Abstract
The central objective of this book is to examine, from the perspective of international relations (IR) theory, the American “dual containment” policy in the Persian Gulf. This policy, which was designed to curtail the influence of both Iran and Iraq across the Middle East, was formally introduced to the world in a speech by a National Security Council (NSC) official in 1993. It essentially persisted until the end of President Bill Clinton’s tenure in office and is notable for several reasons. First, the policy itself tends to be overlooked somewhat, introduced after the events of the 1991 war over Kuwait and before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (henceforth referred to as “9/11”). Second, it is an interesting example of US foreign policymaking in the post-Cold War era. Finally, and arguably most significantly, its implementation and the course it took with regard to Iran is deeply illustrative of the US approach to post-1979 Iran in particular and the Persian Gulf in general. Due to the intensely antagonistic turn US relations with Iran have taken since 1979, the dual containment policy also encapsulates some of the most controversial features of American policy in the Middle East: Washington’s preoccupation with Israel and its increasing entanglement in the security architecture of the Persian Gulf.1
[American] Iran policy has been a failure at every level. The message has been: (1) You are evil; (2) We won’t talk to you unless you come out with your hands up; (3) We intend to overthrow your regime; (4) if you don’t comply we might bomb you; (5) if you try to develop a deterrent we will certainly bomb you, maybe with nuclear weapons.
(—Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, interview with author, Washington, DC, February 2011)
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Notes
For instance, see Robert Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Jeffrey Fields, “Adversaries and Statecraft: Explaining US Foreign Policy towards Rogue States,” PhD thesis, University of Southern California, 2007; Tim Niblock, Pariah States and Sanctions in the Middle East: Iraq, Libya, Sudan (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
For example, see Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2007); Sasan Fayazmanesh, The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008); Hossein Alikhani, Sanctioning Iran: Anatomy of a Failed Policy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000). Gerges takes a different tack to all of the above, in that his analysis is focused on American policy toward the various Islamist movements on the rise in the Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s, in order to examine the basis of US foreign policy when it comes to Islamist groups and states like Iran. See Fawaz Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier, America between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11: The Misunderstood Years between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror (New York: Public Affairs, 2008).
Rosemary Hollis, “The US Role: Helpful or Harmful?,” in Lawrence Potter and Gary Sick (eds.), Iran, Iraq and the Legacies of War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 209.
For instance, see Richard Haass, “Paradigm Lost,” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 1 (1995): 43–58.
Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Dynamics of Change in the Persian Gulf: Political Economy, War and Revolution (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), p. 33.
F. Gregory Gause, The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 88.
Stephen Walt, “Two Cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 79, no. 2 (2000): 79.
The term was coined by Gideon Rose in 1998, who provides a useful introduction to the theory. See Gideon Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy,” World Politics 51, no. 1 (1998): 144–72.
In particular, see Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
This term was coined by Stephen Krasner in “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 185–205.
In terms of the former, for instance, see Aaron Friedberg’s The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline 1895–1905 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988) and William Wohlforth’s The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions during the Cold War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). In terms of the latter, examples include Randall Schweller’s Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
Harald Müller and Thomas Risse-Kappen, “From the Outside in and from the inside out: International Relations, Domestic Politics, and Foreign Policy,” in David Skidmore and Valerie Hudson (eds.) The Limits of State Autonomy: Societal Groups and Foreign Policy Formulation (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993), p. 31.
Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies,” World Politics 43, no. 4 (1991): 479–512.
Peter Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 32, no. 4 (1978): 881–912.
Stephen Krasner, Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), p. 37.
Jeffrey Taliaferro, “State Building for Future Wars Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State,” Security Studies 15, no. 3 (2006): 464–95. For another example, see Thomas Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).
Steven Lobell, “Threat Assessment, the State, and Foreign Policy: A Neoclassical Realist Model,” in Steven Lobell, Norrin Ripsman, and Jeffrey Taliaferro (eds.), Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 42–74.
Norrin Ripsman, Peacemaking by Democracies: The Effect of State Autonomy on the Post-World-War Settlements (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2002).
Edwin S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers 1787–1957: History and Analysis of Practice and Opinion, 4th edition (New York: New York University Press, 1964), p. 171.
Alexander George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), p. 214.
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© 2014 Alex Edwards
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Edwards, A. (2014). Introduction. In: “Dual Containment” Policy in the Persian Gulf. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137447241_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137447241_1
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