Mideast essays

Mideast essays Why Did the U.S. Involve Itself with the Middle East in the Early to Mid 1990s? When the United States of America was founded in 1776 it seemed to our forefathers there was little if any need for a real foreign policy. The general belief was that the United States was small and, to say the least, on shaky ground. So when the drafters of the constitution put their plan of government into writing little, if any, reference to the role of the United States in world politics, much less in the politics of a region so different and unknown as the Middle East. Such thoughts are a far cry from what we know today as the role of the U.S. in world politics and Middle Eastern politics. The United States ranks fourth among the worlds countries in area and third in population. It has the worlds most productive economy and is the worlds largest producer of food. It is a military superpower. Indeed, there is little that happens in the United States that does not affect other parts of the world (The Politics Of American Government). With this in mind one might think the United States could exist independent of any other country in the world, but the facts remain that even though the U.S. is the worlds most productive economy it is also the country with the largest budget at $1.519 trillion dollars in 1995, the country is the greatest donor of foreign aid with $4.57 billion in 1994 to Israel alone, and also the country with the with the greatest foreign debt and the greatest national debt totaling in at $5.153 trillion dollars as of March 31, 1996, (The Guinness Book of Records). Knowing these things it is easy to see that the U.S. is far from self-reliant. How did a nation that is considered by many to be the greatest nation in the world come to such a point of economic hardship? A large part of this is due to the fact the U.S. is heavily involved in commerce with Middle Eastern countries, ...