question archive As we continue our discussions of American foreign policy toward the Middle East
As we continue our discussions of American foreign policy toward the Middle East
Subject:BiologyPrice: Bought3
As we continue our discussions of American foreign policy toward the Middle East. I'd like to bring out one of the more interesting topics that we cover. And that's this, that most people consider American foreign policy and American involvement in the Middle East to be a relatively new development. But in fact, it's not, as you'll find going through the course materials, our involvement, the United States involvement with the Middle East, stretches back to its very beginnings. Let me give you one example today that is rather fascinating. It's this, the rise of the United States Navy. Many people don't know the things that inspire the rise of the United States Navy. But one of them, not entirely, but one of them was indeed a Middle Eastern issue. You see, not long before the American Revolution, there were a group of states in a place called the Barbary Coast. This included tune as places like Tunisia, modern day Tunisia.
In Algiers. That this is the same area there by the Rock of Gibraltar that we, that we now have these North African countries at the time those were known as the Barbary states. And the Barbary states were a coastline known for piracy, the Barbary pirates. Now, before the American Revolution began, before the Declaration of Independence was signed and delivered to Britain. The American colonies had a fair amount of protection in those places. Why? Because it had the world's greatest superpower, the world's greatest naval power, Great Britain, protecting it. But the moment that the founders of the United States signed the Declaration of Independence that ceased to exist
In other words, the flag that used to protect American ships was no longer there. It didn't take long at all for these small Middle Eastern nations to recognize the vulnerability of American cargo ships and American business ships. And they began what is to some extent an early colonial version of, of naval terrorism. It was piracy. Now, the United States had no standing navy at the time. It didn't have gunships, it didn't have battleships, it didn't have the potential to protect itself on the waters. It had required the assistance of the motherland of Great Britain to do that in the past and now it found itself open. It's only choices in the matter to either pay bribes to the Barbary states to avoid piracy, the equivalent of protection money, or to raise its own navy and defend itself. And it responded in both ways. It bought time by paying those bribes for a while. But in direct response to this Middle Eastern issue, this Middle Eastern analogous issue to terrorism, it decided to develop its own navy and did so, wound up developing a good navy that did the job very well. So, you see, as we look back at the connections between US foreign policy, the decisions made in the United States, and it's involved. But in the Middle East we see a rich history that goes back literally to the earliest days of our nation. This is one of the things to keep in mind as we look at US foreign policy toward Israel. Now that we're not looking at it in a vacuum, but we're looking at it over, over literally a time period that spans over two centuries of a very rich history.
