– PLAZOS DE VENCIMIENTO Y TASAS DE INTERÉS DE INVERSIONES, CRÉDITOS Y DEUDAS

U.S. foreign policy tends to be a product of a multitude of several interrelated dynamics. These dynamics contribute, to varying degrees, to the making of the ultimate geostrategic preferences. The geopolitical discourse in terms of which ‘self-image’ and the ‘other’ are defined, appears to be the key force that guides the official thinking. Conceptually, the notion of ‘American exceptionalism’ has captured the worldviews of Democratic and Republican administrations alike. In Ronald Reagan’s words, “America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”54 President Bill Clinton described America as the “indispensable nation”. President George W. Bush asserted “our nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world.”55 Hence, exceptionalism and its consequent feeling of cultural superiority have shaped America’s geopolitical perception of the world and its role atop it. Thus, Islamism was conceptualized within this context of self-assigned mission of democracy promotion, and human rights protection, undermining the forces of darkness.

The second geopolitical dynamic that impacts foreign policy choices is the school of thought, to which the president and his foreign policy team belong, shaping their worldview. Such policy approaches as engagement, containment, and military intervention are largely rooted in their relevant intellectual paradigms of liberal internationalism, realism/conservatism, and neo- conservatism respectively. Diverse U.S. tactical approaches to the Middle East were, to certain extent, influenced by the given administration’s conceptual reference and geopolitical worldview. For instance, George W. Bush’s coercive diplomacy (freedom agenda) and militarized policy (Global War on Terror) were rooted in a synthesis of various foreign policy rends, including conservative nationalism, neo-conservatism, and defensive realism. Whereas, Barack Obama’s reconciliatory posture towards the Muslim world, as reflected in his speeches in Ankara, April 2009, and Cairo, June 2009, revealed the liberal internationalist orientation of his administration, where peaceful engagement and multilateralism constitute the core pillars of Obama’s foreign policy, as delineated in the U.S. National Security Strategy of 2010.56 Finally, U.S. geostrategic behavior in certain circumstances tends to be influenced by the prevailing global and regional balance of power. The demise of the U.S.-backed autocratic power structures, as a result of the Arab revolt, altered the regional balance of power, where U.S. capability to impede Islamists’ ascendance to power seems to have been constrained immeasurably. The post-Arab spring geopolitical landscape further empowered the grassroots moderate Islamic movements, whose domination of the political scene is highly likely.

U.S. Islamist policy in the last two decades (1990 – 2010) appeared to be counterproductive: the role of Islam, as the primary source of cultural identity and political inspiration, extended considerably; Islamism steadily maintained its political significance, emerging as an unrivaled socio-political catalyst for change; and anti-American sentiment further heightened, jeopardizing U.S. interests and discrediting U.S. moral authority. This policy failure can largely be attributed to three factors. First, the U.S. policy community, by and large, seems to have overlooked the character of Islam as a socio-cultural shaper, and political energizer, tending to reduce it to a mere spiritual mission. Paradoxically, the official pronouncements tended to praise Islam as a civilized and tolerant faith, and condemned Islamic political activism.

Second, most American intellectuals and policymakers appeared to have misinterpreted the very geopolitical dynamics that contributed to the evolution of what came to be labeled

‘Islamism’. The post-Cold War administrations failed to properly diagnose the region’s chronic dilemma: the oppressive exclusion of Islam from the public sphere. The Clinton administration embraced an economic interpretation, attributing the rise of Islamic resurgence to socio- economic deprivation; whereas George W. Bush linked the phenomenon to freedom deficit and political alienation, viewing Islamism as a mere reactive protest movement that could be contained through economic liberation and political liberalization. Both administrations’ proposed remedies of economic reform and freedom agenda were, therefore, irrelevant. Particularly, “the so-called freedom agenda of [George W] Bush was a failure of both conceptualization and implementation.”57 Hence, both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, by the end of their respective terms, achieved short-lived success. In the deeper sense, Islamism is rooted in the political nature of Islam, fuelled by the entirely failing U.S.-backed authoritarian power structures, mobilized by collective feelings of political powerlessness and civilizational marginalization, and invariably energized by Muslims’ collaborate desire to restore the lost Islamic primacy. ‘Islam is the solution’ increasingly captured Muslims’ cultural and political inspirations.

Third, lack of comprehensive strategic vision constituted a characteristically major incompleteness in the U.S. approach to Islamic activism. Although far from being monolithic, moderate variants of Islamic groups, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, are largely united by common ideological predispositions, geopolitical perceptions, and geostrategic preferences. With the absence of such deliberately designed intellectual parameters, the U.S. Islamist orientation has tended to be driven by scattered events as they randomly unfolded, conflating radicalism with moderation, and equating aimless violent acts with anti-authoritarian peaceful political opposition. Also, the connotations of such terms as sharia, umma, and jihad were dogmatically identified with brutality, regression, extremism, and theocracy as it figured in the western political literature. As a result of the lack of theoretical guidance, and encompassing strategic vision, U.S. interest was ill-defined, and U.S. policy was misled, where America aligned itself with despotic regimes.

In short, the post-Cold War U.S. Middle East policy was not only dysfunctional, but also counterproductive, both reinforcing the autocratic status quo, and widening the anti-American sentiment. This policy failure can largely be attributed to; the misreading of the role of Islam as

the primary source of ideological, and political inspiration; geostrategic miscalculation of the growing socio-political significance of Islamism as the leading catalyst of change; and mismanagement of the region’s geopolitical landscape, where the U.S. invariably aligned itself with tyrannical regimes, unconditionally supported Israel, and failed to hold a sustainable strategic dialogue with moderate Islamists. These accumulations, along with other reasons, ultimately led to the eruption of the Arab spring at the outset of 2011.

Conclusion

The rise of the United States as a global power has been a historic breakthrough, profoundly altering the dynamics, the scope, and the nature of the global power struggle, and, as a result, increasingly impacting the destinies of many nations all over the globe. America’s combination of vast physical resources, geographical privilege (protection by two vast oceans), self- efficiency, institutional creativities, and value-based pluralistic system enabled the nation to sustain geopolitical preeminence, ultimately emerging as the sole superpower, with unmatched global reach and with no rival in sight. The national feeling of cultural superiority and the notion of ‘American exceptionalism’ tend to shape America’s geopolitical perceptions of ‘self’ and ‘other’, defining the U.S. self-assigned mission of democracy promotion and human rights protection. Crucial historic landmarks presented the U.S. with opportunities significantly to project its centrality to international affairs. Precisely, U.S. decisive roles in World Wars I and II, as well as the Cold War both reinforced America’s significance for world affairs, and unambiguously revealed its unrivalled multi-faceted power. In brief, America’s preponderance has harmoniously been generated by a combination of preparation and opportunities.

The inauguration of the ‘open door policy’, in the wake of the American-Spanish war of 1898, introduced expansionism as a prelude necessity to both internal well being, and promotion of the American version of democracy. To be sure the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 revealed an early signal of this expansionist inclination, but expansionism became an integral part of U.S. foreign policy at the outset of the nineteenth century, marking the realist, idealist, and liberal internationalist schools of thought. The legacies of –just to name a few – Theodore Roosevelt (realist), Woodrow Wilson (idealist), Ronald Reagan (realist), and George W. Bush (neo- conservative) are cases in point. The post-World War II great power struggle intensified the

expansionist tendency of U.S. foreign policy, breaking with isolationism, which, as Charles Krauthammer suggests, became “an ideology of fear.”58

The abrupt collapse of the Cold War saddled America with strategic perplexity: numerous surplus of power with no enemy to concentrate the mind. The 9/11 attacks seemed to have solved this problem, where American public and geostrategic resources were mobilized against ‘Islamic terrorism’, and hence Global War on Terror (GWoT) became the U.S. core strategy throughout George W. Bush’s two-term presidency (2001-2009).59 Henceforth, a stereotypical image of the defiant Middle East figured prominently in American intellectual and policy communities, where the region has dogmatically been identified with the forces of political violence, intellectual extremism, cultural intolerance, and aversion to the secular-based modernization.

Post-Cold War U.S. approaches to the Middle East failed to recognize the vastly ascending Islamist factor. The region, therefore, was viewed through the Cold War’s typical prism.60 America’s geostrategic perceptions continued to anchor U.S. regional interests in the stability of the pro-American authoritarian regimes, perpetuating the increasingly unpopular tyrannical power structures, and hence antagonizing a wide segment of the Arab public. The counterterrorism requirements prompted the George W. Bush administration further to reinforce its alliance with regional authoritarianism. Thus, the vastly growing socio-political Islamic resurgence was simplistically equated with ‘terrorism’. Neo-conservative intellectuals, in particular, tend to reduce mainstream Islamism to a mere fanatically defiant anti-modernization movement mobilized by a mixture of historical and cultural antipathy towards the Judeo- Christian West.61

Both George W. Bush’s conservative worldview and the liberal internationalist approaches of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama failed to capture the region’s geopolitical realities: the zealous aspiration for political liberation; the Islamic-oriented cultural identity that invariably tends to shape the collective geopolitical images of ‘self’ and ‘other’; and the increasingly crucial socio-cultural appeal and political perceptibility of the Islamist forces. As Graham Fuller contends, although “various administrations in Washington have applied themselves to understand this phenomenon...they have been slow to learn not least because the subject is in flux.”62 Failing adequately to capture the region’s longing for freedom, 63 the misperceived U.S Middle East geostrategic calculation relatively contributed to the eruption of what came to be

labeled ‘Arab Revolution’ that swept the region at the outset of 2011, unseating many pro- American autocrats.64

Clearly, relying on the rationalist-realist, and security approaches to understanding the Middle Eastern geopolitical dynamics appears to be inadequate. The region’s political scene is and interdependently constructed by a multitude of historical, cultural, and ideological forces. It is not only the material interests that shape the Muslim-majority societies perceptions and attitudes. Rather, such forces as identities, values, and religious creeds tend to exert a critical influence on peoples’ political and moral judgments. Thus, understanding Islam’s ideological predispositions, political character, and cultural components, is crucial to both examining the viability of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and analytically foreseeing the potential trajectories of the U.S.-Islamist relations.

Notes

1. Samuel p. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, p. 21.

2. Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition, p. 275. 3. Lock Johnson, Seven Sins of American Foreign Policy, p.3. 4. Ibid, p. 3.

5. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, p. 24.

6. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, p. 21. 7. Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, p. 238.

8. Lock Johnson, Seven Sins of American Foreign Policy, p. 14. 9. Ibid, p. 14.

10. Henry Kissinger, Does American Need a Foreign Policy?, p. 238.

11. Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World

Order, p. 87.

12. Lock Johnson, Seven Sins of American Foreign Policy, p. 13. 13. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers, p. 197. 14. Ibid, p. 197.

15. Ibid, p. 242.

16. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, p. 3.

17. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, p. 50. 18. Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy, p. 241.

19. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, p. 63. 20. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, p. 4.

21. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, p. 110. 22. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers, p. 328.

23. Ibid, Table 30, p. 330. 24. Ibid, p. 329.

25. Ibid, p. 331.

26. Ibid, Table 27, p. 296.

28. President Harry Truman's Speech before Congress, March 12, 1947. 29. Quoted in Building Moderate Muslim Network, Rand Corporation, p. 11.

30. Although it was not officially a member of the Baghdad pact, the U.S. was the strategic sponsor of that organization, which was meant to serve as a bulwark against the Soviet penetration.

31. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, p. 30. 32. See Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, Issue

1, 1990/1991, pp. 23-33.

33. Madeleine K. Albright, "The Testing of American Foreign Policy", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, Issue 6, November/December 1998, pp. 50-64.

34. Condoleezza Rice, "Promoting The National Interests", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79, Issue 1, pp. 45-62, January/February 2000.

35. Richard Haass, "What To Do With American Primacy", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78, Issue 5, September/October 1999, pp. 37-49.

36. Barry Buzan, “Will the Global War On Terrorism be the New Cold War?”,

International Affairs, Vol. 82, issue 6, November 2006, pp. 1101-1118.

37. Ibid. pp. 1101-1118.

38. President Bush's State of the Union Address, January 29, 2002.

39. European Parliament Report on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for

the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners, January 26, 2007.

40. Angel Rabasa and others, Building Moderate Muslim Network, Rand Corporation, p. 57.

41. President Bush's State of the Union Address, January 29, 2002.

42. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, March 2006. 43. President Bush's Speech in Abu Dhabi, UAE, January 13, 2008.

44. Condoleezza Rice, "Rethinking The National Interests", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 87, Issue 4, July/August 2008, pp. 2-26.

45. Condoleezza Rice, “Remarks at the American University of Cairo”, June 20, 2005. 46. Graham E. Fuller, Algeria: The Next Fundamentalist State?, p. 113.

47. Tamara Cofman Wittes, Freedom Unsteady March: America's Role in Building Arab

48. Quoted in ibid, p. 23.

49. See John L. Esposito, & Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Muslims?, pp. 66-98.

50. Marina Ottaway & Amr Hamzawy, Getting to Pluralism: Political Actors in the Arab

World, p. 101.

51. President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009.

52. See President Barack Obama’s Remarks to Turkish Parliament in April 2009, and Speech in Cairo in June 2009.

53. See Robin Wright, Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World, pp. 16-40.

54. Quoted in Paul R. Viotti, American Foreign Policy, p. 110. 55. Quoted in ibid, p. 111.

56. See U.S. National Strategy, the White House, May 2010.

57. Brian Katulis, Democracy promotion in the Middle East and the Obama

Administration, A Century Foundation Report, 2009.

58. Charles Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a

Unipolar World, p. 3.

59. See Zbegniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, pp. 7-40; Patrick Porter, “Long Wars and Long Telegrams: Containing Al-Qaeda”,

International Affairs, Vol. 85, Issue 2, March 2009, pp. 285-301

60. See James A. Bill and Rebecca Bill Chavez, “The Politics of Incoherence: The United States and the Middle East”, Middle East Journal, Vol. 56, No. 4, Autumn, 2002, pp. 562-575.

61. See Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, pp. 80-5; Bernard Lewis, “Free at Last”, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, Issue 2, Mar/Apr 2009, pp. 77-88; Daniel Pipes, “Islam and Islamism: Faith and Ideology”, National Interest, spring 2000.

62. Graham E. Fuller, US Policy towards Political Islam, p. 1.

63. See Michael Mandelbaum, The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in

a Cash-strapped Era, pp. 137-80.

64. See Shmuel Bar, “America’s Fading Middle East Influence”, Hoover Institution,

Arab Middle East: Political Change and Geopolitical Implications”, International

Affairs, Vol. 88, Issue 1, January/February 2012, pp. 63-79.

Chapter 2