The United States and Southwest Asia beyond 2000: A regional approach to United States policy in Transcaspia and the path to normalized United States-Iranian relations

This dissertation employs regionalist theories of international relations in a historically rooted analysis of the Southwest Asian region, U.S. foreign policy, and the future of U.S.-Iranian relations. Regional political and economic linkages in Southwest Asia demonstrate a marked consistency through time and have been rejuvenated by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. An examination of those linkages since 1500 supports this claim. However, U.S. policy in the region (the "Middle East") is rooted largely in Cold War imperatives that have warped its foundations and which bear little connection to those reemerging linkages. By adjusting its policy to converge with such linkages and their attendant behavior patterns, the United States can garner immediate benefits in multiple issue areas that bear directly on the long-term stability of this critical theater in U.S. foreign and strategic policy. Those potential benefits are highlighted by a case study of current U.S. policy regarding energy projects in Transcaspia. The United States can also simultaneously employ this more warranted regional perspective to craft a long-term, effective regional strategy---which is clearly lacking today. That strategy must include the normalization of ties with Iran, given its salient role in Southwest Asia. Moreover, the articulation of a coherent and constructive bilateral agenda by the United States, rooted in this regional reconceptualization and based on convergent U.S.-Iranian regional interests in Southwest Asia, will provide a durable basis for the gradual normalization of relations.