ABSTRACT

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, initially, and the subsequent terrorist attacks on European targets in Casablanca, Madrid, and London, a fundamental reformulation of U.S. foreign policy has underlined the need for a new perspective on confronting the growing terrorist threat. Domestic conditions in the Middle Eastern region have increasingly come to be seen as a major source of disillusionment and violence. Support for internal reform in Arab countries has invariably become an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. Some experts have argued that the main threat to U.S. security is no longer rogue states but rather substate or transnational actors who engage in terrorist activities. 1 The George W. Bush administration’s inability to target substate or transnational actors, however, has led to a linking of terrorism to rogue states. Hence, a policy has developed of acting preemptively against rogue states possessing—or believed to possess—weapons of mass destruction.