Steven A. Cook: A Mideast Expert Under Spotlight

On a rainy moderate Thursday, Dr. Steven A. Cook, dressed in a purple shirt and brown khakis, was sitting in this oriental-looking office in the greenish, glassy Council on Foreign Relations building located on L Street.  The office was crammed with a library completely filled with books on one side of the room, and a U-shaped desk taking center stage with many family pictures and stationary everywhere on top of it. At first sight, you can see a big portrait of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak on the desk, with some other paintings adorned with neat Arabic calligraphy are hung on the walls. This is where Cook spends his day at work where he has served as the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC since 2009.

"Hasib Sabbagh family endowed this fellowship at the council for someone who does work on the Middle East," says Cook, 46, while sitting cross-legged in his rotating chair. "Hasib is a Palestinian from Nablus and he started a construction business and he very much believed in coexistence and peace in the region. He and his family have been philanthropic in a variety of different and important ways."

"I taught at AU [American University] last fall," says Cook who has almost 25 years of expertise under his belt. "I taught an undergraduate course on Egyptian politics from 1882 to the present. Now I am teaching a graduate seminar at George Washington on militaries and politics in the Middle East in the Elliot school." But he feels teaching is not his cup of tea, let alone his family and time-consuming job. "It is not really my thing. I have family considerations and I am very interested in policy in some way. This is a wonderful position that I have," he says referring to his job as a Middle East expert.

Cook is such a tech-savvy scholar who keeps an active Twitter account of more than 25 thousand followers. His tweets exquisitely mirror his sense of humor. "I am a big Twitter user. I tweet quite a bit. Most of my tweets are kind of snarky or funny," he remarks as he leans forward on his chair.

As a morning person, checking Twitter is his morning ritual that kicks off his day into a good start. For him, Twitter is a useful tool to keep up with what is going on in the Middle East. "The good thing about Twitter is that I can wake up at 5 o'clock is the morning and I have people tweeting interesting article and interesting insights about the region. My morning routine is Twitter, and then I check my email; I get tons of emails from the region. By the time, I get here [to the office], I take a look at the articles from the media of the region that I that I think interesting on that day," he says.

"The most rewarding part of my job is when I can have an influence on the way people think about the world," says Cook who credits both his parents and his college for his overwhelming interest in the world in general and the Middle East in particular. "I think that there has been so much about the Middle East for so long that has been written and said that that I think it has created more misunderstanding that understanding," says Cook whose sublime mission is to help clarify to the people, through his blogs, articles, books or commentary, what is really going on in the Middle East, what the US interests in the region are and how the US can think differently about its foreign policy in the region.

One time, Cook was asked to lead a group of younger politicians to the Middle East where they went to Egypt, Jordan, Palestinian territories, and finally to Israel. When they came back and their flight landed in New York, one young politician came and said to Cook, who was waiting in the baggage claim, "I want to really thank you for putting together this program. But I had very clear views about the Middle East. Now I am confused."  Cook replied, "The way that I set up this trip and the people that you meet is to confuse you. I am glad that I accomplished what I've accomplished," referring to the fact that the Middle East is not just black and while but rather a very diverse and complicated region.

Born in New York City, Cook grew just outside of New York in a small town called Plainview right in the middle of Long Island. "I assume it is called Plainview because there is nothing really to see there. It is pretty plain," he says while laughing and grinning from ear to ear.

While people his age growing up in the insular world on Long Island in the 1970s and the 1980s were mainly interested in girls, soccer and hockey, the then six-grader Cook, whose parents were world travelers, was interested in exploring the world and knowing more about world affairs. At the time, interest in foreign affairs was like an oxymoron for youngsters, but not for Cook who read the front page of the New York Times from a relatively young age. Yet all of this happened for a reason. "I was in Middle school when the American hostages were taken in Iran in November 1979. Suddenly, there were millions of people in the streets in the city called Tehran in a country called Iran, saying death to America. Why did anybody want death to America?" he wondered.  It did not make sense for him as 12-year-old student and this triggered him to embark in a lifelong knowledge journey that turned out to be a life career.

Cook was a unique student. "I was a very good student. The problem with me as a student was that it was hard to motivate me to get me to get to my homework but what really interested me was the world," he said. "I wanted to do other things. But what really interested me was the world ad in public schools in the United States, they don't teach you a lot about the world. My favorite subject was social studies. I did world cultures, American history, European history and the parts I liked most were world cultures, European history. When I was a senior at high school, I took an advanced world history. It is world affairs that were more interesting to me."

His learning, however, was focused on understanding, not on revenge. He also developed special interest in history and political science that stood him in a good stead at college. "I was not motivated by a desire to defend America. It was more an interest to understand how the world and how people in other cultures and places view the US and its history. When I was in school, I was looking at the map and the US was placed in the middle of the map and the world doesn't look that way. There were so many perspective and ideas. History and political science are just fascinating," he explained.

After high school, Cook matriculated at Vassar College which was a turning point in his life. "Vassar was very important to me," he said. "I don't think that had I gone anywhere else, I'd not have been sitting where I am sitting right now. Vassar did not make me a Middle East expert but what it did is that it took a kid who is interested in the world, brought those interests in the world out and turned them into passion." It is the nature of the program he joined that worked miracles for him. "Vassar had a very innovative international studies program that I was immediately drawn to. I studied economics, history and political science at the same time," he explained.

Curious as he is, Cook was a student like no other at a college that was a perfect fit for him. "I spent a lot of time in the library reading. I was very good student in college. I was a better student in college that in high school. I was really motivated by that intellectual environment created at Vassar," he said.

When his plans to study abroad didn't work out, he did not give up and went to study in American University's Washington Semester Program where he studied the Middle East and world affairs. "I was supposed to go abroad to Jerusalem but the first Intifada [uprising] broke up. My goal to go there is to learn the language of the region. My parents said I was not permitted to go because it was too dangerous and they know that I would get myself in some sort of trouble. I was a trouble-maker.  Instead I spent a semester in Washington D.C. in American University's Washington Semester Program," he explained.

Right after graduation, Cook hanged out in New York City with some friends for a few months where he worked in the business sector but he did not find his passion there.  "I hated it. It was so boring. So I moved to Washington and I found a job here in Washington," he said in a tone reflecting his dislike to his former business job.

In Washington D.C., he worked as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to that, he was a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy where he met his wife. Now they have two little daughters. "Everybody commented at our wedding that it was no secret that I met my wife at work. We both were working at the same place. In the mid 1990, she was a research associate and I was a junior fellow at the Washington Institute for the Near East Policy," he said.

Cook managed later to travel to Jerusalem after graduation and achieve his dream of exploring and learning the languages of the region. "When I graduated from college, I came back to Washington, worked for a couple of years in Washington, saved money and then I moved to Jerusalem.  I used Jerusalem as my home base. I enrolled in an Arabic class in east Jerusalem,  I enrolled in a Hebrew class in west Jerusalem, and  I travelled all around. It was quite an eye-opening experience. I spent the whole year there," he recalled as he was holding his black glasses.

By the end of the year he spent in Jerusalem, he could speak a little bit of Arabic.  When he was accepted in the Johns Hopkins school of Advanced International studies, his Arabic improved dramatically thanks to his Jordanian teacher Saraya Haddad whom he described as "the most amazing Arabic teacher."

Although many may shun studying a region as hectic and turbulent as the Middle East, Cook found an opportunity out of that. "There is no good news. It often seems hopeless. But the work is the work. It is fascinating to think, write about and analyze the region.  Now it is a great time to do that," he remarks.

Cook has a blog called "For the Potomac to the Euphrates" where he has been blogging for almost five years. "It allows me to do and say things I can say and do in formal articles, I have been blogging basically once a week but I should be doing it more. I do a piece on Monday and I do a suggestion on weekend readings on Friday." For Cook is it more than just a blog, it is the link that connects him with his readers. "I sit down on Sunday evening after putting two little girls to bed and I write. I think what is the fun things about the blog is that at least the way I write it I believe that the people who get to read it can get to know me as a person rather than a name connected to the Council on Foreign Relations. I let my personality come through in the blog where I can't do that in some of the more formal things that I write."

"Steven is one of the most wide-ranging bona fide experts on the Middle East I know," says Amy Hawthorne, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a friend of his.  "He works extensively on Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey, as well as on Israel-Palestinian issues, Syria and other key issues in the Middle East.  In addition to being an excellent scholar and analyst, Steven is a wonderful friend:  supportive, loyal, and very, very funny."

Cook is the author of the highly-acclaimed The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square in Fall 2011, which won the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's gold medal in 2012, and Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey in 2007. Writing to domestic and international audience, he puts himself in their shoes when writing a book so that it can be reader-friendly, useful and understandable.  "What I always do when I am writing is that I try to write not in a kind of jargon," he said. "I try to write in a clear, accessible way, but keeping in mind keep a sharp analytic edge to it that helps people understand the region."

 "I called it a Struggle for Egypt for a reason because Egypt has always been a richer, a more diverse ideological environment," he said while pointing to a book on the desk that turned to be the actual The Struggle for Egypt book.

"Dr. Cook writes with an insider perspective," said Abdurrahman Mansour, a senior majoring in Political Science at Cairo University. Cook always loves to hear from his readers, appreciates their feedback and bear it in mind in his ensuing works. Referring to his book The Struggle for Egypt, he said "I love to hear from Egyptians who read the book. Egyptians reactions to the book are the most important for me. I am a foreigner and I am writing about their country and I have learnt a lot. Most of the feedback from Egyptian has been positive and I have learned a lot."

"His book on Egypt is one of the most readable and incisive studies of modern Egypt and is sure to become a classic.  He knows the history and the contemporary policy context in Washington DC," says Hawthorne who considers Cook as a Mideast wonk whose tweets are very hilarious.

Cook is now writing a new book now about "The Middle East after the Arab Uprisings" that will come out in 2016."It is a big project. It is taking a lot of work and a lot of my time. Although it is not exclusive to the Arab world, I am including Turkey in the book," he said giving a sneak peak of the content of this new book.

Looking forward and thinking about what the future holds for him, Cook will write yet another book. "The book that I'd like to write after that,” he says “is more about the United States and its encounters with the region rather than countries in the region.”

This profile story is based on an interview I conducted with Prof. Steven Cook in spring 2015.