Стр. 20 - V

Электронное приложение к журналу «Международная жизнь»
Author : A. Bezrukov
Post-graduate student, Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian
Academy of Sciences
EARLY IN THE 21ST CENTURY, America's Middle
Eastern policy suffered a series of failures that have de-
creased its security level, as well as that of its allies and
the rest of the world. Today, these failures sprouted in
Iraq and Syria where Washington's political and military
interference had stirred up terrorist and extremist activ-
ities. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has
become a regional actor and has dented regional stability
and Washington's defense capabilities.
America's diplomatic defeats in the Middle East should
be identified and analyzed: This has become an objective
necessity since they might be rooted in the mechanism of foreign policy decision-making in the
United States.
AT FIRST it seemed that George W. Bush as the president would not change much, if anything,
in his country's Middle Eastern strategy. There were no signs that the Ba'ath regime would be
removed by force. Indeed, military invasion of Iraq did not fit the aims and tasks of America's
foreign policy as declared by some members of the new president's foreign policy team. In fact,
there were signs that a strong and influential coalition that had taken shape inside the Adminis-
tration would keep Washington away from military operations in the Middle East.
Even before he was elected President, George W. Bush had been talking about the need to grad-
ually undermine the positions of the Iraqi leaders; during the presidential campaign, he was talk-
ing about economic sanctions.
Aware of the disagreements the Administration and top officials invariably demonstrated their
conviction that Iraq had already acquired everything needed to produce nuclear weapons. "The
U.S. vice president, Dick Cheney, delivered this speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW)
national convention: 'Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly
soon'."
THE PROCESS through which the U.S. Administration arrived at the strategy of war against
Iraq exposed flaws or even faults of the mechanism of foreign policy decision-making in the
United States.
This style of foreign policy decision-making in the United States might have repeatedly cropped
up; the high level of confrontation and instability in the Middle East undermined American in-
fluence in the region and put the U.S. political establishment into a situation similar to that of
post-9/11. This means that the errors and blunders of American diplomacy in the Gulf area
have become possible because the mechanism of foreign policy decision-making in the United
States cannot settle interdepartmental disagreements and arrive at the best options.
The Failure of U.S. Mechanism of Foreign Policy Decision-Mak-
ing: The War in Iraq