US Grand Strategy Post-Cold War: Middle East after the Cold War

Us Grand Strategy After the Cold War: Can Realism Explain It? Should Realism Guide It?
Case Study of Middle East Post the Cold War
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Us Grand Strategy After the Cold War: Can Realism Explain It? Should Realism Guide It?
Case Study of Middle East Post the Cold War
Shortcomings of the current foreign policy model of the United States
After the cold war, the United States focused her foreign policy towards influencing the middle east where she had a different objective. The United States involvement in the Persian Gulf has been centered mainly on three strategic reasons ‘1) keeping oil and gas from the region flowing to world markets, to keep the global economy humming; 2) minimizing the danger of anti-American terrorism, and 3) inhibiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The two moral interests are 1) promotion of human rights and participatory government, and 2) helping ensure Israel’s survival.’ It has achieved some of these goals, but the others have remained elusive. Realists believe that these goals can be achieved if the United States change her approach to her foreign policies. As the superpower of the world, the US spends a lot of money outside its borders to ensure that its interests are always protected. Its ways have elicited a lot of criticism and countries like North Korea have in the recent past threatened to attack it. However, the US believes that its means always justifies the end and that the world is enjoying the peace it has largely because of its presence and the costly foreign policies. Conversely, there are those who seem to believe that the US’s foreign policy is flawed and hence its increased expenditure in military. Some pundits see it as paranoia while others believe that the US is justified in its operations in the world.
Hypothesis: Increased military spending is as a result of the cost incurred primarily because of the flawed US foreign policy.
Walt, one of the fierce critics of the current American model of foreign policy quotes French ambassador in US 1919 saying, ‘The United States Is lucky. To the north they have a weak neighbor, to the South, they have a weak neighbor, to the east they have fish, and to the west they have fish.’ It is the geographical advantage of the United States that makes it less likely to be attacked by ‘rogue’ states. It has been the military superpower for decades now, and it still spends more than 50 times what Iraq (which it considers a rogue nation and a threat to US security) spends on defense. It is therefore very unlikely that Iraq is a potential threat to US peace and therefore spending billions of dollars in the country is not justifiable. Iraq cannot attack the United States from its location either by land, air, space or water. Any act of aggression against the US has very negligible chance of success. In such cases, the United States can just resort to offshore balancing and let her neighbors maintain a relative level of power in the area. Putting more boots on the ground is both costly to the US, and it fuels anti-Americanism in the country which becomes terrorism.
Anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism is a product of United States involvement in other regions especial...