US Policy In The Middle East. How The System Determines The Behavior

Abstract

The political arena in the Middle East has undergone substantial transformations in the last 10–12 years. Those changes have affected US policy as well. There is a consensus among scholars and experts that the US presence and influence in the region have notably diminished, and the country has been retreating from the region. The question of debate is whether it is a temporary phenomenon conditioned by internal and external factors or whether the process is irreversible, and what are the reasons for the current state of affairs of the US in the Middle East? What policy does the United States conduct in the Middle East, and how can it be explained?
The United States has become involved in Middle East affairs since the end of the Second World War. Its policy goals and tools in the region have followed a certain path of evolution. This paper is an attempt to explain Washington’s policy behavior in the Middle East in the last 10-12 years and discuss the approaches of three US presidents, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joseph Biden, their policies in the Middle East, and certain outcomes. The paper discusses the US policy towards four important issues in the Middle East: the confrontation with Iran, the war in Syria, the Kurdish issue, and relations with the Gulf Arab countries. This is, undoubtedly, not a comprehensive list of the problems the US has dealt with over the years and decades.

The article first represents the features of the Middle East regional subsystem, the current situation in the Middle East, and the background of US involvement there. Then, it discusses the US policy towards the above-mentioned issues and, based on the conclusions derived from the analysis, tries to present an explanation of the US policy behavior.