by Justin Barnes

Created on: July 01, 2007

It doesn't amount so much to a decline in prestige as it does a decline in trust. Friendly Arab countries (as well as unfriendly ones even if they won't admit it) know how militarily and economically powerful the U.S. remains. They cannot help but notice. However, they also cannot help but notice the speed with which the U.S. government seized on WMDs as a reason to invade Iraq and the subsequent poor planning that helped lead to the current instability.

So do Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the like still respect the U.S. power? What they doubt I think is our ability to effectively install a less confrontational government in Iran. They know that air strikes could very well turn into all out war, and judging by the way the Iraq war has been handled, I don't think they are confident that an Iraq-type conflict could be avoided. Such unrest has a way of spreading the Kuwaitis would be lying if they told you they aren't very concerned about fundamentalist Islam making inroads in Kuwait. War with Iran would just add more fuel to the fire.

I think they may also be distrustful of our intentions in the long run. After all, we're out there promoting free elections and democracy and that could eventually threaten their monarchist governments. I think its conceivable that they see the U.S. as not just promoting democracy, but promoting secular democracy of the American and Western European type. This too could be conceived as threatening in a part of the world where the Islamic religion rules many aspects of daily life. I think their point of view is very similar to that of far-right Christian conservatives within the U.S., who often claim that morality and Christianity are under continuous attack from secular forces. The way they see it, their theocratic/monarchist governments are working just fine as it is and they are probably worried that trying to change that would result in chaos. So, the Kuwaiti refusal to allow U.S. troops to strike Iran is not a signal of declining U.S. prestige, it simply means that they are looking at the situation through a different lens. It's self-preservation since whatever is done is likely to have far more direct impacts on Kuwaitis than it will on Americans.

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