The US Is Shaping A New Order In The Greater Middle East - A Survey.

Editor's Note: This is the beginning of a three-part survey on the way in which the US is changing the established order in the Middle East and is in the process of planning and implementing the emergence of a new order more in tune with American values and interests. The survey will be divided

into three parts, reflecting three phases in the creation of this new order, with each phase likely to affect a different set of countries in the region. These phases may be concurrent, given the fact that success in creating this order cannot be measured solely in terms of regimes replaced or military conflicts won.

The survey will be serialised to reflect the dynamics of each of the three phases. The first phase of the creation of the new order involved the ouster of the Taliban and Baathist regimes from Afghanistan and Iraq respectively. Having won the war in these countries, now the US is attempting to keep the peace and bring about the kind of change it wants to see; this is proving harder than expected (see following pages).

The second phase will target the remaining member of the "axis of evil" in the region, and other countries characterised by the US State Department as "rogue states", or as state-sponsors of terrorism. The diplomacy involved in this phase will be complex and delicate, and the US is likely to face more resistance from its Western counterparts as well as Asian countries to any sort of military action against targeted states in the Greater Middle East - such as Iran, Syria and Libya.

The third phase will be perhaps the most difficult for the US, as it will involve targeting countries that Washington considered close allies throughout the cold war - for example Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries which persist in their refusal to democratise in the way America wants. By targeting them in the final phase of its efforts to establish a new order in the region, the US is also giving these countries enough time to make the necessary changes on their own. It remains to be seen whether they are capable of making such radical reforms that the US expects, but most observers believe it is unlikely.