Even before Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981, and certainly throughout his first term, US foreign policy makers may well have wanted to pursue the directions we are now seeing pursued. They were, however, held back by the constraints of the Cold War. But when the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, talk began in earnest about the liberation of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The limitations on US foreign policy that the Cold War had brought disappeared overnight. It was then that the masterminds of Washington's foreign policy began to feel that the sky was the limit.

During the Cold War Washington attempted to contain the Soviet Union through a variety of military pacts and other lines of defense. One important line of that defense was Islam. US foreign policy spared no effort in rallying Islamic countries, institutions and movements -- moderate and extremist -- behind its goals. The US- Islamic alliance, after all, forced an end to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, a precursor to the Soviet Union's collapse. Washington's plans to develop the so-called Star Wars technology then placed additional pressures on the Soviet leadership, which had to find resources to counter the new threat.

Why, some may wonder, is the US willing to lose popularity now that foreign policy no longer labors under the constraints of the Cold War? The answer may seem simple, but it is not. One has to keep in mind that Americans are used to being viewed with mistrust by other nations. The Spanish, who opposed the US decision to go to war in Iraq, are a case in point. Some Americans say that the reason Spaniards do not trust US foreign policy has its roots in the US victory over Spain in 1898. The British, America's closest allies, treated US soldiers, posted in their thousands in Britain during World War II, discourteously. Many saw the Americans more as invaders than allies. British writers, from Charles Dickens to Kingsley and Martin Amis, are known to have little love for their trans-Atlantic cousins. Germans, to this day, cannot forget that the US brought about their defeat in two world wars.

Hatred is not the issue here; rather it is an accumulation of historical events that have been misconstrued, mishandled or both. When it comes to the Europeans Americans have always had a persecution complex. The Americans have always felt their country a target for hate, envy, and venom -- something the terrorist attacks of 11 September seemed to confirm. Since then the persecution complex and the suspicion of others has become the driving force behind US foreign policy. Americans are suspicious of everyone, above all those of us who live in the Middle East. Reciprocating the sentiment, Arabs and Muslims feel that US actions following 11 September have been designed to humiliate and hurt them. 

Relations between the US and Arab and Islamic countries, and the schemes these relations spawned, have been much discussed. Some of these schemes go back to World War II, when the terms "Middle East" and "Islamic Crescent", both laden with significance, were coined. Once the US was free of the burden of the Cold War it felt no longer in need of friendship with Islamic countries. The new enemy, in US opinion, is latent in this part of the world, funded and abetted by the locals. The verdict in the US is that the eradication of this new enemy will not be achieved through closer ties with local governments or the revival of old alliances. 

The right-wing US administration, in alliance with like-minded anti-Arab Zionists, has opted for confrontation. No analyst can deny that this region, indeed the entire world, is becoming an arena for the confrontation between the Middle East and its sympathizers -- in Africa, Asia, and Europe -- on one hand and US policy on the other. With the exception of Iraq this confrontation has not yet reached the stage of overthrowing governments or an open declaration of hostility. 

Yet through various threats and dozens of calls for domestic change the US has put most, if not all, Arab and Islamic governments on the defensive. The US has demanded economic reforms that countries in the region can meet only partially. It has demanded political reforms states in the region, without exception, have found hard to swallow. It seems, however, that the US -- despite appearances -- is not insisting that political reforms be introduced immediately. Washington's policy makers are aware that the acceleration of political reform may result in chaos. The US, most probably, hopes to see in the Middle East the type of democracy and plurality common in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Let democracy be introduced if only in form, goes US thinking, and true democratization will follow. 

Judging by the Latin American experience this is optimistic. Democracy has not led to political stability in Latin America. Demonstrations, a key aspect of democracy, have succeeded in bringing down five presidents in Latin America in recent years. The Americans -- as well as local opposition -- have come to the conclusion that demonstrations are more effective than military coups, not only in unseating dictatorial governments but also in getting rid of democratic regimes that fail to toe the US line. 

In Georgia, President Shevardnadze has just been overthrown through peaceful demonstrations. In Venezuela the opposition succeeded, with US help, in unseating President Hugo Chavez. Events in the Balkans, Peru, Argentina and Colombia prove that it is much easier to overthrow a democratic than a despotic regime. It is my guess, however, that the US will not escalate its pressure on Arab and Islamic governments to speed up democratization. 

Washington would not hesitate to intervene militarily on the side of any Arab regime that happens to engage in active confrontation with a terrorist group or an extremist trend, regardless of what the US thinks of that regime. I don't think the US has a new map for the region yet, a new Sykes-Picot formulation. But what it does want is to shake up established customs and ways of doing things. It is already putting pressure on Arab and Islamic countries to alter curricula, liberate the economy, allow more freedom of expression, change the status of women, and restrain the role of at least some religious institutions. 

Aside from the above tactics, some of which are already bearing fruit, the US is engaged in policies aimed at undermining movements antagonistic to the US or to reform imposed from abroad. There are attempts to create a deeper sense of humiliation, either through purposely insulting comments by US officials or through disrupting the efforts of Arab and Islamic countries to help the Palestinians at a time when the latter are facing liquidation. The US is also making a point of not humoring regional governments and not providing them with support in the face of political opposition. The aim is to deprive these regimes of any chance to regroup or rehabilitate the Arab regional system. 

The US is using all its strength to get Arab and Islamic countries to capitulate, one after another. Libya and Pakistan are not going to be the last. Washington will continue until the Islamic and Arab community loses cohesion, Islam's penchant for jihad ebbs, and the pan-Arab movement runs out of steam. At which time the "greater Middle East", promised by President Bush in his State of the Union speech, will finally materialize.