Foreign Military Intervention in the Middle East - Essay Example

FOREIGN MILITARY INTERVENTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST By (Name) Name of Class (Course) Professor (Tutor) Name of Institution (University) City and State The Date There is a prevalent competition between countries in the world today for revenues and resources with regard to economic development and growth. This competition is becoming less about war and military might (Shapiro, 1984). It is quite ironic that stable states are the ones limiting themselves to this popular liability because the nations that have coercive powers institutionally restrain their capability of working through and with society and also influence policies. Most of the conventional Arab nations exhibit features of institutional weakness as much as they are powerful and dictatorial in nature; they can only actively cope with the problems they face that are caused by globalization and essential economic restructuring in the post rentier order (Hudson, 1999). These Middle Eastern Countries have had a lot of foreign military intervention in the current twenty-first century which has destabilized their state systems to a large extent. The invasion of liberalism by foreign states in the Middle East has led to instabilities ranging from political, ideological, sociological and even regional systems. Henry, 2005, claims that because of the extent to which Washington's grand strategy in the postwar era has relied upon the control of the world's major oil supplies, establishing American hegemony in oil-rich zones has long been a central objective of the US state. And given where the largest reserves of oil lie, US power has been deployed continuously within the Persian Gulf region. This region sits on top of no less than sixty-one percent of all proven reserves in the world, making it crucial to the entire international system. "Twenty-eight percent of global oil production is located in the Gulf. This proportion will rise to thirty-three percent by 2030 as production is ramped up from twenty-three mbpd (unit for thousand barrel per day) to thirty-eight mbpd. In considering oil reserves and production capacity, no other region has (or will) come close to the Persian Gulf in importance. This is a point not lost on United States (US) planners; the National Energy Policy Development (NEPD) report maintains that the region "will remain vital to US interests." In addition, "a primary focus of US international energy policy" in coming years, with Saudi Arabia continuing as a "lynchpin of supply reliability." Saudi Arabia holds more than twenty percent of the entire global stock of oil and- along with other regional producers- over eighty percent of the world's "excess production capacity." This function is crucial and establishes Saudi Arabia as the "swing state" in the system, able to make up for lost production elsewhere in the globe (whether as a result of natural disaster, corporate accident, or political instability). Muris, 1984, added that controlling this region, and Saudi Arabia in particular, was therefore a high priority for Washington, and this has been so throughout the postwar era. As Bradley Bowman, 2008, added that the first, oldest and main interest of the United States and other developed countries in the Middle East is the desire for an uninterrupted and reliable flow of oil from the Persian Gulf region. The economic and political consequences of the deprivation of this natural gas or oil to the United States and the global economy in general would be immense and devastating. By invading and occupying Iraq, US planners were concerned not only with removing a major challenge to American hegemony in the region and Bush administration officials, in particular, were not only (or even primarily) motivated by US corporate wealth. Washington used the invasion to Trans-nationalize the Iraqi economy, opening it up to speculation by global capital and reinventing it as a platform for neoliberal policies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this episode has led many to believe US strategy was motivated by a desire to secure Iraq's oil wealth for its own corporate and national interests. According to James Paul’s argument, the war was predominantly because of oil where large, cosmopolitan oil Companies and their host governments engaged in secret concerts to get control of Iraq's oil reserves and to increase their influence over their competitors. He also argued that the war in Iraq was driven by the close interrelationship between the United States oil companies and those in power in Washington. In this light, the US-installed occupying authority in charge after the invasion- the Coalition Provisional Authority, 2003, (CPA)- used its relatively brief window of political sovereignty to restructure the Iraqi political economy along neoliberal lines. The CPA passed a number of executive orders in the months following the invasion, privatizing the Iraqi economy to an extent that has never been seen before and forcing Iraq to open wide to foreign investment. Central to this process was CPA Order thirty-nine, entitled "Foreign Investment” which worked to manage Iraq's transition from a centrally planned economy that is not transparent to a market economy with a sustainable economic growth by setting up a dynamic private sector. In an economy that relies on oil as much as Iraq's, these measures were clearly designed to facilitate transnational investment in this sector. Importantly, however, the orders left out Iraq's oil from the program of mass privatization. Sensitive to charges of direct imperialism, and conscious of the danger of inflaming the anti-American insurgency, US planners opted to preserve ostensible control of the sector by the Iraqi state and to allow it to remain within Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Instead, underlying control was achieved through the use of production sharing agreements (PSAs) between oil transnationals and the Iraqi state. Snyder, 2000, argues that according to scholars that worked in the transit-ology convention presumed that the end of dictatorship marks the beginning of the movement towards democratization after uncertainty for some time. It is assumed that if a transition falls short of democratization, there will be a reoccurrence of authoritarian normalcy. In the case of Egypt, Libya, or Bahrain, there is neither a return to the old dictatorial order, democratization nor a slow transition. There is rather the disintegration and wilting of administrations by popular armament stimulated elites' militarization of the national apparatus and levels of state violence against regular people in the process of re-making administrations and governments. Human Rights Watch reported that, by 2007, there were tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in detention- many with dubious links to the armed insurgency. According to the Pentagon, the average length of detention for the more than twenty-five thousand Iraqis in US custody was three hundred days, with many held for years without charge or trial (Mumford, 1974). As the Abu Ghraib scandal demonstrated, torture is common in detention facilities. There are reports of torture all over the region and other abuse of prisoners in imprisonment centers belonging to Iraq's interior ministries, police and defense forces. Officials from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) in October 2007 testified that captives were hung by their limbs, forced to sit on sharp objects, physically shocked with electricity, burned and forced to sit on sharp objects. As a result the human rights of citizens of the states, democracy dictates the rule by the people and public participation in national development matters (McAlister, 2001). However, this is violated when people and especially the journalists who are gagged and some sent to detention when they try to speak out. Freedom of expression is thus not articulated due to restrictions imposed by the foreign countries. This fits within a wider pattern of abuses suffered by political and social activists in states receiving US counterinsurgency support. According to Amnesty International, 2010, the focus by Washington and local elites on the safety of the public and the security of state arose to the disadvantage of the cause of human rights; this was coupled with widespread and rampant serious human rights abuses the region. Rebel debates and voices are repressed by the powerful intelligence and security services throughout the region as state power is maintained. Those that speak up are arrested and detained without trial and are further subjected to torture and other ill-treatments by security authorities who abuse human rights without consequences (Shafir, 2002). Western states including the United States have acquired allies among security and intelligence forces of some of the most oppressive managements in the region which has helped embed the offensive systems of the security apparatus in the region. An article by Pete Hoekstra (2017) claimed that in the month before elections, there was a crucial vote at the UN Security Council of which the Obama administration abstained from; this abstinence allowed another resolution that condemned Israel to pass. This decision clearly showed the personal position on Israel and is expected to destabilize an already damaged Middle East even more. For nearly fifty years, the United States was Israel’s loyal ally (Adamsky, 2010). It consistently helped by rejected insurgent groups such as the Muslim jihadists. Former president of the United States Barrack Obama managed to overturn the previous policy of not engaging with Islamists that had been in place for a number of decades. He however embraced Islamists; a change that led to the upheaval of Libyan and Egyptian leaders and further facilitated the increase in radical jihadism. The collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood eventually led to more instability in the Middle East. Egypt and Libya are still in the struggle to put an end to elements of radical Islamism in their countries. Libya was eventually declared a failed state exporting refugees, terrorists and radical beliefs throughout Europe and Africa. These problems were further worsened by the abstention of the Obama administration from the Security Council vote that occurred recently. Israel is now under criticism from international forces which even go further to challenge the country’s right to exist. The failure to protect the states’ interests is perceived as a selfish move by the United States (Jamal et al., 2015). The entrance of the United States into the dispute between Israel and Palestine caused the entire chaos between the two countries. The United States advocated for the creation of a Jewish town in Palestine. According to Smooha (1990), Palestinians were not followers of the Formalist movement who believed in the peaceful co-existence of two foreign groups together as they perceived Israel to be an ethnic democracy. The result was the current unrest in the countries. The United States was willing to abuse her military force after using Israel to reduce political unrest in the Middle East, the United States was willing to abuse her military force. A civil war started in Jordan in the beginning of September 1970 between Sadam Hussein and the Palestine Liberation Organization (Deegan, 1997). The United States assumed that the Soviets were using the upstarts as tools of manipulation to capture the king and this lead to global reactions. However, President of The United States Of America could not allow an insurrection inspired by Russia to overthrow Sadam Hussein; they believed that the entire Middle East could go into war if it succeeded and the possibility of a direct confrontation between The United States and Russia was very high which could end in nuclear wars. However, Nixon was unable to send the United States troops thus asked their ally, Isreal to be vigilant (Kim, 2013). In conclusion, the instability in the Middle East is a result of selfish states who would do anything in their capacity to exploit other states for their own benefit. The scramble for the oil and natural gas in the region also increased destabilization of the states. As a result, economic control of the main revenues producers which were oil and natural gas got into the hands of the adversaries leading to the chaos. Elites see the lack of U.S. action and strategy to maintain peace in the region is seen as the main reason for instabilities in the internal state systems and is condemned by Elites. Peace and stability between Israel and its rivals was the main force behind most of the foreign policy efforts by the United States. This therefore makes the fact that foreign interests, more so that of the United States are threatened by local rulers representing their class interests just as much as the Soviet aggression in the Middle East is clearly shown. The United States further contributed to the oppressive internal policies. If there were less fights in the Middle East, the countries’ economies would be saved since they will not be spending on fighting costs and deployment of troops and also have American Human resources. In the Long run, The United States could profit from the peace and stability as American companies could move to and grow in the region. 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