Password Please enter your Password. Forgot password? Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Search within work. Military View overview page for this topic. Pax Americana. All rights reserved. It is in fact irrefutable that conflicts and violence outbreaks continued to occur in the Middle East after the Cold War.
We will though argue that the impact of the Pax Americana on the Middle East should be qualified rather than generalized. This essay will be articulated over four major points. Then, we will focus on the notion of regional order: addressing the changes on the Middle East regional order through a brief historical overview, to argue that the changes in the regional order depend mainly on the internal actors, before, during and after the Cold War.
Thirdly, we will observe how the intifadas confirm this observation. The issue of defining the Pax Americana cannot be undermined, nor reduced to a point in the introduction of this essay, because it is a contested notion relying on the apparition of a new doctrine after the end of the Cold War.
According to most of the academics, including Michael T. It is presented by the elder G. Bush as a Pax Universalis [9]. It is in fact important to notice that the US administration usually rejects the Pax Americana , as shown in the President Bush annual UN address in Let me assure you, the United States has no intention of striving for a Pax Americana.
However, we will remain engaged. We will not retreat and pull back into isolationism. We will offer friendship and leadership. And in short, we seek a pax universalis built upon shared responsibilities and aspirations. The American power, at the end of the Cold War, is military and economical. The gulf conflict inaugurates a new era characterized by continuing U. Bush became president in insisting that the United States must do even more. Though the impact on the Middle East regional order is discussed by academics, there seems to be a fair consensus over the way the US military power stabilized the other parts of the globe at this time.
The US military power was considered, as the Bush administration liked to stress, as a form of guarantee of security.
The US was, at the fall of the East-West antagonism, the only reference in terms of military and economical power, but also in term of currency, language and lifestyle [16]. As far as the Middle East is concerned, there is no doubt that Bush wanted to create a new — peaceful — regional order.
In August , he said,:. Keeping the peace in the Middle East will require no less. This new era can be full of promise, an age of freedom, a time of peace for all peoples. We, though, have to be careful with this rhetoric. Firstly, because it appears that Bush admitted that the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict had to come from the local actors and not from the US. Along with Baker, the Secretary of State, Bush often affirmed that the US role was in allowing the two parties to negotiate [18].
Bush considers the old order as bygone after the fall of the East-West bipolarity, and intends to create the new global order under the US leadership that imposes itself considering the US military, economical and political supremacy.
This New World Order, presented by Bush and Baker, would be based on international peace and cooperation. At the same time, and in correlation, we observe a reassertion of the Pax Americana concept [20]. Along with the reassertion comes the emergence of a new threat in the American discourse. There is a change of paradigm after the end of the Cold War in the American military strategy. This comes with the perception of a new enemy that can be identified in the growing regional powers.
In May , G. In the Middle East, in South Asia, in our own hemisphere, a growing number of nations are acquiring advanced and highly destructive capabilities — in some cases, weapons of mass destruction, and the means to deliver them. The US intervention in Iraq in illustrates perfectly those changes, in the military strategy as well as in the perception of the region.
After this overview of the US hegemony and of the concept of Pax Americana, we will now focus on the concept of regional order. Apparently, the US has the will and the means to change the regional order in the Middle East, and to create a new order based on peace and collaboration, and under the US leadership.
So why do they have so little impact on the regional order? First, we will present an historical overview of the changes in the regional order in the Middle East from the s to the Cold War to argue that the changes in the regional order are rather the result of internal changes in the balance of power.
We will then observe why the US is not the one to trigger the structural changes. In general terms, it means the existence of a stable structure of regional inter-governmental relationships informed by common assumptions about the bases of inter-state conduct.
In other words, regional order refers to a condition of security obtaining between regional states which is upheld by their deferring to a formal or informal set of rules. In most of the literature, including in Hinnebusch and in Hudson, we can find the notion of regional order likened to the notion of regional system.
In the s and the s, the regional order described by Hinnebusch is centred on two elements: first, the creation of Israel, and second, the power of Nasser in Egypt:. On the one hand, the sovereignty of the individual states and the status quo state system were preserved by anti-hegemonic balancing and, in a crisis, outside intervention.
On the other hand, trans-state Pan-Arabism amid global bi-polarity reduced the historic permeability of the system to outside penetration and confined inter-Arab competition to the ideological level.
He also describes the fundamental instability of this regional order. According to him, the first time a new regional order appeared in this period was in The new regional order was then shaped by the two Arab-Israeli wars of and This Arab Triangle was at the time replacing the Egyptian hegemony in bringing cohesion to the region.
The Arab States system was functioning with a regional order of its own. The two following events leading to the appearance of new regional orders in the Middle East are the Iranian Revolution, and the Iran-Iraq war. We can conclude from this brief historical overview that none of the radical changes in the Middle East order were triggered by the US, or by any other Occidental power. As Hudson expresses it, there are, in the Middle East, deep attempts of penetration from Western countries, but no single external power could dominate the region.
There seems to be a sort of opacity of the Middle East regional order to external penetration. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.
If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results. Shoreline Community College Ray W. Global Affairs Center This page has supporting, supplemental materials for the symposiums that are organized by the Global Affairs Center.
Prybyla ISBN: Imperial Designs by Gary J. Dorrien ISBN: Between Compliance and Conflict by Jorge I. I Want You!
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