Peace and Democracy? The post-Cold War Debate on U.S. Middle East policies

In the years since the end of the Cold War, the Middle East has become in many ways the test case for U.S. policy in a unipolar world. The policies pursued by the world’s currently most eminent global power toward one of the world’s most penetrated subsystems do not only serve as a vivid example of the prospects and limits of the exercise of hegemonic power. They also reflect the long-standing debate between those who argue in favour of the promotion of political reform and democratization as a central U.S. foreign policy goal and those who support a more cautious approach that centres on what they consider to be more limited “national interests”. The following pages will therefore be devoted to the analysis of the debates accompanying these competing approaches toward a region whose strategic and cultural significance puts it at the heart and centre of many U.S. foreign policy interests.