The United States And The Middle East

Often called “The Crossroads of the World”, the Middle East stands between three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. Over thousands of years, migrating traders and conquerors crossed this region and spread the ideas, inventions, and achievements of many civilizations. It is an incredibly important part of the world with rich history, important resources, and deep religious and cultural traditions. However, in the past decades up to today, the Middle East has been consumed by conflict and chaos. Although different circumstances surround each issue, religion, terrorism, disputes over the control of natural resources, and weak governance primarily allow conflict to persist in the Middle East.

When people generally think of Middle East, they either picture newly developed Arab economies or Muslim dominated volatile regions. However, the Middle Eastern society mentioned in Taking sides is not limited to the few nations defined by geo political lines drawn in the map, rather it is a complexly mixed society of religious factions, different ethnic group and political ideologies, each separated within boundaries of nations. As modern history goes, these factions within the Middle Eastern nation has always contributed hostility to the entire region. Primarily, the faction between Sunni and Shiite fundamentalist can be traced as root cause of

The American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 led to the collapse of Saddam Hussein, yet unleashed a huge partisan war. The instability has led to many terrorist organizations feeding on the chaos, most notably, Al-Qaeda and, now, ISIS (Daesh). The Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq was not successful in stopping the spread of terrorism and has led to strained relations with many countries.

The Iraq war was occurred in 2003 between Iraq and the Unites States. The United States invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein despite not being backed by the United Nations because they claimed that Iraq had a WMD program and were linked to Al-Qaeda. However, no WMD program nor any direct links to Al-Qaeda were found. After the United States had occupied Iraq for a few months, Islamic extremist groups were founded. The United States goal of overthrowing Hussein was accomplished, but this was the incorrect time to overthrow him, as Islamic terrorist groups came in his place. The short-term effects of the Iraq war were the formation of AQI and the increased tensions between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims. The main long-term effect the Iraq War was an increase in worldwide distrust towards the United States. In conclusion, the Iraq War destabilized the Middle East by going against the UN security council and attacking Iraq, then finding neither a WMD program, nor links to Al-Qaeda, which were the reasons they invaded

The US stationed troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2001, and “encouraged the establishment of what was supposed to be a democratic national Shi’ite regime headed by Nouri al-Maliki. However, the regime alienated the Sunni population, which had traditionally controlled the country” (“The Historical Roots and Stages in the Development of ISIS”). In essence, America failed to establish a new political order in Iraq while also alienating the Sunni population. There was no stable, effective, and supportive government regime. Even when the US was occupying Iraq, ISIS had already began to build up power.

“The United States recognizes the provisional Government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.” These are the words of President Harry Truman from a speech he gave shortly after Israel became a recognized nation in 1948. Consequently, the political leaders of the United States have brought America on a rough journey to the current state of foreign policy and relationship with Israel. Since 1948, the United States’ active position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen very little change or progress towards achieving settlement between these two nationalistic states. In the last 65 years, the majority of U.S. presidents repeated mistakes made by their predecessors in office, and this in turn has had little

During the Cold War Saddam Hussain and the Arab Socialist Ba 'ath Party lead Iraq. Sunni Muslims, who were a minority in Iraq, enjoyed increased political power as most politicians were Sunni. During the Cold War Iraq began to increasing align itself with the USSR and espouse the philosophy of uniting all the Arab world under socialism. However the dream of Arab unity was shattered during the Iraq-Iran War. In Iraq 400,000 soldiers died, 400,000 were wounded, and 100,000 civilians died. A few years after the war, the USSR collapsed, and Iraq lost its biggest supporter, and dream of socialism began to fade in the population’s eye. Right after the collapse, Iraqi invaded Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War. Iraq was defeated by the USA. Sensing weakness in the Iraqi government, full scale rebellion broke out in Northern Iraq. Saddam accused

The Great Power involvement in the Middle East politics often creates and contributes to more conflicts and wars. The Middle East, a region described by Victor Israelyan as ‘one of sharp confrontation between the two superpowers unavoidably fell victim to such pressures.

Following September 11, 2001, there seemed to be a sense of fear towards Arabs and Muslims in America. Since then, the tension between the United States and the Middle East has escalated. Based on the attention terrorist attacks receive, stereotypes tend to arise toward Muslims. Terrorists can be any ethnicity or religion, but typically jihadist terrorists’ gain the most attention in the media and the press. In America, Arabs, Muslims, and Jihadists tend to all get grouped together, even though they are not synonymous terms (Amble, 2012, pp. 340, 342). Not every Arab is a Muslim and not every Muslim is a terrorist. In fact, only a small portion of Muslims partake in terrorist activities and the Islam religion actually prohibits deliberate murder of unarmed individuals in battle and suicide (Pratt, 2013). If many stereotypes of Muslims seem to be incorrect, then it is crucial that Christians become educated on what Muslims actually believe. Critiques of the Islam faith that the Christian makes cannot be rooted in the actions of a few radicals. Just as certain people do evil things in the name of Christianity, without truly knowing Christ, I believe terrorists do the same. By targeting the aspects of violence in Islam I believe the Christian can close doors to witnessing. Instead, I think there are two core criticisms between the Islam religion and Christianity that can be analyzed to persuade a Muslim, law and logic. These two categories would allow us to meet with Muslims at

The United States has a long withstanding legacy of the racialization of ethnic communities as part of the non-white “Other”. As seen through the downward mobility of Arab, Muslim, and Middle-Eastern Americans- who had originally been granted access to the privileges of whiteness- after being identified collectively as a threat to the expansion and success of the US empire, Arab, Muslim, and Middle-Eastern Americans began to be racialized as part of the non-white “Other” even before 9/11. Media representations of Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern communities outside the borders of the United States served to construct the “terrorist” identity, which resulted in the collective racialization of Arab, Muslim, and Middle Easterners as terrorists. Through the conflation of the racialization of the Arab, Muslim, and Middle-Eastern identity with the notions of terrorism and risk, the aftermath of 9/11 led to an emergence of racially motivated government policies and practices, such as anti-immigration measures and FBI raids on Muslim community centers, as well as an increase in the level of hate-based crimes against Muslim, Arab, and Middle Eastern Americans that contributed to an internalized sense of fear and insecurity for these individuals in American society. Furthermore, this sense of internal internment within the Muslim, Arab, and Middle Eastern community, coupled with the reality of discrimination and federal exclusion, demonstrates how the racialization of Arab and

Conflict over energy resources—and the wealth and power they create—has become an increasingly prominent feature for geopolitics particularly in the Middle East . The discovery of oil in the late nineteenth century added a dimension to the region as major outside states powers employed military force to protect their newly acquired interests in the Middle East. The U.S.’s efforts to secure the flow of oil have led to ever increasing involvement in the Middle East region’s political affairs and ongoing power struggles. By the end of the twentieth century, safeguarding the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf had become one of the most important functions of the U.S. military establishment. The close relationship between the United States and the Saudi royal family was formed in the final months of World War II, when U.S. leaders sought to ensure preferential access to Saudi petroleum. The U.S. link with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region has demonstrated to be greatly beneficial to both parties, yet it has also led to ever deepening U.S. involvement in regional politics.

In his 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington warns against developing “permanent alliances” with foreign countries, arguing that this entanglement leads to unnecessary complication (Washington). Of course, Washington’s warning is somewhat grounded in the fact that the United States was a young country that could not handle excessive participation in foreign affairs. Nevertheless, it is important to pay some attention to Washington’s words. Since 1900, the United States has executed more than two hundred military interventions. Furthermore, sixteen of these are marked as “attempts at nation building” (Pei and Kasper 2003). Since 1900, the United States has taken on a habit of intervening in foreign countries with the intention of maintaining peace. However, as indicated by Pei and Kasper, success in improving these nations is rarely the case. Of the aforementioned sixteen efforts, democracy was preserved in only four cases. This low success rate proves that building a nation is an inherently complicated – and difficult – process that should only be executed when the recipients truly want help.

Nothing happens in a vacuum; events and phenomena that take place in one region have effects on the rest of the world. In no region has this been more relevant than in the Middle East. Understanding the Middle East as it was and currently is requires an in depth analysis of the events that have so shaped the region. By peering into the premodern, early-modern, modern, and contemporary periods, a comprehension of the Middle East and how it is situated within the global framework will be realized.

President Obama proclaims a free-trade agreement between the United States and European Union. This issue creates enthusiasm and optimism on both sides. They hope to achieve economic and political benefits. The hard economic time on both the United States and European Union is the main reason of this agreement. Another consideration is the growing economics of China. Europe and USA should work together for dealing with China 's growing economy. Since the USA and the European Union was a big trading partner, they will remove tariff barriers and regulatory detention. The deal that balanced regulations on food, cars, toys, and pharmaceuticals is more necessary to save

The Middle East has been one of the most volatile and violent regions since the end of Second World War in 1945. The declaration of Israel in May of 1948 caused widespread violence and conflict among the Arab nations in the Middle East and the Jewish state of Israel. The declaration caused a chain of significant events that to this day still have a bearing. Some key events that followed the declaration of Israel were the war of independence, the Deir Yassin massacre, the displacement of Palestinians and the 6-day war.