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Critical Assessments:
US Foreign Policy in the Middle East
MER 208, Fall 1998
Editorial
Five years ago on the White House lawn, President
Bill Clinton assumed he had achieved a monumental Middle East policy
coup. Since then, the overall situation in the Middle East has worsened,
largely due to the ignorance and arrogance that characterize US
policy making in the region. In the face of growing crises in the
Middle East, critical assessments of flawed US policies in the region
are long overdue.
As we go to press, daily news reports announce
US retaliatory attacks on alleged terrorist bases in Sudan and Afghanistan,
warn of rising tensions between UN arms inspectors and the Iraqi
Government, chart the growing malaise in the West Bank and Gaza,
and speculate on Jordan's future in the wake of King Hussein's serious
illness. Seldom reported in the mainstream media are the stories-and
the US policy failures-behind these dramatic news bulletins. The
alternative press offers more substantive reporting on child malnutrition
and death resulting from inhumane sanctions in Iraq, the continuing
disenfranchisement of Palestinians by an Israeli government that
flagrantly violates international laws, the increasing corruption
and repression affecting nearly every Arab country, and the back-room
deals between Washington lobbyists and legislators that ensure that
the Middle East will only see more of the same.
The articles in this issue of Middle East Report
illustrate how US foreign policy exacerbates the disastrous state
of affairs in the contemporary Middle East. Although the political
contours of the world have changed radically since the collapse
of the USSR and the Gulf War of 1991, US goals in the region have
remained remarkably consistent: to control the flow of oil, to prevent
the growth of Arab nationalist and leftist movements and to protect
Israel. An important foreign policy objective enunciated by former
National Security Advisor Anthony Lake in 1993, the promotion of
worldwide democracy, rings hollow in the Middle East. Encouragement
of social and economic justice and participatory politics is not
on America's Middle East agenda, much to the relief of the autocratic
leaders of the region's monarchies and republics. At a conference
on the establishment of an International Criminal Court held this
summer in Rome, the US found itself in unusual company when it cast
a vote against the creation of an independent court capable of prosecuting
war crimes across borders. In addition to its usual ally, Israel,
others opposing a mechanism of international justice included two
arch-enemies of the US: Iraq and Libya.
Ostensibly committed to peace in the Middle East,
the US is in fact the chief arms supplier to rival countries in
this volatile region. An alarming report recently published by the
Council for a Livable World, "Foreign Aid and the Arms Trade: A
Look at the Numbers," indicates that half of all US foreign aid
in 1997 was military in nature. Egypt and Israel, the two largest
recipients of US aid, are also America's best arms customers, having
received 15 percent of all US arms shipments in 1997. Saudi Arabia,
a leading arms buyer, has become a major US military base in recent
years, angering many throughout the region and beyond, including
Islamists armed by the US during the Cold War.
US policies and practices in the Middle East have
set the stage for instability, injustice and violence. Turning a
blind eye to rising tensions in the region, US policy makers blithely
assume that US military and market might will conquer all. As the
articles in this issue of Middle East Report indicate, however,
US military and market forces are a big part of the problem, not
the solution.
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