The role of the geopolitical position of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan towards American foreign policy from 1990 to 2017

The role of the geopolitical location of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan towards United States (US) foreign policy from 1990 to 2017 is the focus of this study, which addressed the impact of important regional and international political events, positively or negatively, on the development of relations between the two countries in terms of political and security aspects. The study adopted a qualitative approach, and primary data was collected through interviews with 16 participants from political, economic, and security experts in Jordan and the US. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data obtained. The study concluded that US foreign policy recognizes Jordan as a close ally and considers its stability extremely important; Jordan has a suitable location to defend Israel because critical Arab countries surround it, and Jordan enjoys a unique geographical location in the Middle East. Some political events play an essential role in US foreign policy concerning security aid to Jordan, as the US links its aid to Jordan to political events

THE ROLE OF THE GEOPOLITICAL POSITION OF THE HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN TOWARDS AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY FROM 1990 TO 2017

The role of the geopolitical location of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan towards United States (US) foreign policy from 1990 to 2017 is the focus of this study, which addressed the impact of important regional and international political events, positively or negatively, on the development of relations between the two countries in terms of political and security aspects. The study adopted a qualitative approach, and primary data was collected through interviews with 16 participants from political, economic, and security experts in Jordan and the US. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data obtained. The study concluded that US foreign policy recognizes Jordan as a close ally and considers its stability extremely important; Jordan has a suitable location to defend Israel because critical Arab countries surround it, and Jordan enjoys a unique geographical location in the Middle East. Some political events play an essential role in US foreign policy concerning security aid to Jordan, as the US links its aid to Jordan to political events.

A POLÍTICA EXTERNA DOS ESTADOS UNIDOS EM RELAÇÃO À JORDÂNIA A PARTIR DAS DIMENSÓES POLÍTICA E DE SEGURANÇA DE 1990 A 2017

Foreign policy is an integral part of international relations. This study examines the United States (US) foreign policy towards Jordan from 1990 to 2017 since the period witnessed important regional and international political events that significantly impacted the US foreign policy. These events have the greatest impact on the development of relations between the two countries in terms of political and security aspects. The study looks at four political events and their impacts on Jordanian-American relations from the political and security aspects. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to examine the US foreign policy towards Jordan from the political and security aspects. This study adopted the qualitative approach. The primary data were collected from interviews while the secondary data were obtained from books, journals, theses, newspapers, seminar papers, articles and other documents. In this study, 16 respondents from political, economic and security experts in Jordan and the US were selected for semi-structured interviews. The study employed Thematic Analysis in analysing the data obtained. This study adopted the neo-realism theory as a theoretical framework. This study found that the US foreign policy recognizes Jordan as a close ally and considers its stability very important. The US foreign policy was seen slightly negative towards Jordan during the Iraqi War on Kuwait in 1990. However, the Wadi Araba peace treaty between Jordan and Israel in 1994 had promoted positive US foreign policy towards Jordan. This policy was slightly weakened in 2017 due to the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Certain political events play an important role in the US foreign policy regarding security aid towards Jordan. The study found that the US foreign policy provides security support to Jordan to protect Israel, spread American ideology and fight against its enemy. This research also found that Jordan has a suitable location to defend Israel because the country is surrounded by important Arab countries.  The US links its aids to Jordan due to political events. Accordingly, the study recommends the necessity for the Jordanian state to increase its influential economic alliances at the international level. In addition, Jordanian policy must be redrawn in line with international realities to pressure the US to make Jordan play an active role in the region and international arena. Jordan should better use its geographical location to achieve international cooperation and enhance Arab security as a barrier against Israel.A Política Externa é uma parte integral das relações internacionais. Este estudo examina a Política Externa dos Estados Unidos para a Jordânia entre 1990 e 2017 tendo em vista que o período testemunhou importantes eventos políticos regionais e internacionais que impactam significativamente a Política Externa estadunidense. Esses eventos tiveram um grande impacto no desenvolvimentos das relações entre os dois países tanto em termos políticos quanto em termos securitários. Esse estudo examina quatro eventos políticos e seus impactos nas relações Jordânia-Estados Unidos sob as perspectivas política e securitária. Portanto, os objetivos deste estudo são examinar a Política Externa estadunidense para a Jordânia a partir dos aspectos securitários e políticos. Esse estudo adota uma abordagem qualitativa. Os dados primários foram coletados a partir de entrevistas enquanto os dados secundários foram obtidos a partir de livros, periódicos, jornais, trabalhos publicados em seminários, artigos e outros documentos. Neste estudo, foram selecionados 16 respondentes jordanianos e estadunidenses, especialistas nas áreas de política, economia e segurança, para entrevistas semi-estruturadas. Esse estudo empregou a Análise Temática para analisar os dados obtidos. Esse estudo adotou a teoria neo-realista como arcabouço teórico. Esse estudo concluiu que a política externa norte-americana reconhece a Jordânia como uma aliada próxima e considera sua estabilidade muito importante. A política externa norte-americana para a Jordânia foi percebida como relativamente negativa durante a Guerra Iraque-Kuwait em 1990. Contudo, o Tratado de Paz assinado entre Jordânia e Israel (o Tratado de Wadi Araba), em 1994, promoveu uma política externa norte-americana positiva para a Jordânia. Essa política foi sutilmente enfraquecida em 2017 em função da transferência da Embaixada norte-americana para Jerusalém. Certos eventos políticos desempenharam um importante papel na ajuda securitária fornecida à Jordânia pela política externa norte-americana. Esse estudo concluiu que o auxílio securitário da política externa norte-americana para a Jordânia tem como objetivo maior a proteção de Israel, a dispersão da ideologia norte-americana e o combate ao seu inimigo. Essa pesquisa concluiu, ainda, que a Jordânia possui uma boa localização para defender Israel uma vez que o país está cercado por importantes países árabes. A ajuda norte-americana à Jordânia está ligada a eventos políticos. Desta forma, o estudo recomenda ao Estado da Jordânia a necessidade de aumentar suas influentes alianças econômicas para o nível internacional. Além disso, a política da Jordânia precisa ser redesenhada, indo de encontro a realidade internacional e pressionando os Estados Unidos para que a Jordânia possa desempenhar um papel ativo na região e na arena internacional. A Jordânia deve utilizar melhor a sua localização geográfica para alcançar a cooperação internacional e fortalecer a segurança árabe como uma barreira ao Estado de Israel

UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY TOWARDS JORDAN FROM THE POLITICAL AND SECURITY DIMENSIONS FROM 1990 TO 2017

Foreign policy is an integral part of international relations. This study examines the United States (US) foreign policy towards Jordan from 1990 to 2017 since the period witnessed important regional and international political events that significantly impacted the US foreign policy. These events have the greatest impact on the development of relations between the two countries in terms of political and security aspects. The study looks at four political events and their impacts on Jordanian-American relations from the political and security aspects. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to examine the US foreign policy towards Jordan from the political and security aspects. This study adopted the qualitative approach. The primary data were collected from interviews while the secondary data were obtained from books, journals, theses, newspapers, seminar papers, articles and other documents. In this study, 16 respondents from political, economic and security experts in Jordan and the US were selected for semi-structured interviews. The study employed Thematic Analysis in analysing the data obtained. This study adopted the neo-realism theory as a theoretical framework. This study found that the US foreign policy recognizes Jordan as a close ally and considers its stability very important. The US foreign policy was seen slightly negative towards Jordan during the Iraqi War on Kuwait in 1990. However, the Wadi Araba peace treaty between Jordan and Israel in 1994 had promoted positive US foreign policy towards Jordan. This policy was slightly weakened in 2017 due to the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Certain political events play an important role in the US foreign policy regarding security aid towards Jordan. The study found that the US foreign policy provides security support to Jordan to protect Israel, spread American ideology and fight against its enemy. This research also found that Jordan has a suitable location to defend Israel because the country is surrounded by important Arab countries.  The US links its aids to Jordan due to political events. Accordingly, the study recommends the necessity for the Jordanian state to increase its influential economic alliances at the international level. In addition, Jordanian policy must be redrawn in line with international realities to pressure the US to make Jordan play an active role in the region and international arena. Jordan should better use its geographical location to achieve international cooperation and enhance Arab security as a barrier against Israel.</jats:p

Predicting academic performance for students’ university: case study from Saint Cloud State University

Predicting students’ performance is one of the essential educational data mining approaches aimed at observing learning outcomes. Predicting grade point average (GPA) helps to monitor academic performance and assists advisors in identifying students at risk of failure, major changes, or dropout. To enhance prediction performance, this study employs a long short-term memory (LSTM) model using a rich set of academic and demographic features. The dataset, drawn from 29,455 students at Saint Cloud State University (SCSU) over eight years (2016–2024), was carefully preprocessed by eliminating irrelevant and missing data, encoding categorical variables, and normalizing numerical features. Feature importance was determined using a permutation-based method to identify the most impactful variables on term GPA prediction. Furthermore, model hyperparameters, including the number of LSTM layers, units per layer, batch size, learning rate, and activation functions, were fine-tuned using experimental validation with the Adam optimizer and learning rate scheduling. Two experiments were conducted at both the college and department levels. The proposed model outperformed traditional machine learning models such as linear regression (LR), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), and support vector regressor (SVR), and it surpasses two deep learning models, recurrent neural network (RNN) and convolutional neural network (CNN), achieving 9.54 mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), 0.0059 mean absolute error (MAE), 0.0001 root mean square error (RMSE), and an R² score of 99%