ABSTRACT
In this chapter, William Quandt considers developments in Middle East foreign policy through early 2006, or approximately midway through George W. Bush’s second term. Even considering the flaws in US policy in the Middle East that he himself acknowledges, Quandt rates US policy before the Iraq War as “remarkably successful” in achieving the primary American objectives of containing the Soviet Union’s influence, preserving access to Middle East oil, and maintaining Israel’s security—all at a comparatively low cost in American lives and dollars. That changed with the Iraq War, which alone cost as much as the previous fifty years of Middle East policy expenditures, as well as the lives of thousands of Americans. The war was part of an ambitious strategy to transform the Middle East by toppling Saddam Hussein, aggressively pursuing a war on terror, pressuring Iran and Syria to change their hostile policies, and allowing Israel a freer hand in developing its own approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, once the short military phase of the Iraq War had concluded, Iraq’s envisioned transition to democracy faltered as Iraqi politics polarized along sectarian lines, often quite violently. The Bush administration eventually sought to lower expectations by signaling that US troops would be withdrawn and Iraqis would be left to create their own state. For Iran, the lesson of the war seemed to be that it should accelerate its nuclear-weapons capability, given that the United States was evidently less likely to challenge a country that had nuclear weapons (such as North Korea) than one that didn’t (such as Iraq). President Bill Clinton’s promising discussions toward an accord between Israel and Syria came to naught following 9/11, as Syria’s support for radical Palestinian and Lebanese groups and its alignment with Iran were problematic for Bush. And while Bush did outline a so-called road map for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, his attitude was typically one of disengagement, leaving prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert free to unilaterally define a new reality on the ground by erecting a barrier/wall that redrew boundaries between Israelis and Palestinians and by evacuating Israeli settlers from Gaza, leaving the area in Palestinian hands but tightly surrounded by Israel. Even Bush’s broad theme of promoting democratization of the Middle East may have been tempered by 2005–2006 elections in Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine that showed the strength of Islamic parties.
