Islamic Middle East; America's Foreign Policy Focus during the Last Two Decades

Heidarpour, Mashallah; Azar Najafabadi, Mohammadmehdi

Islamic Middle East; America's Foreign Policy Focus during the Last Two Decades

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mashallah Heidarpour ¹

Mohammadmehdi Azar Najafabadi ²

¹ PhD in International Relations and Assistant Professor for the Political Science Faculty of Islamic Azad University, Qom Branch

² Master’s in Political Sciences from the Political Science Faculty of Islamic Azad University

Abstract

Since World War II, America has practically stepped into the path of the world’s authoritarianism, however, during this period (Cold War) America based its foreign policy on Europe which is not investigated in detail. Ergo, the reason for its approach towards the Islamic Middle East, after the event of September 11, 2001, turned into a matter that the present paper has attempted to explore it on the basis of evidence derived from America’s National Security!
Thus, in this article we are faced with the following question: what are the primary reasons for the Islamic Middle East focus in America’s foreign policy by emphasizing on the strategy similarities and differences of Bush and Obama?(Question) It seems that the answer to this question should be considered due to the change and transformation of the international system’s structure of this country’s major strategies.(Hypothesis) In this paper, through understanding the primary reasons for the focus of America’s foreign policy towards this region, we attempt to offer a new image of America’s foreign policies for the Islamic Middle East based on the similarities and differences between the national security strategies of Bush and Obama.(Objective) Reaching this objective has become possible through using the comparative and analytical method.(Methodology) Achievements made in this article are: discovering the similarity of national security strategies of Bush and Obama in elements such as supremacy, effort to become hegemonic power and failed attempt to utilize the intelligent power and discovering their differences in determining declared threats and also in Bush’s unilateralism and Obama’s multilateralism.(Findings)

Keywords

America

Islamic Middle East

National Security Strategy

Foreign Policy

September Eleventh

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