The purpose of this analysis is to assess the likely impact that the US campaign against global terrorism launched in the wake of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, will have on key American interests in the Middle East over the medium term (next 12 months). The main focus will be on the expected perceptions and reaction to US policy of selected important Middle East actors, regime stability and changing regional alignments.
The concept of sovereignty designates an institution of supreme rule which seems common to all politically organized peoples throughout history. Every people since the ancient polities to the most recently constituted states, concerned with the control, organization and uses of power, has also found a fundamental utility in institutionalizing various forms of the principle of the supreme rule. Quoting from Mountague Bernard's historical account of the neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War, Henry Maine observes in one of his 1887 lectures on international law that by "sovereign state" it is meant "a community or number of persons permanently organized under a sovereign government of their own", where "sovereign government" means "a government, however constituted, which exercises the power of making and enforcing law within a community, and is not itself subject to any superior government".
As we went to press, the election of a new US President was still undecided. More than a week after 100 million Americans went to the polls, the ultimate margin of victory for either George W. Bush or Al Gore appeared to hinge on several hundred Florida votes. Whoever does take office on January 20, the next American President (and Commander in Chief), the man with ultimate authority over the world' s largest nuclear arsenal, will begin his term in office in the most politically tenuous position of any American president in perhaps a century.
Topic:
Government, Nuclear Weapons, Peace Studies, and War