US-EU: Middle East as a Zone of “Shared Responsibility”

The article examines a number of aspects of the process of updating the approaches of the United States and the European Union to the problems of the Middle East (ME), as well as attempts by Washington and Brussels to coordinate their actions under the new conditions. In the United States, the voices of politicians and experts are growing who believe that, despite the fact that threats from the ME are much more significant for the security of Europeans, the latter refrain from increasing their participation in Middle Eastern affairs, still relying on America's military power there. In turn, many European politicians do not hide their disappointment in the US approaches to a number of crises in the Middle East, and increasingly reproach them for the “loss of American leadership” on the world stage. The need for Europeans to increasingly rely on their own strength and resources, formalized in the form of the concept of the EU's “strategic autonomy”, is today determined not only by the situation around Ukraine, but also by the increasing level of conflict in the Middle East – namely, Israel's military actions against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip, direct clashes between Israel and Iran, the activation of pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.