In order to understand the 21st century policies of the great powers in the Middle East, it is imperative to know what these powers really want from this region. Because there might be many factors influencing their behaviour, but obviously they are not equally important. For the general reader to understand the policies of the great powers in the Middle East, the focus must be only on their most important geopolitical objectives, and that's exactly what this essay is going to do, because sometimes too much detail can blur the big picture. Once the main geopolitical objectives of the great powers are outlined, one only needs to examine how the objectives of one power complement or compete with the objectives of the other powers.
When I say “great powers”, I mean the countries that can quickly mobilize huge military forces, and such countries are mainly the United States, China and Russia. As you can see in the following Wikipedia link, according to all three sources used by Wikipedia, it is these three countries that have the highest military spending in the world.
Military Spending by Country (Wikipedia)
Image 1
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
Annual military spending amounts approximately to 600 billion dollars in the US, 180 billion dollars in China and 90 billion dollars in Russia. The following article by the Economist, titled “Military Might”, April 2013, confirms these figures. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/04/daily-chart-9
Before I examine the geopolitical objectives of the US, China and Russia in the Middle East, I must say that English is not my first language, so please excuse potential errors.