HEGEMONY: THEORY AND PRACTICE. THE CASE STUDY OF U.S. POST-COLD WAR HEGEMONY OVER AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Year 2017, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, 29 - 38, 01.03.2017

Sana Zırarı Foued Djemaı

Abstract

This paper is a study of U.S. foreign policy in the context of international relations in the post-Cold War era, an era in which the U.S. assumed the role of the world hegemon. It deals with the issue of U.S. ‘humanitarian’ military interventions in Africa and the Middle East. To this end, U.S. interventions in both Somalia 1992 and Iraq 2003 , incarnating Africa and the Middle East respectively, have been chosen as cases in point. More specifically, the study examines the extent to which a ‘humanitarian’ concern shaped U.S. foreign policy decisions during its military interventions in both countries, as opposed to calculations of hegemony exercise. The intent of this paper is, then, to prove that U.S. so called ‘humanitarian’ military interventions in Somalia and Iraq were driven in the first place by realistic geostrategic and geopolitical considerations of primacy, economic interests as well as cultural motivations, not idealistic ‘humanitarian’ concerns. The latter was but a means of ideological legitimisation of government policies. For this reason, this work strives to argue that the United States hegemonic calculations of national interests explain better why the nation pursued distinct policies and approaches in both Somalia and Iraq, and that the ‘humanitarian’ concern was of marginal relevance. In clearer terms, the shift of the U. S. ‘humanitarian’ military intervention from a multilateral realistic profile in the case of Somalia to a more unilateral idealistic profile in the case of Iraq was a national interest act—for Iraq was, unlike Somalia, a worthy terrain. Besides, this study elucidates that the main reasons leading Presidents George Bush the father to delay action and then opt for intervention in Somalia and Bill Clinton to urge for withdrawal from it, as well as the reasons pushing George W. Bush the son to wage war on Iraq are all based on the hegemonic game. The latter has its implications politically, economically and geostrategically. Not only does this work unfold American foreign policy twists and underlying calculations of hegemony in the course of its ‘humanitarian’ interventions, but it shows how the giant media conglomerates are U.S. foreign policy decision makers’ unhumanitarian partners as well. The propagandistic coverage during the build-up to the war on Iraq in comparison to the little coverage Somalia had received earlier reveals the extent to which the media are complicit with U.S. foreign policy decision-makers’ calculations in war aims and shifts. The argumentation and analysis set forth in this study are based on the hegemony theories formulated by Antonio Gramsci and Robert Cox. While the former sets forth the mechanisms of the hegemonic bloc at a national level, the former extends it to the international. Of importance to the present work is that not only do both theories serve the paper’s intent but they illustrate perfectly the complex web of U.S. foreign policy decision-makers together with the media’s perpetual attempt to create an international climate suitable to their hegemonic supremacy. The research questions of the study are of paramount importance as well and were formulated as follows: • intervention in Somalia, whereas in Iraq neglecting the total opposition of the UN, it did act unilaterally accepting to take responsibility over what the war may generate? • • failure? And why was there in Iraq, in spite of the difficulty of the mission, a transportation of an enormous army, navy and air force 7000 miles away to destroy a country scarcely known even to the educated American, all in the name of freedom?

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