Are US policies toward the Middle East likely to succeed Discuss with Essay

Are US policies toward the Middle East likely to succeed Discuss with relation to to either democratization or Iran - Essay Example he following will discuss Middle Eastern perceptions of American foreign policy and ask the question, are US policies toward the Middle East likely to succeed? Democracy has been at the forefront of stated American ambitions in the region and the decision by the United States to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003 was perhaps the most controversial event in recent Middle Eastern history. Seen by many as an attempt by the United States to exert its global hegemony and dispose of a dictator not for the benefit of the Iraqi people, nor due to the supposed cache of weapons of mass destruction, but to obtain access to the vast oil resources of Iraq, this invasion is arguably the most controversial aspect of American foreign policy within the past quarter century. The US invasion of Iraq was controversial for a variety of reasons, the not least of which was the fact that the invasion did not first receive United Nations Security Council approval: an important condition in inte rnational relations which effectively legitimizes decisive political action. Opinion polls, conducted in the Middle East prior to the invasion by both the British Broadcasting Corporation and global pollster Ipsos Reed, effectively demonstrated how different Arab (and Iranian) perceptions of the War were in comparison to those of Americans (who were divided, albeit less opposed, to the invasion). We now turn to an analysis of unilateralism in the 21t century, the driving force of American foreign policy in the Middle East since the attacks of September 11, 2001 (Reynolds 2008). According to Drake University Professor of Politics and International Relations, David Skidmore, American unilateralism developed into an explicit and implicit policy of the present Bush Administration since the aftermath of September 11th 2001. Although the United States, historically committed to multilateralism, collective decision-making and international rules of law, has rejected foreign policy