by Eran Arsia

Created on: March 10, 2010   Last Updated: February 18, 2011

 What is the goal of US foreign policy in the Middle East?

In general, the United States foreign policy in the Middle East is an evolved form of colonialism.   Since the end of World War II, the United States has engaged itself in few major economic and political policies to implement the following objectives:

Combat communism and its global domino effect. Protect and safeguard the security of the state of Israel. Ensure production and distribution of cheap fossil fuel to the United States and its allies. To control but not eradicate extremists movements in the Middle East region. To promote and protect political and economic interest of corporations, special interest groups, influential ethnic groups or nations without any regard to fairness, democracy or justice.

In November 2nd, 1917 Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, was urged by the Russian Jewish Zionist leaders; Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow to write a letter  to Lionel Walter Rothschild, the British Jewry leader of a promised  establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine that would not disturb the non-Jewish groups already residing there. The British anticipated gaining a mandate over Palestine after the war and hoped to win over Jewish public opinion to the side of the Allies. They also hoped that pro-British settlers would help protect the Suez Canal, a vital link to Britain's South Asian colonies. Therefore, after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, both the French and English dissected the Ottoman controlled territories and divided the spoils amongst themselves.  The French took over Lebanon, Syria, Algeria, and the British took over Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.  During the Second World War and after its Nazi’s Jewish Inquisition, the allies created safe haven for oppressed Jewish refugees in Palestine.  Soon after the war, territorial disputes between the natives (Palestinians) and the Jewish settlers peaked.  In 1948, with the help of the British and the United States, the Jewish settlers defeated the native residents of Palestine declaring independence and the creation of the state of Israel.

At the end of WWII, Europe was in desperate economic and political shape.  The declining power of United Kingdom and France made the United States the world’s most powerful economic and military super power.

  Ironically, a series of events from 1946-1949 led both the United States

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