Obama Administration’s Middle East Policy: Strategic Adjustment And Intentions

The Middle East has always been the hotspot area in the world due to its strategicimportance, abundant energy reserves and complicated ethnic, religious and territorialconflicts, attracting the attention of the U.S. successive governments since the SecondWorld War. When Obama took office, he initially planned to implement the so-called“Rebalancing Strategy” by diverting the U.S. strategic priority to the Asia Pacific region.But the outbreak of the Arab Spring forced Obama to refocus on the Middle East on whichstill lies the U.S. foreign policy priority.The thesis begins with the background of Obama administration’s Middle East policy,namely, the global financial crisis, the legacy of the Bush administration, the widespreadanti-Americanism, the global power shift and U.S. pivot to Asia. Then it dilates on thestrategic adjustments the Obama administration makes accordingly such as improvingrelations with the Islamic World, rebuilding alliances, adopting balance-of-power strategyand maintaining regional stability, and further discussing the framework of the policycovering the retrenchment from Iraq and Afghanistan, Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Irannuclear issue and the Arab Spring. In the final part, the thesis sums up the features andsubstances of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy which are pragmatic realism,inconsistency and double standards, and more continuity than real change and then probesinto the real intentions of this policy from the aspects of the U.S. core interests, balance ofpower and the U.S. national identity crisis and finally makes a deep analysis of theinfluencing factors of this policy in terms of the U.S. domestic politics, the Middle Eastand other foreign players.In a word, the Obama administration reduces the deep involvement of the Middle Eastaffairs and adoptes a more flexible and pragmatic approach, but it does not lift the shacklesof the domestic politics or reverse its fundamental position. Thereforem, Obama’s MiddleEast policy shows more continuity than real change. As the United States will continuouslyspare no efforts in preserving its dominance in this region, it would be very difficult for theMiddle East to achieve the final peace and stability.