Abstract
As a world power, the US has fought many wars in its history. It has interests all over the world, and these have shaped its policies, occasionally leading to wars and interventions. The Middle East has been in focus, at least since the Second World War. The cold war and its end kept the oil rich, volatile region in focus of US leadership. Americas War for the Greater Middle East is an account of America‟s role and involvement in and around the Middle East. Bacevich has been an officer in US military, and a professor of history and IR at Boston University. He has a PhD in diplomatic history from Princeton University. He starts off saying, “…America‟s War for the Greater Middle East was a war to preserve the American way of life….” (p.3). But, there are other more complicated reasons for this policy, political, military as well as strategic. Bacevich builds his case from the 60s and 70s, with the observation, “the first round of proposals to militarize US policy in the Middle East found little favor in the Pentagon.” (p.8) „Instability‟ in the region made it a „strategic imperative‟ to devise policies to cope with the region.