The presentation situates the current discussion about American policy towards the Middle East within the ongoing debate about if we are witnessing the “end of the American era in the Middle East.” It argues the Obama administration’s response to 2010-12 Arab uprisings have sought a redefinition of the American rationale for its continuing, if not expanding, diplomatic and military presence in the region. I show how the American recognition of an Arab democratic imaginary has allowed the US and Europe to speak about the possible incorporation of the Arab world in a US-led liberal international order defined by economic independence and mutual security arrangements and regulated by global (or rather “Western-dominated”) norms and international institutions. A close reading of events, however, shows how shifts in US policy have largely been in response to political change generated by local social and political forces (be they liberal, populist, or Islamist) who largely reject external efforts to define the regional order. The presentation suggests that several emerging forces are pushing to shape the development of a multi-actor, though possibly more unstable, regional system in the Middle East. A major, ongoing trend has been the increasing assertiveness of regional ‘middle powers’ such as Turkey, Iran, now Qatar and likely Egypt in the future. Each of these states is using a range of tools to project influence, exploit geopolitical shifts caused but the uprisings, and articulate (rival) visions for the emergence of a multi-actor regional order. It is not clear, however, to what degree the US is willing to accommodate the rise of more autonomous regional actors. In fact, recent events seem to be leading the US to become more narrowly reliant on Israel and the smaller Gulf states to sustain the American ability to project power in the region. The presentation concludes that we might be returning to an era like the 1950s, when public opinion and popular mobilization can shape the foreign policy behavior of states. In such a system, the US will likely be less willing to rely on soft power as it faces more rivals in the struggle to maintain its regional influence. The US will again have to choose if it wants influence gained through persuasion and diplomacy, which would also mean a retreat from its current regional posture, or forgo such influence in a effort to seek control through projecting military power.

This paper contributes to the panel theme: “The United States and the Middle East: The End of the American Century?” by interrogating what the “American Century” was, and how it operated in the Middle East. After first exploring the concept of an “American Century” and how it relates to traditional notions of empire and hegemony, my paper looks specifically at U.S. foreign policy toward the Ba‘thist government that took power in Iraq in July 1968. I investigate the extent to which Iraq in the late 1960s and early 1970s should be considered a part of the “American Century.” What was the U.S. relationship to Iraq prior to the Ba‘th’s 1968 coup? How did US foreign policymakers respond to the emergence of a Ba‘thist government in Iraq? How did the emergence of a Ba‘thist government in Iraq affect the regional oil economy? In answering these questions, I draw on a variety of international sources. These include: recently declassified U.S. government documents – particularly the records of the Office of Near Eastern affairs within the U.S. State Department (located at the US National Archives II, College Park, MD), the Iraq Petroleum Company Archive (located at the University of Warwick, U.K.), and Ba‘thist memoir literature. These records clearly indicate that the Ba‘th’s 1968 coup occurred at an important inflection point in the history of American global power – indeed, a moment that can be considered the beginning of the end of the “American Century.” I show that while the Ba‘thist coup forestalled a burgeoning oil nationalization movement in Iraq, U.S. foreign policy-makers were unable to develop a clear and decisive response to the emerging Ba‘thist regime in Iraq. Despite repeated overtures from Ba‘thist leaders seeking American support between 1968 and 1970, American policy-makers remained divided amongst themselves. One faction advocated embracing the Ba‘th as means of stabilizing western oil interests in the region. An opposing faction perceived the Ba‘th as a potential ally of the Soviet Union and a threat to Israel. American fears of Ba‘thist-Soviet alignment proved a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the American refusal to accommodate the Ba‘th, led the government in Baghdad to seek Soviet support. Drawing on this support, the Ba‘th nationalized the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). I argue that this development did indeed undermine the structure of American power in the region.

Palestine has long been a key node in circuits of global counterinsurgency. Under the British Mandate, the territory served as a staging ground for the consolidation of British imperial policing and pacification strategies, and following mandate rule, as a testing ground for Israeli experiments in asymmetric warfare and demographic engineering, not barring considerable US diplomatic and material support. In its most recent occupation of Iraq, the US adopted various population control measures and biopolitical technologies long used by the Israeli military in the occupied territories. Yet counterinsurgency is often assumed to be kinetic, or related to outright violence and lethal force while its “non-kinetic” counterparts are often overlooked. This paper explores the ways in which practices of colonial subjugation and management are being mobilized through the less sensational, seemingly mundane spaces and practices of aid governance – to be precise, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Beginning historically, this paper situates USAID within a brief genealogy of US counterinsurgency theory and maps linkages between USAID and the “population-centric” approach in US counterinsurgency thinking. Centrally I argue that the “population-centric” approach seeks to modulate and render invisible the ongoing operation of both lethal and non-lethal forms of violence. This paper then turns to a detailed account of how those living in the West Bank and Gaza are negotiating the contours of the American security state in Palestine and the attendant forms of “risk-based” and disciplinary management to which American power is giving rise. Lastly, this paper engages broader questions concerning the ways in which US aid intervention in Palestine relates to larger questions of sovereignty, national struggle and ever-more sophisticated modes of colonial management. In attending to such questions, this paper suggests that far from waning, American power remains a significant force in the making and unmaking of political geographies at the global scale and in the Middle East specifically.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, there has been an expanding shadow war of assassinations and drone strikes across physical borders in such peripheral localities as Pakistani tribal areas, Yemen and Somalia in which violence is largely disappeared from media coverage and political accountability. While some argue that this new deterritorialized form of warfare is being driven by the technological innovations of drone warfare, this paper will argue that the key innovation has been the increasing social adoption of networks as the primary organizational form of American military engagement. Drawing upon the speculative theorizing of Hardt and Negri in their work Multitude, who contend that wars today will increasingly be fought through the organizational form of networks (“All wars today tend to be netwars”), the paper will trace the rise of the network form within the US military through the expansion of the power and influence of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) across the US military after September 11, 2001 culminating in the leading role of JSOC kill/capture networks commanded by General Stanley McChrystal during the 2007 “surge” in Iraq. The new modalities of networked warfare were then expanded to Afghanistan and, more discretely, to Pakistan through the spread of JSOC, fusion centers and joint commands across the military under the Obama administration. This has resulted in the increasingly deeterritorialized form of targeted warfare that is taking place today in such locales as Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. While proponents of the new form of targeted warfare tout that it does not put America soldiers at risk and removes the heavy footprint that stirs up militant opposition, the paper will conclude by discussing the dangers these increasingly permissive and deterritorialized network forms of warfare pose for democratic accountability and strategic rationality. In particular, the paper will contend that the deterritorialization of war makes it more likely that war will become, as Hardt and Negri warn, a permanent social condition; both a procedural activity and an ordering, regulative activity that creates and maintains social hierarchies, a form of power aimed at the promotion and regulation of social life both at home and abroad.