rarching strategic foreign policy thrust, any government must consider all of the other actors with whom it will be involved and adjust specific focused policies to reflect attendant realities and influences. In other words, to put it at its simplest, a country seeking to enhance its relationship with country A must also take into consideration how such policies are likely to impact its relations with countries B, C, and so forth.
In the present study, the central issue is how U.S. foreign policies in three key Middle Eastern states are shaped and a determination of which of a set of specific variables are most directly shaping these policies in the post-September 11th world. There can be no doubt that the United States since 9/11 has dramatically changed many of its foreign policies with respect to the Middle East (Asner & Hall, 2004). What began as a declared War on Terror initially targeting Al-Qaeda has become something entirely different. The United States, under President George W. Bush, has not only embarked on a concerted effort to eliminate Al-Qaeda and to remove the Taliban's supporters from Afghanistan, it has also led a coalition in the invasion of Iraq (characterized by President Bush as a member of an Axis of Evil) to remove Saddam Hussein from power and to put in place a democratic government there.
This comes somewhat more than a decade after President George Herbert Walker Bush led a coalition inclusive of a number of Middle Eastern states to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi invaders (Gaddis, 2005; Harding, 2003). In the period from the early 1990s to the present, U.S. foreign policies focused on the Middle East in general and the countries of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and particular, have been restructured to build new relationships, establish new mechanisms for democratic governance, create regional stability, and ensure the ongoing flow of vital oil reserves necessary to grow the U.S. economy (Jervis, 2003).
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