Greater Middle East

The Greater Middle East, is a political term, introduced in March 2004 in a paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the U.S. administration's preparatory work for the G8 summit of June 2004, denoting a vaguely defined region called the "Arab world" plus Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and Turkey. The paper presented a proposal for sweeping change in the way the West deals with the Middle East and North Africa.[1][2] Dr. Adam Garfinkle of the Foreign Policy Research Institute defined the Greater Middle East as the MENA region together with Central Asia and the Caucasus.[3]

Variations on definitions of the Middle East and North Africa region.
  Traditional definition of the Middle East
  Greater Middle East (2004 U.S. Government paper)[1]
  Areas pundits sometimes associated with Middle East c. 2004[1]

The future of this Greater Middle East has sometimes been referred to as the "new Middle East", first so by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who in Dubai in June 2006 presented the second-term Bush administration's vision for the region's future. Rice said would be achieved through 'constructive chaos', a phrase she repeated a few weeks later during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when the 2006 Lebanon War had broken out; the meaning of this phrase and the Bush administration's vision have been much debated since.[4][5][6] The efforts to achieve this new Middle East are sometimes called "The Great Middle East Project".[7][8]

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated that a "political awakening" is taking place in this region which may be an indicator of the multi-polar world that is now developing. He alluded to the Greater Middle East as the "Global Balkans", and as a control lever on an area he refers to as Eurasia.[9] According to Andrew Bacevich's book America's War for the Greater Middle East (2016), this region is the theater for a series of conflicts dating back to 1980, which heralded the start of the Iran–Iraq War. Since then, the U.S. has been involved in balancing conflicts amongst these culturally interconnected nations in order to further its interests in the region.

See also

References
  1. Perthes, V., 2004, America's "Greater Middle East" and Europe: Key Issues for Dialogue Archived 15 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Middle East Policy, Volume XI, No.3, Pages 85–97.
  2. Ottaway, Marina & Carothers, Thomas (2004-03-29), The Greater Middle East Initiative: Off to a False Start Archived 8 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Policy Brief, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 29, Pages 1–7
  3. "The Greater Middle East 2025". 1 December 1999.
  4. Kamal, Baher (14 December 2015). "Silence, Please! A New Middle East Is in the Making". Inter Press Service. Archived from the original on 30 August 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
  5. Yadgar, Yaacov (July 2016). "A Myth of Peace: 'The Vision of the New Middle East' and Its Transformations in the Israeli Political and Public Spheres". Journal of Peace Research. 43 (3): 297–312. doi:10.1177/0022343306063933. S2CID 144802783.
  6. Jumana Al Tamimi (10 August 2013). "The 'New Middle East' and its 'constructive chaos'". Gulf News. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  7. ""Great Middle East Project" Conference by Prof. Dr. Mahir Kaynak and Ast.Prof. Dr. Emin Gürses in SAU". Archived from the original on 22 January 2018. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
  8. "Turkish Emek Political Parties". Archived from the original on 2 May 2014. Retrieved 3 October 2009.
  9. Zbigniew Brzezinski, "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives" Cited in (Nazemroaya, 2006).
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