Special Issue on the Middle east

Noor e Marfat, 2020

Iraq parliament has passed a resolution on January 5, 2020 to oust US-led coalition forces from country, as hostile response grew after the assassination of Qasim Sulemani, a top Iranian military commander, near Baghdad airport. The US State Department rejected this demand and said Washington and Baghdad should instead focus on fixing their alliance.US and its allies were expecting that their presence in Iraq will be welcomed by different Iraqi communities as these communities came out of Saddam's suppression with the help of US and its allies. This study tends to address the fundamental challenge regarding US' consistently diminishing influence over the Iraqi society. Though heterogeneous in its nature and fabricated in its essence, US still have no pivotal powersay over any of the Iraqi societal, religious or political groups. Particularly, the Iraqi majority Shiite population is real beneficiary of US campaign against Saddam as they remained under the despotic rule of Sunni minority led by Saddam. In post Saddam period their increasing inclination towards Iran has changed the entire socio-political scenario of Iraq and despite huge strategic investment in Iraq, US has been marginalized in main stream decision making process. Consequently, US supremacy in entire Middle East went under question.

2019

How was the effects of realist theory the understanding the American hegemony in the context of the First and Second Gulf Wars ? This research examines the Gulf wars with a realist perspective of American hegemony in the international relations discipline of the 1st and 2nd Gulf wars. This article includes the first Gulf War events from 1990 to 11 September, the US policy on Iraq and American hegemony. The most important building block is to reach American hegemony and oil resources. Focusing on the content of this research, it is based on understanding the cause of the military interferences here when it sees the realist perspective as a threat to the interests of American hegemony. The main focus of American hegemony is to prevent the Gulf region oil from being under the influence of the enemy regional or global forces, and when it is approached with a realist perspective, it constitutes the subject of this research. The Gulf War and the American hegemony have increased its power or presence in the Gulf region, and have shown the world that it can control and respond harshly to these threats that are hostile to it or that may pose a threat to it. The biggest examples of this are the September 11 events, the execution of Saddam Hussein. This research explores how the American hegemony, security, or interests are controlled by a realist perspective when they think it is under threat in the international arena. Gulf Wars is one of the most important indicators of how American hegemony responds in an aggressive language. Keywords: Realism,the 1990 Iraq War, the 2003 Iraq War, Hegemony.

Middle East

Studying the underpinning politics behind the two gulf wars, this paper views the American call for collective security as a function which serves her purpose in the Middle East: the concept of collective security is used to legalize policies and actions which are aimed at securing the United States hegemony in the region, and so long as the region serves the West economic needs, this hegemony remains important. It is the existence of this hegemony that creates artificial "colliding" forces in the region; through propaganda, the sponsorship of warring parties and direct aggression.Our argument is in two dimensions: firstly, we argued that the United States hijacked the global collective security mechanism, which she uses to pursue her interest as a hegemon in the Middle East, as evident in the cases of the two Gulf Wars. Secondly, the case of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 showed clearly that while a hegemon looses its key gramscian elements of coercion, she can sustain its position through "deference".

Historical Materialism , 2005

Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 2007

Centre for Mediterranean Middle East and Islamic Studies, 2023

The Iraq war of 2003 occurred at a period of time when the United States were at the height of its power and clout in the international system. The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1990-1991 heralded the birth of a unipolar international order based on the strengths and values of the American hegemon. Nonetheless, world history is punctuated with instances of international power equilibria rising, shifting, and restructuring anew. It certainly seems that Washington’s Iraqi intervention will be considered as the force motrice, which eventually gave way to power reshuffling in the international order and the end of the unipolar system.

st-andrews.ac.uk

As the Middle East has become the centerpiece of its drive for global hegemony, America's de-stabilizing impact on the region has deepened; equally, the reaction from the Middle East to US policy carries important consequences for US hegemony globally. The Iraq war is ...

Australian Journal of International …, 2007

2020

Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2005

Over the course of events taking place in and around the Persian Gulf over the last three years, the United States has used force to replace a despotic dictator who once served Western interests, placed considerable distance between itself and its erstwhile regional partner Saudi Arabia, and reduced its role as arbiter in the Arab-Israeli dispute. Operation Iraqi Freedom would seem to reveal that the United States has chosen a broader vision for the role that force could play as part of a more aggressive security strategy. The Gulf littoral's forward-deployed footprint, set into place during the first Gulf War, enabled effects-based capabilities to be tested in Iraq that have come online since the 1990s, enabling the US military to begin to operationalise what was initially dubbed the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' and now is called 'Transformation'. As such, the Gulf infrastructure provides the US with a model to emulate around the world as it seeks to realign its forces to better address new threats in the global theatre. The Gulf facilities will become central hubs in the network of bases stretching throughout Central and South Asia and the Horn of Africa which will perform missions associated with the global war on terror. Operation Iraqi Freedom represents only the beginning of this phenomenon in an emerging new global defense strategy that may see forward-deployed forces around the world used with increased frequency to manage an uncertain security environment. Analysts, scholars, and policy professionals can be forgiven if they seem somewhat confused over the course of events in and around the Middle East and the Persian Gulf over the last three years. During this period, the United States used force to replace a despotic dictator who had once served Western interests, placed considerable distance between itself and its erstwhile regional partner Saudi Arabia, and reduced considerably its role as arbiter in the Arab-Israeli dispute. Each of these three elements had at one time or another served as an important pillar in US regional security strategy during the last twenty years. The abandonment of the peace process and the new distance between the United States and the Saudis, while interesting, are partially explainable by circumstance and domestic politics. The aftermath of the September 11 attacks placed inordinate pressure on an already frayed US-Saudi political partnership and followed a decade of drift in what was once a strategic relationship. As for *The views in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the views or positions of the Department of Defense. The author expresses his gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and Editor-in-Chief Roxane Farmanfarmaian for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.