American Foreign Policy and the Middle East: Influence in Decline (2009-2014)

Abstract

After the Cold War, the United States enjoyed a position of unparalleled strength and influence worldwide, but such influence has been in steady decline in the last decade in the Middle East. Such decline has become particularly evident in the Obama years. Iraq and Syria stand out as two clear examples, though there are others, in which the United States has experienced serious limitations and constraints on the exercise of its power to influence events. Such decline in influence did not begin overnight, but was an outcome of a variety of internal and external factors. The foreign policy of Bush the son, specially his war in Iraq, did much to undermine U.S. credibility and raised doubts about the real intentions of its policy in the region. After this war, the United States entered a phase of economic recession and suffered from a host of other domestic problems that forced President Obama to devote his administration’s agenda to sort out such problems while they put limits on the resources he needed to act freely and boldly to preserve and advance his country’s role abroad. The adoption of assertive foreign policy agendas by some rivals of the U.S. like Russia, China, and Iran was both a reason and a consequence of America’s declining influence in the region. While the United States has failed to turn the tide of events into its advantage, those powers have succeeded to shore up old allies and to strengthen their economic, political, and diplomatic ties with some key states and leaders in the region.