Middle east and america essay

The Sultan saw the U. Commercial relations opened between the U. Moreover, the United States had provided the Middle East with highly skilled petroleum engineers. Other examples of cooperations between the U.

Can the momentum be reversed—without going to war? A truck tows armored combat vehicles belonging to an Iraqi anti-Islamic State paramilitary group on August 31, Peter Rough is a fellow at the Hudson Institute in national security and international relations.

That is, he would achieve significantly more than Barack Obama at a much smaller sacrifice of blood and treasure than was incurred under George W.

This he would accomplish by defining American interests sharply and pursuing them aggressively, not to say ruthlessly. The result would be a global restoration of American credibility and, as Trump never ceased to remind voters, renewed global respect.

Many Americans, especially those in his base of supporters, regarded Obama as timid, weak, and more solicitous of enemies than of friends; Bush, they believed, had been strong in some ways but prone to quixotic adventures like building democracy in the Middle East, a putative sin of which Obama had at least been innocent.

What's In, What's Out?

Trump offered an attractive alternative: Unlike Bush, Trump would resist thankless nation-building projects; unlike Obama, he would reward friends and punish enemies.

Exactly how Trump intended to translate this framework into concrete policy started to become clear only after the election.

As he appointed his national-security team, four major policy goals in the Middle East came into focus. First in line was the swift defeat of Islamic State IS. Finally, Trump was personally eager to explore the possibility of a strategic accommodation with Russia, especially in Syria.

These goals were not and are not obviously compatible with each other. In the event, as we shall see, the administration has chosen to prioritize the defeat of IS. In so doing, however, it has unconsciously assimilated much of the strategy developed by the Obama team in its final years, a strategy that consciously facilitated the rise of Iran and brought the policies of the United States into alignment with that goal.

This alignment is now so extensive that any serious effort to contain or roll back Iranian power will require an equally lengthy and systematic effort to rethink American interests and reorder American policy.

Such an effort will demand sustained presidential attention, the devotion of new resources, and, inevitably, the disruption of established relations with key allies. It will also bring down on Trump even more criticism than he is already receiving from pundits, allied nations, his own national-security bureaucracy, and, on a few key issues, his political supporters.

But the nuclear deal itself was the direct outgrowth of an earlier decision in foreign policy, a decision at which Obama had arrived years earlier.

Obama had articulated this vision throughout his first presidential campaign. At every rally, he promised that he would avoid the calamitous misadventures of the past, especially as exemplified by the war in Iraq.

But how could the military withdraw without turning Iraq into a satellite of Iran? Obama declined to think in such terms. Rather, in keeping with a current of thought then circulating in national-security circles, he believed that the Middle East was altogether no longer as important to the United States as it once had been, and that, moreover, the fundamental interests of the United States overlapped with those of Iran not to mention Russia.

In the case of Iraq, whose stability was vital to both Tehran and Washington, those interests were especially well-matched. The United States, therefore, could tolerate a reduction of its influence and a tilt by Baghdad in the direction of Tehran.

These strategic calculations made it relatively easy for Obama to pull American troops from Iraq in and to downplay the rapid political deterioration in the country that ensued in the aftermath of our withdrawal. And very similar calculations shaped his policy toward Syria as that country, in turn, descended into civil war in Military operations in Syria had no guarantee of success, he reckoned, and they could easily result in a quagmire.

In addition, they would undermine the peace platform on which he was already campaigning for re-election. Above all, any significant American intervention in Syria would damage relations with Iran and Russia, the primary patrons of the Assad regime, whose goodwill Obama needed not just to stabilize Iraq but to cover the greater American withdrawal from the Middle East in general.

Obama dreamed of an entirely new Middle Eastern order. In place of American primacy, which had led to thankless military interventions, he would substitute a concert system, a club of powers.

He was dreaming of an entirely new Middle Eastern order. In place of American primacy, which had led to thankless military interventions, he would substitute a concert system: It also required recognizing Syria as an Iranian and Russian sphere of influence.

As he saw it, active competition with Russia and Iran over Syria would scuttle the chances of achieving a nuclear agreement with Tehran, and failure to achieve a nuclear agreement would impede the cause of regional cooperation.Terrorism in the Middle East and Latin America.

Topic: Terrorism in the Middle East and Latin America Thread Prompt: In the Middle East, Israel has responded to terrorism with several controversial counter-terrorist polices to include a wall and selective initiativeblog.com U.S.

policy on the use of drones selectively targeting individuals such as Anwar al-Awlaki could also be considered. Dec 09,  · History: Middle East essay papers. Pages: 1. 0. 0. Analysis Back before the 70 s oil from the Middle East was very cheep, and in North America, it was about $4 a barrel.

But then, the leaders of the Middle East discovered that everyone needed their oil, so they formed OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting .

The Middle East: United States Policy and Relations in the Latter Half of the 20th Century Bobby Beaver, Jeffrey Beaver, Matthew Wilsey US Middle Eastern Policy in the Post-Gulf War Era: being the lone superpower in the world requires America to assume some world policing responsibility.

This paper provides a brief evaluation of the American foreign policy and measures taken to make the region very peaceful for the Obama Administration. We have started from the Cold war pre-circumstances and presently prevailing conditions of the Middle East with perspective of the America foreign policy.

What America Should Do Next in the Middle East. “America First” meant placing a Bush-style readiness to use military force in support of a leaner, Obama-style agenda that nixed democracy promotion.

What America Should Do Next in the Middle East. 1.

What's a region, anyway?

Essay. What America Should Do Next in the Middle East. 2. Response. The idealized image to be projected in the Middle East of a freedom-loving America was contradicted by the U.S. government's mutually beneficial relationships with autocratic regimes in the region.

Despite rhetorical claims, influential Americans tolerated and valued authoritarian rule.