ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to show that, on the contrary, contemporary US strategy toward the Middle East often lacked realist foreign policy determinants. Both neo-conservative as well as liberal interventionist agendas dominated foreign policy decision-making in 2003 and 2011. The extensive 2016 Chilcot Report on British decision-making leading up to the Iraq War made it clear that both President George W Bush and Prime Minister Blair were made fully aware that Iraq could descend into sectarian chaos after the invasion. The decision to invade Iraq under the Bush administration and Obama's decision to intervene in Libya and support the rebels in the Syrian civil war brought the region into total and seemingly perpetual war. In a stark departure from realist balance-of-power thinking, in a disclosed note from Blair to Bush, the Prime Minister tells the President that Bush could "define international politics for the next generation", calling that moment "the true post-Cold War order".
