America’s Soft vs. Hard Power toward the Arab Countries

Abstract

This dissertation intends to explore some perspectives of the two forms of power “hard” and “soft”, and U.S. foreign policy toward the Arab countries. From the one hand, the present study sheds light on U.S. goals of implementing the soft power, which focuses on power of attractiveness driven from American culture, values and foreign policies. From the other hand, the research focuses on U.S. use of hard power. The United States pervasive hegemony hinges its foreign policy toward other countries; it may use either foreign aids to pursue its strategic goals or military coercion. The study probes the question about U.S. implementation of its hard and soft power during the period of 2001-2008 in the following two cases. The first case is the U.S. implementation of soft power with Jordan, the latter has been a close ally for America; their ties were characterized with cooperation on a number of issues. The second case is U.S. use of hard power toward Iraq, focusing on the Iraq invasion of 2003 and U.S. desire to overthrow the regime of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein who was threatening the U.S. security. Since the rationales of the U.S. occupation of Iraq were not justified, many Arab, as well as, non-Arab countries condemned the invasion that brought negative effects on U.S. relations with the entire Middle East and decreased U.S. hegemony also.