Middle Eastern Politics

The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) is a current problem U.S. foreign policy problem that is facing the country. Originally mentioned during a speech in May of 2002, President Bush first brought up the idea of creating a policy of help for the Middle East region. The formal MEPI policy was later established in early December of the same year by Colin Powell with hopes of creating better relations with the countries in the region. The policies problem is that with controversy of U.S. military presence in the area may affect the out come of the MEPI as it is clearly tied with the war on terror.

Different political parties seem to have differing ideas on what it will take to secure the MEPI's four pillars, economics, political, educational, and woman's empowerment. As of the parties everyone agrees that this is a needed program to help the citizens and governments in the Middle East area, but people differ on whether our military presence in the area is beneficial to the goals of the MEPI. It is not completely clear cut but in general it seems to go that the Republican Party and other conservatives believes military presence is necessary to secure the ideas of the MEPI. While the Democratic Party and other liberals seem to think that the military presence is only hampering the MEPI goals. Some of the larger individuals who have participated in the MEPI are of course President Bush, Colin Powel, Condoleezza Rice and the head of the program Chairwoman Iliana Ros-Lehtinen. While no one is against the MEPI there is very out spoken concerns such as how much western influence would be placed on these traditional Arab countries. There a problems such as providing aid to countries such as Syria who the United States has had many problems with. Other participants in the program include branches of government from the U.S. Departments of Customs, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Labor, State, and Treasury as well as different agencies including E.P.A., F.D.A., and the Patent Office. Private industry has also helped substantially with the participation of Coca-Cola, Exxomobile, Motorola, and Walt Disney among others.

The means of solving this problem comes from the security class of tools specifically Military