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| Volume X, Fall 2003, Number 3 |
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| EXCERPT: Jordan, the Al-Aqsa Intifada and America's "War on Terror" |
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| Scott Greenwood |
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Dr. Greenwood is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, San Marcos.
Throughout its contemporary
history, Jordan has been heavily
influenced by external events.
The modern state itself was the result of British imperial ambitions in the Middle East. Anxious to create a land bridge between British-controlled oil fields in Iraq and the Mediterranean coast, the territory of Transjordan was created in 1921.1 During the 1920s and 1930s, Jordanian politics continued to be profoundly affected by British colonial policies in the region. By the 1940s, politics in Jordan began to be dominated by the growing conflict between Zionism, Arab nationalism and Palestinian nationalism. This conflict continued to dominate the Jordanian political scene until Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait created another source of instability to the east. Since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Jordan has been caught between crises in Israeli-Palestinian and American-Iraqi relations, in a regional environment of almost continual instability.
The al-Aqsa intifada and the American "war on terror" have largely shaped the rule of Jordan's new monarch, Abdullah II, who ascended to the throne following the death of his father, King Hussein, in 1999. Like his late father, Abdullah is pursuing a regime-survival strategy that depends heavily on securing economic benefits such as increased aid, trade and investment from Western countries, particularly the United States. However, unlike his father, who chose to remain neutral in the 1991 Gulf War, Abdullah lent strong indirect support to the Bush administration's diplomatic and military campaign against Saddam Hussein in 2002 and 2003. By offering this support, as well as by cooperating with President Bush's policies towards Israel and the Palestinians, the king has sought the economic assistance necessary to build a stronger economy that will provide more jobs, wealth and opportunities to Jordanians. The king not only hopes to improve the standard of living of his subjects but, more important, to win their support for his regime and his political vision for Jordan's future.
1 An excellent study of this period is Mary C. Wilson's King Abdullah, Britain, and the Making of Jordan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
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