# Extricating America from Its Middle Eastern Entanglement 

June 12, 1991 • Policy Analysis No. 154 

By [Leon T. Hadar](https://www.cato.org/people/leon-hadar) 

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The successful outcome of a war tends to create unrealistic expectations. World War I was supposed to have been the war to end all wars. World War II was expected to usher in a new era of permanent peace. There was in the United States, in the days following the military victory in the Persian Gulf, a sense of omnipotence similar to the euphoria that dominated Israel after the Six-Day war in 1967, a feeling that everything was possible in arranging the political cards of the Middle East; that after Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi Thomas Jefferson would come to power in Baghdad and a window of opportunity would be opened for democracy, stability, and peace in the Middle East.

As the decadent Kuwaiti emir returned to his liberated city-state, American policy experts and pundits discussed plans for establishing a constitutional monarchy in Kuwait and a democracy in Iraq, and for launching a Marshall Plan for economic development in the region to close the gap between the “have” and the “have not” states.\[1\] Others called for structuring a NATO-type security arrangement in the gulf and in the entire Middle East and for using American leadership to bring peace between Israelis and Arabs.\[2\]

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##### Extricating America from Its Middle Eastern Entanglement 

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##### About the Author 

##### [Leon T. Hadar](/people/leon-hadar)

Former Research Fellow 

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