FROM THEORY TO GRAND STRATEGY: ASSESSING US GOALS IN ARABIA 2001-2018

Abstract

The study seeks to provide an overarching understanding to the US objectives and policies in the Gulf region at three intersecting levels; strategic interests, regional security and political reform. This study takes United States interactions with Arabia, as a case study, during the period 2001-2018 under the administrations of G.W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Additionally, the study attempts to generate greater understanding of the dynamics that motivating American international politics and subsequent policies toward the Arab gulf countries through examining the interactions between both systematic and domestic factors. Noticeably, US entrenched vital enduring interests with the Arab Gulf States rested, for approximately seventy years, on protecting oil flow from the region into international economy without interruption, selling arms to the Gulf Arabs and maintaining gulf regional security against any real or potential threats. Therefore, the administrations of Bush, Obama, and Trump were not different from their predecessors in their strategy of preserving gulf security through forward military presence in the region. Hence, the author employs the neorealist theory to understand US interactions with the Gulf countries. Remarkably, despite some scholar's arguments that envisaged the US policies under G.W. Bush and Donald Trump as departed drastically from US conventional policy, the study argues and concludes that the US actual policy towards Arabia reflects a traditional policy of maintaining mutual interests.