scholarly journals La complexité de valeurs dans la politique étrangère de l'administration Reagan face à l'Iran

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-551
Author(s):  
André Lecours

The formulation of a policy that will satisfy several values and interests more or less compatible is a classic problem of political decision making. This phenomenon by which there can be, in a foreign policy issue for example, several divergent values and interests was named value-complexity by Alexander George. When facing a value complexity problem, a decision maker must choose some values and some interests over others. The choice he makes will not necessarily be the one made by other decision makers. This can result in a serious impediment to the decision making process. The American foreign policy towards the Middle East faced, for the major part of the Cold War era, a value-complexity problem because it looked to reconcile four hard-to reconcile values and interests. The Reagan government was confronted rather acutely with this problem in the making of its Iranian policies. The administration was split in at least two factions over Iran : one who thought primarily of containing the Soviet Union in the Middle East region and the other for whom the political stability of moderate regimes threatened by revolutionnary Iran should be the most important priority. The existence of these factions, consequence of value-complexity, produced the making and the implementation of two distinct Iranian policies.

Author(s):  
Craig L. Symonds

The dissolution of the Soviet Union did not erase the need for a global U.S. Navy, as events in the Middle East and elsewhere provoked serial crises that led to the dispatch of U.S. naval combat groups to various hot spots around the world. ‘The U.S. Navy in the twenty-first century’ explains how the U.S. Navy continues to fulfill many of its historic missions—suppressing pirates, protecting trade, and pursuing drug runners. It is also a potent instrument of American foreign policy and a barometer of American concern. In addition to its deterrent and peacekeeping roles, the U.S. Navy also acts as a first responder to natural or man-made disasters that call for humane intervention.


1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-445
Author(s):  
M. A. Fitzsimons

Since 1947 the major foreign policy of the United States government has been containment. This policy of creating situations of strength which would prevent the extension of Communist power and influence in the world was first proclaimed in the Truman Doctrine (March 12, 1947). The policy had been anticipated in 1946 when the battleship Missouri visited Turkey and some forty Mediterranean ports. In the course of this display the Missouri was joined by two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers, and eighteen destroyers. The early sensitivity to Soviet threats to the Middle East and its approaches, revealed in the Doctrine and that naval demonstration, was not consistently maintained at this time or later. Perhaps, indeed, American foreign policy only operates with fullest energy, when directly confronted with a serious Soviet threat. At any rate, it may be argued that for the period 1946–1955, when the Soviet Union was neither conspicuously active nor influential in the Middle East, United States policy contributed little to the solution or easing of the area's all but intractable problems. So to describe the problems is to propose a good excuse, but they were the problems, and, unfortunately, they did not wither from neglect or incantations.


2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 87-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Bromley

AbstractDuring the Cold War, United States (US) policies towards the Middle East and towards Afghanistan and Pakistan were largely unrelated. India's non-alignment and relations with the Soviet Union were reasons for close US-Pakistani relations, but the Chinese success in the war with India in 1962 also highlighted the importance to the West of India's position. 1979 marked a major turning point in US foreign policy towards the Middle East and Central Eurasia (CEA) because of the two events which were to shape so much of politics and geopolitics in those regions as well as in the wider international system: namely, the Iranian revolution in February and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December. Taken together, these developments posed a major challenge to US strategy towards the Soviet Union, to the wider Middle East and to relations with China, Pakistan, and India. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan during 1988/89, the US lost interest in Afghanistan and followed the policies of Pakistan for most of the 1990s. Then came 9/11 and President Musharraf took the historic decision to break with the Taliban. In March 2003, the US began its second war against Iraq. Whatever the rationale for the conflict, the outcome has been to turn the future of Iraq into a key fault-line of geopolitics in the Greater Middle East. Now, with the instability following the collapse of the Soviet Empire in CEA, the defeat of the Taliban and the ongoing future of Iraq, the US faces what the Department of Defense describes as an "arc of instability" running from the Middle East through CEA to Northeast Asia. This is the region that lies at the centre of planning for the "long war" announced in the Pentagon's 2006 quadrennial review.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 667-675
Author(s):  
Mohamad Hasan Soueidan

The Yum Kippur War, or as the Egyptians call it The October War, is one of the most important wars in the history of the Middle East between the coalition of Egypt and Syria versus Israel. It occurred at a time when the two superpowers then, the Americans and the Soviet Union, were in engaging in what was called the Cold War. For that every Superpower used to support a certain party of conflict to assure the balance of global dominance isn't affected. This paper reviews American foreign policy during the war in 1973. It concentrates on how the American institutions and foreign policy activists acted and influenced the outcome of the war. The paper finally conducts a counter analysis on what could have happened if the Americans didn’t support the Israelis in the war.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas K. Gvosdev ◽  
Jessica D. Blankshain ◽  
David A. Cooper

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nilay Saiya

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, it attempts to explain why dispensationalist Christians were successful at influencing American foreign policy during the administration of George W. Bush, particularly towards the Middle East. Specifically, I connect this success to their ties to Washington neo-conservatives, the personal faith of Bush himself and his links to conservative Christians, and their broad cultural appeal and grassroots strength. Second, it will present two brief case studies on the influence that dispensationalism has had on US policy towards Israel and Iraq during the administration of George W. Bush.


2021 ◽  
pp. 45-65
Author(s):  
Kardo RACHED ◽  
Salam ABDULRAHMAN

Since the Second World War, the Middle East has been mentioned in connection with the national interest of America manifested by US presidents. This paper looks at the US foreign policy in the Middle East from Truman to Clinton on the premise that the US foreign policy has contributed to creating a breeding ground for dissatisfaction toward the US In this context, the paper focuses on the doctrines in use from the time of President Truman to Clinton. Thus, every American president has a doctrine, and this doctrine tells what political line the president follows regarding domestic and foreign policies. Keywords: Middle-East, Israel, US national interest, Soviet Union, Natural resources, ideologies.


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