslim world as a righteous protector against the atheistic Communists of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse and the resulting elimination of this nation as a threat, many nations in Middle East returned to their roots of hard-line religious identity. This identity was less accommodating to non-Muslims, and took the form of revantism – the idea of reclaiming lost Muslim territories.

Mr. Brennan described this shift during the 1990s as the beginning of a gap in understanding between Americans and Muslims. The gap worsened following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which strengthened Americans’ perception of Muslims as a violent people without making a distinction between religious individuals and terrorists. Meanwhile, the Iraq war has strengthened the Arab belief that the United States is jingoistic and relies heavily on the use of military force to assert its power internationally.

As a result of the events of the past two decades, American fortunes in the Middle East have never been in such grave danger. Mr. Brennan insisted, however, that the United States and Middle Eastern nations must not give up on efforts to improve relations because “our collective futures require us to have a better relationship.” As a superpower, the United States has an obligation to help solve problems in the region without resorting to the use of force.

Mr. Brennan identified five specific areas that the United States should address in order to improve relations with the Middle East. First, the US must work to reverse its image of a country obsessed with military paraphernalia and warfare, as efforts to do so have thus far been “amazingly ineffective.” In order to regain lost credibility, it must make an effort to promote and project the values upon which it was predicated.

Secondly, Americans must be more considerate about the language and rhetoric they use. For many reasons, such as simple ignorance, politics, or chauvinism, terms that have negative connotations in the Middle East are often naively employed. Examples include “global war on terrorism,” “victory in Iraq,” and “jihadists,” each of which has a different and controversial meaning in the Arab and Muslim world. The overuse and misuse of such phrases contributes to the negative prism through which the United States is viewed.

The third recommendation is to develop a more sophisticated structure for approaching the Middle East. Instead of grouping entire countries and organizations into black-and-white distinctions of “good” or “evil”, there should be an effort to understand the driving forces that motivate actors such as Syria, Iran, Hizbullah, and Hamas. While the Cold War was often likened to a game of checkers, Mr. Brennan characterized the current situation as “a three-dimensional chess game,” illustrating its complexities.

Mr. Brennan also stated that both Americans and Muslims need to explore possibilities for improving overall social integration, particularly in the areas of education, economics, and commerce. If the United States and the Middle East became more interlocked, there would be greater incentive to avoid conflict, and the younger generation from both sides would gain a wealth of new opportunities.

Finally, Mr. Brennan stressed that the virtual environment of the internet should be better utilized as a medium of interaction between the two cultures. An extremely useful tool for improving relations if properly harnessed, through the sharing and spread of information the internet can help improve understanding and awareness, reduce problems borne out of ignorance, and begin to diminish the gap of understanding between the United States and the Arab and Muslim World.