Abstract

This paper argues that the US encouraged the starting, continuation and even expansion of the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon in order to achieve its own hegemonic objectives in the region. While global hegemony has always been on Washington’s agenda, in the Bush administration, with neoconservatives sitting behind influential desks in the capital, the initiative got new impetus. According to this new approach, the goal was to be advanced with the confrontation and eventual defeat of the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis, a move that would help create a ‘New Middle East’ in which opposition to US-Israeli policies would not be tolerated. The paper uses a Neoclassical Realist theoretical approach to show that Washington’s miscalculation of power relations in the region led to the failure of its foreign policy. Like the Iraq War of 2003, the 2006 Lebanon War was a disaster for the US. With the encouragement and support of the Americans, the Israeli war machine fought an inconclusive war with Hezbollah, as a result of which the status of the Israeli military as the Middle East’s ‘Invincible Army’ was shattered and archenemies Hezbollah and Iran were strengthened.

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