Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis of U.S.

involvement in the
Middle East
Author(s): Ruairidh Wood
Source: Journal of Global Faultlines , Vol. 6, No. 2, Security Challenges of the 21st
Century: New Challenges and Perspectives (December 2019-February 2020), pp. 166-185
Published by: Pluto Journals

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 Journal of Global Faultlines, 2019
Vol. 6, No. 2, 166-185.

Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis

of U.S. involvement in the Middle East

Ruairidh Wooda

Abstract
Promoting democracy in the Middle East has been cited by the U.S. as a key foreign policy
objective post-Cold War. As a result the U.S. has intervened in numerous countries and
conflicts, particularly since 9/11 and the subsequent declaration of the War on Terror.
However, this has not been without controversy and its actions often aid imperialism rather
than the country it claims its intervention is benefitting. This paper challenges the claim
that the U.S. is indeed promoting democracy, arguing that it is instead pursuing national
objectives to increase hegemony. By analyzing U.S. involvement in the Middle East from the
Soviet-Afghan War, through the Invasion of Iraq and Arab Spring, up to present day, this
paper contends that the U.S. has continuously created instability in the region, in terms of
both state and human security. By constructing various actors as threats to themselves, the
West or the world, the U.S. has been able to justify its aggressive pursuit of foreign policy
objectives in the Middle East. Utilizing the theories of realism, liberalism, and constructivism,
this research discusses how the U.S. has attempted to achieve hegemony in the region, and
indeed globally, before contrasting this with humanitarian efforts it has been a part of. The
paper also analyses the impact external actors have had on U.S. action, discussing the crucial
but often constrained role of the United Nations, as well as the contentious proliferation of
private military and security companies in the post-Cold War era.

Introduction

This paper examines modern U.S. involvement in the Middle East, to determine whether it
has attempted to pursue hegemony or promote democracy in the region.
The humanitarian impact of the Syrian civil war has affected countries across Europe.
While there were reasons local to Syria, discontent in the country can be traced back to U.S.
involvement towards the end of the Cold War and its aggressiveness in the Middle East
since. Modern Western politics has seen an increase in xenophobia – Trump getting elected
and Brexit in the U.K. are examples of this happening in traditionally liberal states – yet the
“outsiders” in question are seeking safety because of the detrimental impact Western influ-
ence has had on their own states. While there is a body of work focusing on how U.S.
attempts to achieve hegemony in the Middle East have had an adverse effect of the region,
much of this is focused on specific periods or regions. With the Syrian Crisis in mind, I aim
to provide a comprehensive overview of how a history of U.S. hyper-involvement in the
Middle East led to the crisis. Furthermore, by offering a comparison via a competing theo-
retical perspective, I will be examining whether much of this criticism of the U.S. is indeed
warranted or not.

Ruairidh Wood is a Birmingham City University Graduate with a degree in Security Studies.
a

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Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
Ruairidh Wood

The U.S. has directly and indirectly participated in various conflicts in the region –
beginning with the Afghan-Soviet war and ending with the Syrian civil war – and it has
attempted to achieve hegemony through these actions. Using liberalism, this research inves-
tigates how this involvement may be an attempt to promote democracy and human rights
within the region, at the same time discussing the role of the United Nations (UN) in
humanitarian efforts. Finally I will examine how the recent influx of private military and
security companies (PMSCs) has led to these organizations also playing a key role in con-
temporary conflicts.
In 1979 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched Operation Cyclone; a
program to arm and fund the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in opposition to occupying Soviet
powers (Gaspar, 2001). Didam Audu (2013) discusses in his article “The War on Terror and
the Afghan Stalemate” how the U.S. (along with the U.K., Saudi Arabia and more) armed
and trained insurgents to wage a jihad war in what they saw as an integral Cold War strug-
gle. Didam Audu states that the U.S. contributed nearly US$600 million yearly to the
Mujahideen, but once the Soviets were defeated it withdrew all support, which left a vacuum
for the Taliban – who arose out of the Mujahideen – to fill. Williams (2011) reports that the
Mujahideen were composed of Afghan nationals as well as foreign fighters known as Afghan
Arabs, which included Osama bin Laden. Allegedly the CIA created this group themselves,
although they refute these claims, stating that aid was not provided to non-Afghan
Mujahideen. However, it has been reported that they gave Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who
was a major recruiter for the Afghan Arab group, U.S. visas on four occasions (Kepel, 2006).
The Taliban were able to rise to power due to the recklessness of the U.S., which was
only concerned with the short-term goal of winning the Cold War. Uprooting a progressive,
albeit communist, Muslim regime by creating a polar opposite jihad force that wanted to
implement their radical Muslim code, inevitably led to a power struggle within the country
once external forces had withdrawn. This demonstrates how little the U.S. valued Afghanistan
or its citizens and indicates that it was acting purely to advance its own national interests.
How the U.S. acted in Afghanistan is strikingly similar to the ongoing Syrian civil war, with
the New York Times (2017) Mazzetti, M., Goldman, A. & Schmid, M.S., ‘Behind the Sudden
Death of a $1 Billion Secret CIA War in Syria’ [online] Available at https://www.nytimes.
com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-arm-train-trump.html (accessed 29
February 2020) reporting that President Trump abruptly shut down a $1 billion, four-year-
old effort to arm and train Syrian rebels, which, while experiencing some success, had led to
weapons ending up in the hands of al-Qaeda.
In the article “U.S. Foreign Policy and the Arab Spring: Balancing Values and
Interests,” Atlas (2012) discusses how Islamist forces in the Middle East rose in part because
of Western intervention in the region. This can be seen with the Soviet-Afghan War because
the proxy war fought between the U.S. and Soviet Union, which then disregarded recon-
struction of the country once it was over, provided justification for a defensive jihad that
ended up gaining support from Muslims worldwide. Atlas explains how the U.S. has vied to
become the hegemonic power in the Arab world since the 1950s and has become more irre-
sponsible in maintaining this position in the years since 9/11. Under the guise of freedom,
oil-hungry Western powers have looked to assert dominance in the Middle East and have
done so with minimal resistance up until Russia opposed them in Syria.
The article suggests that the majority of U.S. interventions in the region are done
to increase its own sphere of power, similar to British and French colonization prior to
World War I, with little thought given to the humanitarian aspect unless it is useful as
a tool for expansion. The article points to the desire for oil amongst Western nations as
one of the driving forces behind U.S. involvement in the region and has a very cynical
viewpoint in regards to its actions. Oil is a controversial, yet consistent factor in U.S.

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 Journal of Global Faultlines, 2019
Vol. 6, No. 2, 166-185.
involvement in the Middle East, which is an area that remains critical for the future of
energy and is thought to hold 65% of the world’s oil reserves (Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries, 2018). The Oil Factor (2005) suggests that because oil is
so crucial to the U.S. that the Bush administration was in fact lucky when their aggres-
sive foreign policy inadvertently produced the Islamist force behind 9/11 so that they
could pursue further interests in the Middle East.
Malley and Finer (2018) begin their article “The Long Shadow of 9/11: How
Counterterrorism Warps U.S. Foreign Policy” by discussing how crucial counterterrorism has
been for U.S. presidents’ foreign policy objectives since George W. Bush launched the global
War on Terrorism following on from the 9/11 attacks. While conspiracy theories suggesting
the U.S. government played an active role in the destruction of the twin towers are improba-
ble, there is evidence that the U.S. government had knowledge of an attack of similar magni-
tude, which suggests that 9/11 was allowed to happen so that threats in the Middle East could
be neutralized in retaliation. The President’s Daily Brief for 6 August 2001 was titled “Bin Laden
Determined To Strike in U.S.” (Blanton, 2004) and the 9/11 Commission’s report stated the
“attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise” due to previous attempts
at terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists against the U.S. throughout the 1990s (The 9/11
Commission Report, 2004: 2). If the U.S. did intentionally avoid stepping up their security to
stop a potential terrorist attack on home soil, then it again demonstrates how it disregards the
humanitarian consequences of its actions so long as they aid imperialism.
This aligns with the realist notion that the U.S. is only interested in “self-help” and is
acting in this aggressive manner due to the uncertainty of what other actors may do. 9/11
paved the way for an aggressive Middle Eastern foreign policy to be put into effect via the
“War on Terror,” which did work to curtail terrorism at home; between 2002 and 2011 only
23 people lost their lives to terrorism in the U.S. (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2012). Yet,
the subsequent invasion of, and then war in, Afghanistan was not brought to an end until
2014, suggesting the war there, and indeed the War on Terror as a whole, was and is still
being drawn out for other, not so apparent, reasons. The article goes on to suggest that this
is due in part to the U.S.’s desire for a quick fix to life or death problems when, in terms of
the Taliban, it would have been more beneficial to look at local grievances that motivated
the group. One of the concluding points of the article is that there are more terrorist groups
now than at the beginning of the War on Terror so something has to be changed if the U.S.
does indeed want to stop terrorism.
In “How 9/11 Triggered the Arab Spring,” Dekhakhena (2013) denotes how the U.S.
has tried to promote both democracy and dictatorships around the world, depending on
which is more beneficial to their national interests. During the Cold War the micro-narrative
of U.S. policy was to push for dictatorships in the Middle East – unintentionally producing
the likes of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda – which fell under the macro-narrative of hin-
dering the spread of communism and Soviet ideologies. After the Cold War, they pushed
for democracies in the region up until 2006 when funding was provided to oppressive
regimes to silence opposition to their interests abroad. Middle Eastern dictators were then
in a position to keep hold of their regimes as the alternative was civil war. This tightening
of the grip by dictators, U.S. relinquishing support leading to underdevelopment of the
country, and the rising awareness of these factors by the population, all heavily contributed
to the Arab Spring, which created a power vacuum for Islamist forces to fill in the anarchy
that followed the uprisings.
The article suggests that throughout history the U.S. has changed its foreign policy
objectives to suit its needs without accounting for how this will affect other states. This is
even more apparent when looking at Syria. Trump initially intervened to protect Syrian citi-
zens after the use of chemical weapons by Assad, but, given the strategic importance of Syria
in the Middle East, this intervention was not done for purely humanitarian reasons (Yacubian,

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Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
Ruairidh Wood

2018) Progress in Syria is apparent, with ISIS dwindling in terms of support and territory, yet
the recent decision by Trump to remove U.S. troops, isolating the Kurds and other local
forces that depended on U.S. military assistance, demonstrates how little value is given to
human beings in war zones.
Although there is clear evidence of realist strategy by the U.S. in terms of foreign
policy, interventions in other states are justified as being for the good of humanity, because
the U.S. is promoting democracy. Whether this is true or not, there is some evidence of
interventions having a positive influence, such as in Kuwait, Panama, and Bosnia. Liberalists,
such as Kant, would argue that “democratic governments, economic interdependence, and
international law and organizations” could all be implemented to combat the security
dilemma (Russet, 2013: 94). So as long as the U.S. is attempting to promote democracy, then
the underlying motivations may not matter so much.
However, in “Neo-Realism and Humanitarian Action: From Cold War to Our Days,”
Aliyev (2011) analyses humanitarian intervention is being driven by self-interest, which is
something still present in modern humanitarian intervention. Genocide in Rwanda saw little
peacekeeping operations launched, partially due to the fact that none of the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) had interests there and so they were reluctant to
risk lives and spend resources. Levin’s (1994) report on the U.S. security strategy since the Cold
War supports this notion, proposing that only the human rights of its own citizens are a con-
cern to the U.S. and, due to the resources available, it has to pick and choose which states they
become involved with. Whether this is morally right or wrong, a state will value the lives of its
own citizen tenfold in comparison to those of other states, especially when not an ally. This
supports the idea that much of U.S. foreign policy is for imperialism, even if appearing to be
for humanitarian intervention. Be this as it may, it raises the question as to why the U.S. is so
aggressive with its methods that could serve to worsen the conditions of human rights world-
wide, which in term may affect it. Additionally, liberal scholars argue that other states have a
duty to help those who are being denied human rights and the concepts of sovereignty, impe-
rialism, and even the promotion of an order in international society must fall behind the pur-
suit of justice (Spalding, 2013). Just war theory, however, questions whether or not the
motivation behind a state’s intervention matters so long as the situation is being combated
(Seay, 2007) and Tesón (2005) points out that motivations and intentions for humanitarian
intervention will rarely be without an ulterior motive, and so if a resolution is achieved, the
actions that lead to it are somewhat acceptable.
Erickson (2013) argues in “The United States and the Case for Humanitarian
Intervention” that the U.S.’s ability to act in cases of humanitarian intervention is often
limited. Due to the conflicting national interests of the permanent five members (P5) of the
UNSC, who must unanimously agree on whether or not to intervene, there are very few
crises where a course of action will be decided. Russia has vetoed action in Syria on more
than one occasion, whilst continuing to supplying President Assad with arms, which indi-
cates that the P5 will counter international efforts to stifle violence, so long as they can
profit. This structure, used by the European Union (EU), has been criticized for being an
elitist club for those states with the most power which can then dictate world matters to
the remaining countries (Ziabari, 2011). Erickson (2013) goes on to suggest that due to the
failure by the UN and other international institutions, such as the EU and North Atlantic
Treat Organization (NATO), to enforce the resolutions in place for countries violating
Security Council resolutions, the U.S. will have to carry the burden of humanitarian inter-
vention unilaterally. Therefore the U.S. should be free from most of the rules of the
International Criminal Court, so that the often-hindering aspects of the UN are unable to
delay or prevent intervention.
Further criticism of the ineffectiveness of modern humanitarian intervention has
centered on the lack of political will from major nations to intervene, unless they have

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 Journal of Global Faultlines, 2019
Vol. 6, No. 2, 166-185.
interests within the state affected. The Mogadishu effect has made states more reluctant to
send in troops over fears of their safety. This has led to the proliferation of PMSCs as key
actors on the international stage. The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan saw a boom in these
companies and they are now relied upon in wars and for humanitarian missions, although
they have faced criticism due to the manner in which they have been known to operate.
In “Private Military Companies, Opportunities, and Termination of Civil Wars in
Africa,” Akcinaroglu and Radziszewksi (2012) argue that it would now be virtually impossi-
ble for a nation to effectively go to war without relying on PMSCs in some capacity. They
believe that this is threatening to the state, because although contracting PMSCs will free up
other resources, their employment undermines a state’s ability to provide its own security
and so the PMSC can maximize leverage to gain a more profitable contract. Transnationalists
support this notion, contending that states are now in a period of unprecedented weakness
and lack control to execute tasks mandated by the electorate. The growth of non-state
actors, for hire or not, coupled with ever-increasing globalization has led Hobsbawm to go
so far as stating “Nations and Nationalism will be present in this globalized history but in
subordinate and rather minor ways” (Hobsbawm cited in Boyce, 2013: 23).
Alternatively, the employment of PMSCs can be viewed as a purely logical deci-
sion due to the decline in domestic capital for large military forces after the end of the
Cold War. This, coupled with a change in public attitudes towards reduced military
spending, led to a large pool of skilled personnel looking for new work and so it made
sense for states to capitalize on it. Arguably, states like the U.S. and Russia have been
using PMSCs to further distance themselves from the battlefield so as to appease the
public and not aggravate tensions with other states, similar to how they utilized proxy
forces during the Cold War.
The proliferation of PMSCs has not been restricted to state employment and the
UN has more frequently been turning to them for assistance in peacekeeping missions.
Nation-states are becoming more reluctant to send their own troops on these missions
and the UN is also cautious of relying on local police forces so the profit-driven PMSCs
have marketed themselves to the UN by offering services that otherwise may be a struggle
to provide. However, Paul (2014) discusses in “The Use of Private Security Companies in
the Humanitarian Sector” how PMSCs are rarely deployed effectively in humanitarian cri-
sis due to a lack of trust between them and their employers due to high profile mistakes in
the past. These incidents mean that employers do not want to take complete responsibil-
ity for their actions, which in turn has hindered regulation of these companies as well as
information sharing between organizations, creating a gray area in terms of how they are
supposed to operate. The most infamous example of PMCs acting more like mercenaries
than an extension of the state or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is the Nisour
Square massacre, in which 17 civilians were killed by the PMSC Blackwater while it was
escorting a U.S. embassy convoy (BBC, 2008).
The aggressive nature of Blackwater during the Nisour Square massacre highlighted
the biggest fear surrounding PMSCs: that they are just mercenaries rebranded for the 21st
century. The incident received so much backlash that a year later the company decided to
move away from security contracting because the cost of doing business was too high (Fox
News, 2008). The withdrawal of troops from Syria would leave the Syrian Democratic Forces
(SDF) and its Kurdish forces extremely susceptible to attacks from Turkey, however, an
aggressive policy to simply replace troops with troops will only make matters worse in Syria
and alternative solutions, however difficult they made be to attain, need to be seriously
considered by states and NGOs instead. Upon Trump’s announcement regarding the
removal of his troops, Blackwater posted an ominous image on the front page of Recoil
magazine with the words “WE ARE COMING” (Military Times, 2018). This evidence of an
aggressive approach by the already controversial Blackwater does not bode well for the

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Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
Ruairidh Wood

future of PMSCs and suggests they have not learnt from their past mistakes. Additionally,
that Prince (Erik Prince, Founder of security company Blackwater) is using the excuse of
protecting the Kurds to promote the use of PMSCs is somewhat similar to the U.S. acting
in Iraq and Afghanistan under the guise of liberating the countries.

Pursuing hegemony

Pre-9/11

The period of U.S. hyper-involvement in the Middle East began with Operation Cyclone in
Afghanistan and has not stopped since. The macro-narrative of the Cold War meant that
people largely accepted the U.S.’s role here due to the existential threat of communism to
Western civilization. However, the short sightedness it displayed in Afghanistan – leaving
immediately after the war, which created instability and a power vacuum – set the tone for the
rest of its involvement in the Middle East.
Realist theory can explain why it acted this way in Afghanistan and indeed other
conflicts. Realism proposes that all states are looking to further their own interests because
this is the only way to ensure security in the anarchic international system (Glaser, 2016: 14).
Looking at U.S. foreign policy through a realist lens therefore allows for the underlying
motivations of their actions in the Middle East to be investigated because the promotion of
democracy, which it claims to be doing, does not directly further its interests. In regards to
Afghanistan, the U.S. was uncertain of the Soviet Union’s actions in the state but viewed
them as an expansion of power, which would be detrimental to its national security in the
Cold War context. This meant it needed to do everything in its power to prevent this from
happening, regardless of the consequences of other states.
Once the Cold War was over, however, the concrete danger of nuclear war had
ceased, yet U.S. involvement in the Middle East persisted. Defeat of the Soviet Union in the
Cold War led to the U.S. becoming the hegemonic superpower at the center of world power
(Krauthammer, 1990) and so its policies changed from military security to economic secu-
rity. The first Gulf War, which was the U.S.’s initial post-Cold War international crisis, best
highlights these new ambitions.
After Iraq invaded Kuwait, a U.S.-led coalition launched Operation Desert Shield,
which crumbled Iraqi forces in just over a month (McIntyre, 2001). This conflict appears to
show the U.S. implementing its New World Order that allowed for “new ways of working
with other nations” and “peaceful settlements of disputes” (Nye, 1992: 83). However, the
conflict was crucial to secure its economic interests in the region and so it launched the
offensive against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, even after supporting his regime in the Iran–Iraq
war only a few years earlier. Moreover, the use of chemical weapons by Saddam against the
Kurdish population in Halabja was initially blamed on Iran, until the U.S. needed to use the
atrocity to help justify Operation Desert Shield (Lin, 2007). This raises the question as to
why the U.S. intervened after one Iraqi offensive, but not the other.
Distinguishing between structural and motivational realism provides a fuller
understanding of why the U.S. has acted differently in similar situations in the Middle
East. When discussing motivational realism, Glaser (2016: 15) describes states that wish to
expand their spheres of power, rather than just secure their own security, as “greedy states”
and the U.S. falls into this category. During the Iran–Iraq war, the U.S. provided covert aid
to Iraq because it did not want Iran to become a strong power in the Middle East due the
anti-American sentiment that was instilled after the Iranian Revolution (Friedman, 1993).
Once the economic and political threat of Saddam Hussein became too great, however, it
turned its attentions to overthrowing him, culminating in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. If
the U.S. was only concerned with maintaining its security rather than expanding power,

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 Journal of Global Faultlines, 2019
Vol. 6, No. 2, 166-185.
it would not have acted in this pre-emptive manner because there was little to suggest it
would be under any threat.

Post-9/11

The invasion of Iraq was again justified on the basis of the U.S.’s New World Order of peace
and democracy, yet it carried ulterior motives. President Bush suggested that imposing a
democratic regime in Iraq would defeat part of the “axis of evil” that posed an existential
threat to not just the U.S. but the entire civilized world. He used the threat of Iraq’s nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons (NBCWs) as a justification for the aggressive policy the
U.S. would enact on Iraq following on from 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan.
The 9/11 attacks were therefore not the direct cause of the invasion of Iraq, however they
heavily contributed to the rhetoric surrounding it.
Following on from these attacks the Bush administration had unprecedented foreign
policy power in the U.S. and so constructed Saddam as a threat to U.S. and Western values.
Saddam was indeed a threat, but an economic rather than military one, which Buzan (1983)
differentiates between. However, he was portrayed in this manner because a threat to the
economy would not have gained support for an invasion whereas the danger of NBCWs
would. Elite members of society, such as politicians, have the ability to give meaning to
events and declare things as threats as they please and this is known as securitizing a threat.
The U.S. has been seen to do this for much of its intervention in the Middle East, creating an
often-exacerbated rhetoric to appease the public while acting under alternative motives.
The War on Terror was the catalyst for U.S. intervention in Iraq, but it had been fix-
ated on Saddam since the first Gulf War (Hinnebusch, 2007). It believed that a campaign
against him would remove the biggest threat to the political order it had become accustomed
to in the region, while also having the benefit of demonstrating its military power – something
it had been continuously attempting in the post-Cold War era. This realist stance that the
U.S. has taken in the Middle East is also demonstrated by examples of non-intervention in
the case of Halabja, and indeed Israel. Israel is also known to have NBCWs and is under the
rule of an oppressive leader (Beehner, 2006), yet military action in this case, and after Halabja,
would have harmed U.S. interests in the region.

Constructivist contrast

Realism is accepted by most as the dominant stance states take in national security, yet there
are competing notions of constructivism and liberalism. Taking a constructivist viewpoint
offers an interesting contrast to the realist theory previously discussed. Constructivists argue
that the anarchical international system is socially constructed and so states only act competi-
tively because they conform to this system (Wendt, 1992). Moving away from this belief would
allow for the identities of states to dictate how they behave and so meaningful courses of
action would be taken, rather than states acting to increase power for power’s sake. Barnett
(1998) argues that Arab politics can be understood by examining the relationships between
identities, norms, and regional order throughout history. This suggests that trying to impose
Western values, which the U.S. has claimed it is doing, is actually detrimental to the develop-
ment of Middle Eastern states.
Fritz (2015) argues that imposing democracy on states has a very limited chance of
success and economic and political stability must instead be attained through a process of
modernization. Although Frank (1970) argues that this idea is based upon European
examples – indeed China is a state where modernization has not brought democracy – notable
examples of South Korea and South Africa have supported this notion. Therefore if Bush had

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Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
Ruairidh Wood

accepted the cultural relativism that constructivism brings forth, then the invasion of Iraq
and the strategy of enforcing peace with military action in the Middle East may have been
reconsidered. States in the region would have instead been left to develop into democratic
societies on their own.
Constructivists have criticized realism as being simplistic because it does not account
for moral values that many states, particularly in the Middle East, hold. For the U.S., realism
is embedded in national security policy and this is not likely to change anytime soon.
However, taking a realist-constructivism approach, as proposed by Barkin (2003), may allow
for a more considered attitude towards foreign policy that may serve to benefit the inter-
vened state as the U.S. claims it is doing, while still achieving foreign policy goals.
This approach would view human and state security as equally important, which is
something the U.S. has failed to do in Middle East. As previously discussed, after the Cold
War, and exacerbated by 9/11, the U.S. used the discourse of promoting democracy to justify
much of its action in the Middle East. Although it had successfully imposed a democracy in
Iraq, the means to the end and aftermath of doing so were catastrophic to the Iraqi civilians
whom it was supposed to benefit. The invasion demonstrated that a powerful nation would
exploit the country and Middle Eastern dictators took advantage of this, offering stability
under their rule or civil war with them gone. Bush’s failed aggressive foreign policy essen-
tially only served to empower the ruling class in Arab states, leading to economic, social, and
cultural deterioration that, coupled with the rise of awareness by civilians, laid the founda-
tions for a series of uprisings to occur.
After Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia after mistreatment by local
police officers, a wave of protests swept through the Arab world. Discontent towards years
of authoritarian oppression and the desire for self-determination engulfed the region, lead-
ing to the toppling of regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya. Although to begin with
it looked like some good may have inadvertently come from U.S. involvement in the region,
the Arab Spring quickly became the Arab Winter. Five years after the uprisings Amnesty
International (2016) reported that in Egypt hundreds have been sentenced to death and
thousands have been imprisoned for their links to protests; Libya has become deeply divided,
leading to war crimes on both sides; thousands of civilians have been killed by the Saudi
Arabia-led coalition air strikes in Yemen; and even Tunisia, which is considered somewhat
of a success, still suffers human rights abuses.

The Syrian civil war

This war illustrates the impact in the countries that managed to overthrow governments, yet
many more failed to do so and still suffered for their attempts. In Syria, the call for improved
human rights in the region during the Arab Spring led to a struggle for power between
President Assad, rebel groups, and terrorist organizations. This ongoing civil war is the latest
case of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and is the first instance in which it has been chal-
lenged by other global powers. In the case of Syria, however, Russia and China also have inter-
ests in the country and so, much like the U.S. did with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, have
aided local forces to protect these (Momani, 2012).
The U.S. and Russia are essentially fighting a proxy war in Syria, but President
Trump’s recent decision to remove U.S. troops from the conflict has given Russia a sense of
victory over their former adversaries (Rodgers, 2019). While these states have been compet-
ing to assert their power in Syria, the civilians of the country have suffered enormously. The
total death toll stands at over 500,000; over six million have been internally displaced; and
over five million have been forced to flee the county (UNHCR, 2019). Many of these have
been taken in by surrounding Middle Eastern states, with European nations only accounting
for a fraction of those seeking safety, even though intervention by Western powers in the

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 Journal of Global Faultlines, 2019
Vol. 6, No. 2, 166-185.
Middle East to further their security interests can be seen as one of the underlying causes for
the violence and death in Syria.
States that have ignored the humanitarian impact of their foreign policy actions
continue to refuse to acknowledge and take responsibility for the damage they have caused
by rejecting refugees. Lord Ashcroft (2016) argues that one of the biggest causes of Brexit
in Britain is the desire for control of borders in apparent response to the refugee crisis in
Europe. The short sightedness of foreign policy action in the Middle East may inadvert-
ently damage Britain’s economy, which is arguably the reason why they become involved
in the Middle East alongside the U.S. in the first place. Solely focusing on furthering the
state, rather than also accounting for the humanitarian impact on foreign citizens, and in
this case their own, can have as much of a detrimental impact as not becoming involved
in the first place.
The Arab Spring and subsequent war in Syria created a power vacuum leading to
the rise of terrorist organizations in the region. The instability of the government through-
out this period has allowed for these groups to gain territory and power, similar to the
Taliban following the Soviet-Afghan war. In both cases, the U.S. has opposed Russia yet
portrayed the wars as the promotion of good governance worldwide, citing the threats of
oppressive dictators and damaging ideologies. The creation of the Mujahideen marked
the beginning of the period of U.S. hyper-involvement in the Middle East and the domino
effect that followed has led to the Syrian civil war. Evidently, the U.S. has not learned
from its past mistakes and continues to act aggressively to achieve hegemony, competing
with Russia in a conflict in which brokering a settlement with them would be the most
utilitarian outcome.

Hegemony in decline

The U.S.’s desire to assert their hegemony so aggressively in the Middle East may be a result of
the fears that if it does not display its military power, other states will cease to feel threatened
by it. The end of the Cold War saw the death of the bipolar international system that had
been in place for decades and as of yet, a new structure that appears to be taking the shape of
multiple strong powers is yet to be born (Bauman, 2001). The Soviet Union collapsed after the
Cold War yet the U.S. has also been in decline since the conflict ended. During this period, a
variety of what Gramsci calls morbid symptoms, in the form of terrorist organizations, have
risen (Cohen, 2013). However, the U.S. has been reluctant to relinquish unipolar dominance
and benefits it brings, leading to attempts to assert it as far and wide as possible.
The hegemony that the U.S. has asserted so aggressively in the Middle East looks to
be in decline, however, with Russia and China the biggest challengers to its global power.
Russia has maintained resentment towards the U.S. since the end of the Cold War and did
not agree with it taking on the role of world authority (Graham, 2019). In the 1990s it did not
have the power to challenge this but has slowly been resurging and has sustained a good
relationship with President Assad. Successful Russian opposition to the U.S. in Syria, through
the use of asymmetrical warfare and veto powers, has shown weaknesses in U.S. military
power. Additionally, the lack of physical force from the U.S. in Syria is perceived as a decline
in U.S. hegemony, partly because it was so aggressively involved in many Middle Eastern
crises leading up to this.
Russia has also opposed the U.S. in Ukraine and the Obama administration did little
to deal with Russian annexation of Crimea, even though its support for Ukraine was made
official in the Budapest Memorandum. Hyper-involvement in the Middle East has drained
U.S. military resources and weakened public support for heavy-handed military interven-
tion, which has strengthened the Russian influence of power in both Eastern Europe and the
Middle East.

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Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
Ruairidh Wood

U.S. hegemony in the Middle East and further afield may be in decline and its poli-
cies perhaps need rethinking, however emerging powers are reluctant to attempt world gov-
ernance. Conceivably they are wary after seeing the U.S.’s failings in the region and are more
cautious of making the same mistakes on the international stage.

Promoting democracy

The liberal perspective

Realism is inherently cynical in its propositions, suggesting that states only act to further
their own interests because of the belief that everyone else is doing the same. Therefore when
looking at U.S. action in the Middle East from this perspective it is difficult to justify its poli-
cies in humanitarian terms, although it claims this as the driving force for them. Liberalism
opposes realism and is a more optimistic theory, suggesting that peace and security are attain-
able if states cooperate with each other (Morgan, 2016). Unlike realism, it is not a theory that
explains why states act as they do, but rather an approach that offers guidelines for better
conduct in the international system. Kant was a key liberalist scholar and, while he accepted
the realist description of why conflict occurs, he believed that “free trade and economic inter-
dependence, and international law and organizations” could be implemented to combat the
security dilemma (Oneal, 2000: 1).
Former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sought to implement liberalism in interna-
tional politics following World War I, but the rise of fascism leading to World War II and the
subsequent Cold War undid much of the foundations he had laid. Although liberalism only
serves to explain the conditions under which international cooperation can become a possi-
bility, there has been a post-Cold war commitment by the U.S. to promote and maintain
liberal values and this has been evident in the Middle East (Stokes, 2018). Regardless of their
underlying motivations in these instances, the U.S. has been involved in various efforts – such
as both Gulf Wars – to ensure human rights are not being violated. However, the knowledge
of its ulterior motives has led to criticism of the U.S. Just war theory states that the right
intentions must be present for the use of force to be justified, yet it does not mention motiva-
tions behind these intentions (Kamm, 2004). Furthermore, consequentialists would argue
that so long as the state intends a humanitarian solution, the underlying motivations behind
its actions should not be an issue. This suggests that so long as the humanitarian outcome the
U.S. intended is achieved, other reasons for its actions in the Middle East do not matter.
Although the way U.S. governments have tried to ensure human security in the
Middle East is controversial, the desire to spread democracy and promote peace globally
has been cited by multiple administrations as the reason for engaging in conflicts.
Democratic peace theory, which suggests democracies are hesitant to go to war with other
democracies (Doyle, 2011), can explain why the U.S. wants to ensure these values are
spread far and wide. This logic is also recognized by Clausewitz, who believes achieving
political objectives through war becomes more difficult in an age of mass democracy
(Dannreuther, 2013). Therefore, U.S. ambitions in the Middle East, from a liberal perspec-
tive, are an attempt to stabilize the region and prevent further conflict that is a result of
undemocratic regimes; this will benefit U.S. security and the security of civilians within
the undemocratic state in question.
Expanding democratic beliefs globally included the promotion of neoliberal eco-
nomic policies. The U.S. enthusiastically adopted neoliberalism in the 1970s and this, along-
side globalization facilitated cooperation with other states for things such as outsourcing
cheap labor (Bulajic and Domazet, 2012). Commercial liberalization asserts that this increases
interdependence between states and so they would be less likely to engage in conflicts

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 Journal of Global Faultlines, 2019
Vol. 6, No. 2, 166-185.
(Baylis, Smith and Owens, 2017). Thus proponents of this strand of liberalization would
argue that the U.S. actions in the Middle East have been beneficial in reducing wars and so
even, if U.S. hegemony is in decline, it has already been successful in transforming the inter-
national structure into a more stable system. Additionally, Levin (1994) argues that promot-
ing these values alongside human rights will improve the security of the U.S. as well as
making foreign policy objectives easier to attain.

Failings

The invasion of Iraq has not provided stability and safety to civilians of the country. Since the
war there began in 2003 “the daily death toll continues uninterrupted” (Hamourtziadou,
Dardagan and Sloboda, 2018: p. 1). The U.S. claims it was attempting to bring democracy to
the country, which it has officially achieved, yet the war removed the stability a tyrant brings.
Consequently, the entire country was transformed into a war zone with rival insurgent groups,
political parties, and foreign actors all fighting for power. As a result, the lines between war
and peace and oppression and freedom have been blurred and an entire generation of Iraqis
has known nothing but chaos.
Continuing to adopt a liberalist stance to analyzing these actions therefore sug-
gests that the U.S. acted incompetently or arrogantly in the case of Iraq, which further
supports the notion that its military prowess is in decline. Galbraith (2006) argues that
Bush was ignorant while planning for the invasion, failing to understand key cultural
aspects of Iraq, such as the Sunni and Shiite divide within the country. The U.S. demon-
strated extraordinary military power during the 20th century, yet has often struggled
with understanding how nations with different backgrounds to the West operate. This
failure to understand the identities of states has been evident in much of its conflicts in
the Middle East, which is why the promotion of democracy in this region has been harder
to come by than in post-Cold war Europe.
Touched on earlier was the notion that democracies cannot be imposed and must
instead be implemented at grassroots level. The Arab Spring provides evidence for this, as do
democracies that appeared in states such as Poland and Turkey during the 1990s but have
moved back towards authoritarianism (Fukuyama, 2018). This is due in part to identity poli-
tics, which have began to define politics rather than the traditional discourse of economic
issues. The U.S. itself has been victim of this: Trump appealed to the xenophobic sentiment in
the U.S. – which was partially a result of the War on Terror – during his election campaign. If
the growth of identity politics has been detrimental to the historically liberal U.S., then the
imposition of democracy on Arab states – many of whom internally contain conflicting views,
especially regarding religion – is certainly not going to have a positive outcome. However,
after the Cold War, the U.S. believed that the triumph of capitalism over communism was
reflected worldwide and so it had to liberate all those who were not benefitting from this ide-
ology. The aggression shown by the U.S. may therefore stem from arrogance that its system of
beliefs that overcame communism in the 20th century was preferable to any other.

The role of the UN

This then is perhaps why the U.S. was one of the driving forces behind the UN and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) after World War II. Although realism dis-
misses the role of non-state actors, such as the UN, liberalism gives attention to these organi-
zations, claiming that they have played an important role in conflicts in the post-War War II
period (Barnett, 1997). The Middle East has demonstrated that the U.S. is more than happy
to engage in warfare over the principles of the UNDR, with or without the backing of the

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Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
Ruairidh Wood

international community. The UN, however, has often preferred non-military methods of
humanitarian intervention because this minimizes the risk of increasing tensions within an
authoritarian state. While the UN has successfully been involved militarily in many conflicts,
such as in Sierra Leone and Burndi, there has also been effective use of economic intervention
or non-intervention. Newman (1983: 343) discusses how the UN has successfully used “the
mobilization of shame,” rather than the military, as entry points to a conflict for decades.
Political pressure placed on governments in Indonesia, Chile, and Greece has led to the
release of those wrongfully imprisoned and the ousting of military leaders, demonstrating
that there are effective alternatives to military intervention. Like the notion of constructiv-
ism, these liberal principles demonstrate that the U.S. would be able to influence democracy
without having to resort to military force.
Nonetheless, military intervention in the case of a humanitarian crisis is unavoidable
in some instances, yet this has been widely criticized for its political motives. The UN does
not have a force of its own and so has to rely on troops from its member states, who have
foreign policy objectives of their own. In Rwanda, Yemen, Somalia, and Sri Lanka a lack of
intervention can be attributed to powerful states assessing the conflicts as being too risky to
intervene, while Russian intervention in Georgia was criticized for being disproportionate
and illegitimate (Doukakis, 2018). This has led to the legitimacy of military intervention for
humanitarian purposes being contested. Basaran (2014) argues that humanitarian and stra-
tegic concerns are almost indistinguishable because states will only engage in conflicts if
they have the political will and military capability to do so. This demonstrates the idealistic
nature of liberalism because even if states are acting to promote human rights and advance
democracy, the realist intentions of a state will come to the fore because they will only con-
tribute to interventions if the eventual outcome suits their national objectives.
It is evident in contemporary conflicts that intervention is driven by self-interest, even if
states are portraying these actions as for the good of humanity. As discussed in relation to Syria,
the competing interests of the P5 of the UNSC mean that the UN struggles to act in this instance
and will continue to do so until the international system is dictated by liberal values over self-
interest. Although President Bush criticized the effectiveness of the UN (New York Times, 2002),
it is lack of will by the U.S. to participate in these instances, coupled with the rejection of Western
intervention stemming from U.S. invasions, that has led to this lack of effectiveness.
Currently, however, realism places little importance on organizations such as the UN
and sees them as being reflective of the values of their members states, rather than autonomous
bodies in their own right. This has led Erickson (2013) to state that due these failures by the UN,
and institutions like the EU and NATO, the U.S. will have to carry the burden of humanitarian
intervention unilaterally and so it should be free from the often-hindering constraints of these
organizations. Such statements have a feel of Western imperialism to them, which is one of the
criticisms aimed at the UN as a whole, yet they do have some merit. The U.S. has always
attempted to encourage democracy, which as discussed does promote peace, while trying to
achieve its national interests. These policies have been aggressive and, on occasion, lacking in
competence, but they have not hindered progression towards peace as boldly as Russian sup-
port for Syria has. Putin has continued to supply weapons to Assad during the crisis and has
vetoed UN action in the country while doing so, demonstrating that he will counter interna-
tional efforts to stifle violence so long as he can profit from it (Bagdonas, 2012).
Humanitarian intervention during the Cold War was characterized by the struggle
between East and West, and Russia seems to be stuck in the mentality that it must oppose U.S.
action or be seen to be a weaker nation, regardless of the impact on human life. It can be argued
that the U.S. is doing the same, because it does not wish to relinquish the hegemony it has
come to enjoy. Consequently, it is more likely that its claims of promoting liberal values are
merely to provide a justification for the realist manner in which it is acting in the Middle East.

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 Journal of Global Faultlines, 2019
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Whereas state-sponsored humanitarian intervention during the Cold War can be
considered purely neo-realist, with Responsibility to Protect (R2P) understood through the
lens of the arms race and superpower competition, there has been a shift in modern inter-
vention towards a focus on long-term development and post-war rehabilitation of a country
(Aliyev, 2011).

The role of PMSCs

The UN attempts to provide support for civilians in cases of atrocities, yet powerful states
have consistently undermined its efforts to do so. The impact of national interests on whether
or not a state will offer assistance to the UN has led to the organization looking elsewhere for
military support. This has come in the form of PMSCs.
PMSCs began to be used by Western governments in the early 1990s and the UN soon
followed suit, mandating missions to the Balkans and Sierra Leone that included the use of
these organizations (Pingeot, 2012). While Sierra Leone is often heralded as the most success-
ful UN peacekeeping mission, deployment of PMSCs in Bosnia led to a scandal whereby U.S.
contractors working under UN command were found to be involved in organized prostitution
and sex trafficking (Robson, 2002). This caused reluctance from the UN to use them in any-
thing other than logistical support roles, but the U.S. criticized this, suggesting that the UN
could no longer ignore the cost savings that PMSCs would bring about (U.S. Senate, 2004).
Although the UN has been somewhat reluctant to use PMSCs and has essentially
been forced into doing so because of its lack of resources, nation states have been more will-
ing to deploy them in the post-Cold war era. The changing nature of warfare away from the
traditional dichotomy of large conventional forces fighting until one has suffered too many
casualties has seen an influx of guerrilla tactics. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have largely
consisted of this, but the U.S. also suffered against these tactics in Vietnam (Tung, 2013). The
smaller actors in these conflicts deploy guerrilla warfare because they cannot compete in a
conventional warfare sense. Larger forces, such as the U.S., have subsequently had to adapt
their own methods and send in smaller, more dynamic forces in attempts to counter these
tactics. This is one way in which the notion of a post-Cold war era has affected the nature of
contemporary conflicts.
There has been a decline in public support for large-scale, heavy-handed military
offensives. Although similar use of force to traditional warfare was seen with the Shock and
Awe campaign in Iraq, this is perhaps the only instance of this and was met with dissatisfac-
tion by the public. As a result, the U.S. has been keen to become less involved in conflicts,
preferring to utilize proxy forces or give contracts to PMSCs. This was echoed in President
Trump’s election campaign, during which he promised to withdraw troops from overseas
conflicts (BBC, 2018). Therefore, even though the role of PMSCs has been highly questiona-
ble, states see the value in continuing to deploy them.
Although there have been high profile controversies stemming from the use of
PMSCs, Isenberg (2006) argues that PMSCs operate at the same level of professionalism
as the regular military. He points to the Abu Ghraib incident in Iraq as an example of
when soldiers have demonstrated the same level of incompetence and lack of training as
PMSC soldiers, who were also implicated in the scandal. This incident highlighted the
controversial nature of these organizations’ modus operandi. However, regular militaries
have also been criticized for being brutal and undisciplined: massacres of unarmed civil-
ians in the Vietnam war (Greiner, 2010); the Highway of Death in Iraq (Chediac, 1992);
and various incidents during the war on terror that violated the Geneva Convention
(Human Rights Watch, 2005) demonstrate that regular armies can be just a reckless. This
raises the question of why PMSCs are trusted less and scrutinized more heavily, if they
are acting in the same way.

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Promoting democracy or pursuing hegemony? An analysis of U.S. involvement in the Middle East
Ruairidh Wood

Firstly, there is a lack of accountability for the actions of PMSCs, unlike with regular
soldiers. PMSCs are supposed to act under the laws of the state they are based in, but a gray
area occurs in places like the Middle East, because this legislation may not apply there, yet
they are not bound by local laws either (Francioni, 2008). Alternatively, military soldiers can
be court-martialed if they violate military or wartime laws. This issue was highlighted after
Abu Ghraib, which saw the PMSC CACI International evade punishment, while 11 U.S. sol-
diers were convicted of offences (Singer, 2004).
Another reason why regular soldiers are viewed preferably compared to those
working for PMSCs is the ideological commitment and loyalty they have to the state.
The first priority of PMSCs is to make money and so it has been suggested that they
deliberately prolong operations and aggravate hostilities to maximize the leverage they
have with their client state (Wood, 2013). The willingness to employ these actors, rather
than develop their own organization further, which includes recruitment of regular sol-
diers, further demonstrates that the U.S. is rarely concerned with long-term objectives
in places like the Middle East.
Similarly to the UN, expenditure takes priority over expertise for the U.S. in a period of
reduced military spending. This claim is reinforced by the fact that in 2005 the U.S. govern-
ment was concerned that contractors may abruptly withdraw the services they were offering
to the state but continued to employ them because of the economic benefits (U.S. GAO, 2005).
Therefore, although the U.S. would prefer to utilize their own troops, the decline in domestic
capital and public desire for conventional army operations has meant it has had to turn to
these private actors in certain theaters. While this points towards the erosion of U.S. control
over their use of force, and furthers the idea that its hegemony is declining, realists still reject
PMSCs as a legitimate contributor to a state’s security, due to their purely profit-driven motives
(Wood, 2013). Consequently, they can be viewed as an extension of the state when acting
within the contract they have been given, and more similar to an insurgent group when not.
Although realist scholars suggest that PMSCs do not contribute to their client states
security or insecurity, there has been an increased use of them in the post-Cold war era.
Much like other NGOs, the decline of global superpowers has led to them having more of an
impact on international security than they would have done in the past. China and Russia
have been growing into strong nations in recent times and regional powers like India and
Brazil are also beginning to have more influence on the international system, yet this does
not mean the use of PMSCs will decline. The Cold War and the period since has seen power-
ful states less reluctant to become directly involved in conflicts due to the danger of provok-
ing rival nations into more dangerous forms of warfare, such as nuclear war (Ruhle, 2015). As
a result, proxy forces and private military companies are likely to still play a key role in
conflict for the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

Aggressive U.S. intervention in the Middle East since the end of the Cold War has continu-
ously created instability in the region and the state has seemingly not learnt from its previous
mistakes. The Soviet-Afghan war gave rise to the Taliban that, through 9/11, deteriorated per-
ceptions of national security. Yet this did not prevent the U.S. from becoming involved in Iraq
when it was unnecessary for it to do so and in turn provided the conditions for terrorism to
thrive in the Middle East.
The U.S. has constructed various actors as threats to justify action that will increase
the hegemonic power it has enjoyed globally since the collapse of the Soviet Union. By not
acknowledging the long-term implications these actions may carry, the U.S. has been able
to consistently influenced politics in the Middle East to benefit its own interests rather than
the interests of those living there. The Syrian civil war is the latest example of this and

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 Journal of Global Faultlines, 2019
Vol. 6, No. 2, 166-185.
suggests that this will not cease in the near future. That Russia has been challenging the U.S.
to also increase it own power indicates that the structure of the international system is the
cause of states’ behavior, rather than the morals of a state.
Realists support this notion, however proponents of constructivism and liberal-
ism argue that alternative courses of action can be taken by the U.S. to achieve much of
the same aims. They argue that by seeing past the realist proposal that all states are only
out to benefit themselves and subsequently cooperating with each other, then policies
that benefit all can be pursued. However, due to U.S. hegemony apparently being in
decline this will remain an idealistic notion for the foreseeable future, although its short-
comings when acting in this manner may demonstrate to rising powers that alternative
courses of action are preferable.
While the U.S. has cited the advancement of peace and democracy worldwide as the
motivation for its foreign policy, it has failed to achieve this more often than not. Instead,
the UN has been the foremost international body in promoting liberal values but has often
been undermined by powerful states that have declined to offer assistance in conflicts that
do not impact their own interests. Consequently they have had to increasingly turn to PMSCs
for military support, yet the manner in which these operate has been questionable. This has
left the UN in a sticky position, because the methods of states that are pursuing their own
interests and mercenary-like PMSCs have both been controversial.
Although it would be easy to accept that the international system is inherently realist,
this is only a social construction, albeit a deeply embedded one. The work the UN continues to
do is vital for civilians of states that are seen as little more than pawns for global powers. The
Syrian civil war is only the latest example of U.S. hegemony in the Middle East and how it has
negatively affected the human security of those living in the region. The long-term humanitar-
ian impact of such action needs to be the top priority when considering future intervention.
This paper has mostly taken a state-centric approach to the issue of U.S. pursuing
hegemony in the Middle East. If I were to conduct similar research in the future I would like
to analyze their actions from a human security standpoint, focusing much of my work on
how innocent civilians have been affected by its actions. This would allow for an emphasis
on what humans consider security to be, rather than a focus on how states want to maximize
power because they believe this will protect their citizens.

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