The Middle East: Some New Realities and Old Problems

Introduction Since tragedy of September 11, 2001 United States has launched and prosecuted, on both military and civilian fronts, a war against terror in Afghanistan and in Middle It also has embarked upon an explicit policy of regime change in Arab and Muslim Iraq. Meanwhile, within larger context of U.S.-Middle East relations, a new endeavor took center stage when Secretary of State Colin Powell presented U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative on December 12, 2002 pledging United States to act firmly on side of change, of reform, and of a modern future for Middle East. This plan squarely challenged countries of Arab and Muslim Middle East, while holding out promise of financial aid from U.S., to embrace American-style democracy, peace, and opportunities to engage in global marketplace. (1) The rattling of sabers, it seems now, is accompanied by extension of hands filled with dollars in order to propel Middle Eastern states forward into a rosy, modern future. These essentially contrasting paths to change in specific Muslim and Arab states as well as in Islamic world in general illustrate type of historical amnesia, myopic short sightedness, and inability/unwillingness to perceive root causes of indigenous Arab-Muslim discontent with American decision-making and action in Middle This article examines complex set of relationships that has emerged between United States' foreign policy-making toward Middle East and study of region since World War II. It identifies several of variables that have interacted to produce inconsistency and incoherence in relation to America's declared geo-political, socio-cultural, and economic goals for Middle In so doing, one finds that recent events have created new realities for American involvement in Muslim Middle East, but old problems remain. These issues and perspectives, which are couched in a new language, continue to exert a pre-dominant influence upon directions, goals, and actions of U.S. decision-making in Islamic Middle Establishment of Fundamentals of American Policy Following World War II, professional study of Middle East in United States grew beyond its traditional academic quarters in archaeology, history, and classical languages and literatures. Global geopolitics inspired creation of area studies, interdisciplinary programs of study that concentrated upon specific geographic regions of world that held significant political and economic importance to America's then new vision of itself as leader of free world. World War II had left Great Britain powerless and economically prostrate. Once power and power broker in Middle East, Great Britain ceded her mantle of world leadership to United States. Britain's ambassador to Washington formally notified U.S. Department of State on February 21, 1947 that his nation could no longer provide financial aid to governments of Greece and Turkey, two geographically strategic states who long had depended upon British diplomatic and financial assistance. The projected British transfer of power and responsibility in these critical areas of eastern Mediterranean and Middle East to United States provided immediate context for launching U.S. onto stage of world leadership and into Cold War era policy of containment of Soviet Union. Appearing before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman characterized Britain's pending withdrawal from Greece and Turkey as a grave situation affecting American national security that required an immediate response. He then outlined basic principles around which American foreign policy in developing areas of world would revolve until collapse of Soviet Union in late 1991. An essential objective of American foreign policy entailed the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. …