ABSTRACT
The US-led occupation of Iraq in 2003 constitutes a major catalyst of Arab chaos. It removed a brutal leader, Saddam Hussein, who had held Iraq together, thereby fragmenting a lynchpin Arab state and opening the gates of the Arab world to an Iranian hegemonic drive that soon extended to Syria. There followed Obama’s effort to alter negative perceptions of the US in the region by focusing on democracy and tolerance, which ended up empowering Islamist rule in Egypt and Turkey. Obama’s failure to act against Syrian chemical warfare sent a devastating message of US weakness. Even the JCPOA, in itself a positive step, encouraged the Iranian hegemonic drive into the Levant. Trump, in his first two years in office, emulated Obama by seeking ways to disengage militarily from the Middle East and by offering arms to the Gulf Arabs as a counterbalance to Iran. Trump’s ‘America First’ policy was more ideologically based and economically oriented than Obama’s. And more chaotic.
