scholarly journals UNITED STATES: A REVIEW OF THE US MIDDLE EAST POLICY FROM HARRY TRUMAN TO BILL CLINTON

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-65
Author(s):  
Kardo RACHED ◽  
Salam ABDULRAHMAN

Since the Second World War, the Middle East has been mentioned in connection with the national interest of America manifested by US presidents. This paper looks at the US foreign policy in the Middle East from Truman to Clinton on the premise that the US foreign policy has contributed to creating a breeding ground for dissatisfaction toward the US In this context, the paper focuses on the doctrines in use from the time of President Truman to Clinton. Thus, every American president has a doctrine, and this doctrine tells what political line the president follows regarding domestic and foreign policies. Keywords: Middle-East, Israel, US national interest, Soviet Union, Natural resources, ideologies.

Author(s):  
Peter Rutland

This chapter examines US foreign policy in Russia. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 raised a number of questions that have profound implications for American foreign policy; for example, whether the Russian Federation, which inherited half the population and 70 per cent of the territory of the former Soviet Union, would become a friend and partner of the United States, a full and equal member of the community of democratic nations, or whether it would return to a hostile, expansionary communist or nationalist power. The chapter considers US–Russia relations at various times under Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, Dmitry Medvedev, and Donald Trump. It also discusses a host of issues affecting the US–Russia relations, including the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the crisis in Kosovo and Ukraine, and the civil war in Syria.


Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 026339572093537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonny Hall

This article asks how Donald Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric during his presidential campaign and presidency has affected US foreign policy in the area of overseas counterterrorism campaigns. Looking at two case studies – the May 2017 Arab Islamic American Summit and the US role in the counter Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) campaign, it is argued that Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric has failed to accurately describe or legitimate his administration’s counterterrorism strategy, as per the conventional wisdom. Instead, Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric has largely been aimed at creating a sense of crisis (as populism requires) to mobilise his domestic base. In making this argument about the purpose of Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric, not only does the article contribute a new perspective to the extant literature on elections, rhetoric, and US foreign policy, but also to the burgeoning scholarship on governing populists and their foreign policies. Although these findings could be unique to Trump, the article’s novel framework – combining International Relations and populism scholarship to elaborate on how the foreign arena can be used to generate a state of perpetual crisis – can hopefully be applied in other contexts.


Author(s):  
Lisa Wedeen

This chapter examines how political science's complicities with the US empire would jibe with the two aspects of political science that are currently defining the discipline—the convergence, or perhaps more historically accurate, the continuing coalescence in new forms, of science and liberalism. It fleshes out those links while considering how scholarly convictions, combined with the realities of US foreign policy, have structured the terms in which the Middle East is studied today. The first section explores the discipline's seemingly contradictory commitments to value-neutrality and liberal values. The second section foregrounds the constitutive relationship between science, liberalism, and empire in the making of modern Middle Eastern politics as an area of academic inquiry.


Author(s):  
Viktoriia Bondaruk

The US foreign policy serves as an example for other countries, as it is one of the most developed countries in the world. For a better understanding of the features of contemporary foreign policy, the preconditions for its formation are determined. The history of the United States of America has been analyzed, which has inevitably influenced the formation of its current foreign policy and geostrategy. The political system of the country is defined as one of the direct factors influencing the formation of foreign policy. It is revealed that the very political preconditions create the legal basis for the existence and development of foreign policy, and therefore their study is very important for a deeper understanding of the vectors, principles and means of implementing the modern foreign policy of any state, namely, the United States. The internal economic situation, structure and development of the country’s economy, as well as problems and challenges on the way to the development of the national economy that are directly relevant for defining the functions, priorities and directions of foreign policy are considered. After all, it is the economy that is one of the most important factors shaping the foreign economic strategy of the state, which is an important factor in the formation of foreign economic relations and politics in general. It is proved that the geopolitical situation is the main factor for the definition of foreign policy vectors of the state. The geographic and geopolitical location of the state, in this case, the United States, defines the directions and vectors of the foreign policy of the state. The article explores all the factors and preconditions for the formation of US foreign policy during the presidency of Bill Clinton and his predecessors.


2013 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 462-478
Author(s):  
Miroljub Jevtic

One of the most important phenomena in US politics is Christian Zionism. The term Christian Zionism is related to unity of a large part of Protestant beliefs and the Zionists movement. The religious motives of US Protestants have coincided with the Jewish intention to go back to Palestine. In this way, Protestant religious motives could only be achieved by using political pressure on the US government. The goal of this pressure is to turn the foreign policy of Washington into a struggle for reconstruction and maintenance of the state of Israel. That is why many people wrongly believe that the US policy in Middle East is a product of the Jewish lobby. However, the US foreign policy in Middle East is a product of religious beliefs of Christian Zionists and the Jewish lobby is just using this fact for its own purposes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-337
Author(s):  
Jacob Abadi

This article analyzes the course of US–Yemeni relations from the 1940s to the present and aims to explain the reasons for the twists and turns in bilateral relations. It argues that the US government never developed a unique “Yemen policy” and that its attitude toward that country was determined largely by its ties with Saudi Arabia. Yemen began to loom large in US foreign policy in the early 1960s when Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser intervened on behalf of the Republicans who staged a coup against the Royal imamate regime, which relied on Saudi support. The article shows that President John Kennedy looked favorably on the new Republican regime in Yemen despite the robust relations that existed between the United Statesand Saudi Arabia. In addition, it argues that despite the war in Yemen, which lasted from 1962 to 1970 and caused instability in this region, this country did not loom large in US foreign policy. This was largely due to the British presence in south Yemen and especially in the port of Aden, which lasted until 1967. The article shows how the British withdrawal from Aden increased Yemen’s value in the eyes of US policymakers, but even then, no effort was made to fashion a unique policy toward this country. In addition, the article demonstrates how Washington’s attitude changed in 1969 when the country was divided into North Yemen, which tended to regard the Soviet Union as its protector and South Yemen, which continued to rely on US aid. And lastly, the article traces US–Yemeni relations from 1990, when the country reunited, until the present. It demonstrates how the bilateral relations were affected by the superpowers’ rivalry during the Cold War, the fight against terrorism, and disagreement between the Republican and the Democratic parties in the United States.


Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter focuses on the United States’s predominance and the search for order in the post-Cold War period. George H. W. Bush, who came to power in January 1989, concentrated on world affairs and had a series of foreign successes before the end of 1991. Bush’s cautious, pragmatic, orderly approach carried both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand he escaped any major disasters abroad and avoided antagonizing the Soviet Union or rekindling the Cold War. On the other hand, he seemed to be undynamic and at the mercy of events — he failed to provide a sense of overall direction to US foreign policy once the Cold War ended. The chapter first considers US foreign policy in the 1990s before discussing the Gulf War of 1990–1991, US–Soviet relations in the 1990s, US policy towards the ‘rogue states’ during the time of Bill Clinton, and ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Somalia and Haiti.


Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent

This chapter focuses on the predominance of the US and the search for order in the post-Cold War period. George H. W. Bush, who came to power in January 1989, concentrated on world affairs and had a series of foreign successes before the end of 1991. Bush’s cautious, pragmatic, approach carried both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, he escaped any major disasters abroad and avoided antagonizing the Soviet Union or rekindling the Cold War. On the other, he seemed to be undynamic and at the mercy of events—he failed to provide a sense of overall direction to US foreign policy once the Cold War ended. The chapter first considers US foreign policy in the 1990s, before discussing the Gulf War of 1990–1, US–Soviet relations in the 1990s, US policy towards the ‘rogue states’ during the time of Bill Clinton, and ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Somalia and Haiti.


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