by Jahandad Memarian
According to a recent special report on Iran in The Economist: “The revolution is over.” The article concludes by suggesting that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s approach to the country’s controversial nuclear program and international relations is a departure from that of his predecessors. While the piece makes several noteworthy points, it fails to mention some important nuances of Iran’s foreign policy paradigm shift, a movement three decades in the making.
Ruhi Ramazani, a veteran scholar on Iranian affairs, has long demonstrated that since Iran’s 1979 revolution, the country’s foreign policy-makers have broken away from a doggedly spiritual paradigm in varying degrees, at times acting directly in opposition to long-held religious, moral, and ideological values. Indeed, the intervening years since the Iranian Revolution have facilitated an evolution of the country’s foreign policy, which has culminated as a hybrid political construct framed by both pragmatism and spirituality, as Ramazani asserts in his book, Independence Without Freedom.
The leader of Iran’s revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, a super-idealist, led the charge toward a more aspirational foreign policy paradigm based on ideals rooted in what Ramazani describes as spiritual pragmatism. To achieve this, Khomeini, at times, allowed deviations from “his ideological line” (Khatti Imam) and adjusted his worldview in response to social and political circumstances. Whether in regard to declaratory or practical policies, no one altered Khomeini’s line more than Khomeini himself.
For example, after the 1979 American hostage crisis in in Tehran, which began the era of ever-increasing US sanctions on Iran, Khomeini declared, “We must become isolated in order to become independent.” Yet following the release of the hostages in 1981 and the liberation of the Iranian port city of Khorramshahr from Iraqi forces in 1982, Khomeini saw his power consolidated at home and turned the lens on his ardent followers. He placed the blame for Iran’s “hermit” status on the international stage squarely on their shoulders. In one markedly critical accusation of his hard-line supporters, Khomeini even went so far as to cite the prophet Muhammad as an example of someone who sent out ambassadors to establish conciliatory relations with the outside world. To demand that Iran permanently cut ties with other countries made no sense, said Khomeini, because for Iran “it would mean defeat, annihilation, and being buried right to the end.”
Perhaps the most salient example of Khomeini’s pragmatism was Iran’s decision to secretly purchase arms, for its defensive war against Iraq (1980-88), from both the United States and Israel in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair (1985-87). By striking a deal through intermediaries, American and Israeli military supplies were provided to Tehran in return for its cooperation and assistance in securing the release of Western hostages in Lebanon. In negotiating with his adversaries, Khomeini’s pragmatism proved he was focused on the bigger picture for Iran.
Many Iranian leaders have attempted following in Khomeini’s footsteps. Even president Sayyid Ali Khamenei, now the country’s Supreme Leader, adopted similar views under Iran’s “open door” foreign policy and declared, in the summer of 1986, that “Iran seeks a rational, sound, and healthy relations with all countries.”
What would these healthy relations look like for Iran? Consider the example of the high point in US-Iran relations that occurred during the two countries’ decision to cooperate in response to the war in Afghanistan. In late 2001, Iranian diplomats (and even some members of the Revolutionary Guard) domestically lobbied for working with the United States to deliver the mutual benefit of toppling the Taliban and implementing a new political order in Afghanistan. Ayatollah Khamenei conceded and as a result Iran offered airbases, search-and-rescue missions for downed American pilots, the tracking and killing of al-Qaeda leaders, and assistance in building ties with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. But this warming in relations was short-lived. Not long after taking advantage of Iran’s assistance, then-President George W. Bush declared Iran as part of an “Axis of Evil,” thereby instantly destroying the tenuous goodwill the two discordant countries had been working to build.
In another example, during his first two terms, President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani pressed for military reconstruction and economic development as a means of emphasizing the country’s practical needs following the end of the Iran-Iraq war. During his time in office, Rafsanjani invited Conoco Oil, a US company, to bid for the Sirri oil field development project (the largest in Iran’s history at that time). With Khamenei’s approval, Rafsanjani worked to close the Conoco deal, understanding that this act would significantly increase economic relations between Iran and the United States. But not long after the $1 billion deal was awarded to Conoco, the Clinton administration blocked the contract as a “threat to national security.”
There are of course other events in the Islamic Republic’s history proving that from Ayatollah Khomeini to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, many Iranian leaders have genuinely attempted to—even in the face of powerful internal and external impediments—implement a hybrid paradigm, with each leader assigning different weights to practical and spiritual considerations. Considered with this history in mind, Rouhani’s efforts to facilitate compromises in regard to the Iran’s nuclear program are not, as The Economist suggests, a turning point in Iranian politics. They’re merely a continuation of an ongoing trend that should have been noticed by Western analysts long before now.
Jahandad Memarian is a research associate at the West Asia Council and a senior research fellow at Nonviolence International as well as a contributor to Al-Monitor and the Huffington Post. He holds an M.A. in Western Philosophy from the University of Tehran and was previously an Iranian Fulbright scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2010-11. Prior to that, Mr. Memarian was a researcher at the Iranian Parliament Research Center and worked as a journalist for the Iranian news daily, Hamshahri.
]]>A variety of recent opinion polls indicate that a significant portion of the American public remains deeply fearful of international terrorism. Many Americans even feel less safe now than they did before the 9/11 attacks.
A CNN poll conducted in September found that 53% of Americans believe that more terrorist attacks on the homeland are likely. Seven out of ten Americans meanwhile believe that Islamic State (ISIS or IS) has operatives in the United States who are planning future attacks.
These deep-seated fears formed part of the backdrop in the recent US midterm elections that swept Democrats from power in the Senate and added to the Republican majority in the House. America today lives in an age of fear, loathing, and anxiety that might have produced good copy by Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, if he was alive today, but which bespeaks a republic that has lost its confidence as well as its emotional and intellectual moorings.
Yet it’s hard to understand why if we consider our present circumstances. As noted by terrorism expert Peter Bergen at a recent symposium (echoing figures from a variety of sources) 22 Americans have lost their lives in the United States since the 9/11 attacks in violence perpetrated by attackers expressing support for Islamic extremist causes. Of those 22, 13 were killed in a single attack inside a US military base at Fort Hood, Texas in November 2009.
The numbers of Americans killed outside their borders due to terrorist attacks is somewhat higher, but still remains small. According to the State Department, 16 Americans lost their lives as a result of terrorism related violence around the world in 2013.
In short, Americans have more to fear from slipping in the shower or falling down the stairs than they do of terrorist-inspired violence. They definitely have more to fear from random handgun-related violence in their neighborhoods, which has lead to nearly 1,000,000 fatalities and injuries since 9/11 in the United States. Yet many people resist even rudimentary steps to control access to guns at home while enthusiastically supporting America’s trigger-happy foreign policy around the world.
How do we explain the incongruence and disconnects between the American public’s perceptions and these realities? Political and military leaders are part of the problem.
Instead of reassuring the public about the threat of terrorism relative to other dangers, political leaders have actively played upon public fears by continually asserting the imminent dangers of new and more dangerous attacks.
One result has been the establishment of the national security surveillance state by the generation of Vietnam War protesters that once took to the streets to protest the overreach of the state in the 1960s and 70s. Even the postal service recently disclosed that it had received 50,000 requests from the government to read people’s mail during 2013 in national-security related surveillance. Not to mention the intercepted phone calls and emails, to say nothing of those who are being watched in other countries. The public has greeted this development with little more than a yawn.
Of course, even as political leaders from both sides of the aisle mercilessly exploit people’s fears, the fact is that they are mirroring general public attitudes and perceptions. The slide of the American public into fear and loathing post-9/11 has paralleled the state’s political descent into anarchy at home. Republican religious zealots and conservative ideologues have brought their version of the Taliban home to the United States, just as our armies sought in vain to drive the group away from major Afghan cities in America’s longest war.
Therein lies the strategic consequences of the 9/11 attacks that went far beyond Osama Bin Laden’s wildest dreams when he and his lieutenants concocted the idea of flying airplanes into buildings. It’s the gift that just keeps on giving to Islamic extremists as America spies on its citizens at home and careens around the world blasting away at real and imagined enemies in a vain attempt to bomb them into submission. Unfortunately, the latest crusader army that has been taking shape since the end of the Bush administration only confirms the extremists’ vision of a Western-led war against Islam.
The atmosphere of fear and loathing at home in the United States will only gather momentum with the Republican-led Congress, and the squeamish, defeatist democrats meekly following along. Republican candidates around the country cloaked their winning message in the fear and loathing parlance for which the party has become known for in the post-9/11 era. And it’s not entirely clear what the Republicans are hoping for any more—other than aiding the wealthiest among us and enhancing fortress America to keep out immigrants.
What does this mean for the Middle East? It means that America’s fruitless bombing campaign will continue for the foreseeable future—a slippery slope of commitment that will inevitably involve additional ground troops in the region. America’s quarter century of war in Iraq isn’t ending any time soon.
Another casualty of this campaign may be the failure to reach an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program—if a weakened and chastened Obama administration retreats in the face of the Republican (and Israeli) pressure. Meanwhile, a new intifada in the simmering occupied territories would serve as icing on the proverbial cake of America’s failed endeavors that litter the Middle East like shattered glass.
Hunter S. Thompson would have had a field day in today’s world. His drug-infused delirium, which led to his famous novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was his only release from the madness surrounding him—but what about us? Unfortunately, it’s Osama bin Laden who has so far had the last laugh from his watery grave in this plot—and the joke is on us.
Photo: Hunter S Thompson with his IBM Selectric Typewriter. Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
Since the United States invaded Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, and began an era of major military operations in Southwest Asia and the Middle East, “what next” has been sometimes posed, but never adequately answered.
To this day, it is not possible to define what the US would realistically like to see happen in the region. Instead, it has limited itself to tactical steps (e.g., degrade and destroy al-Qaeda and the Islamic State) or Mission Impossible, the total remaking of essentially alien societies.
Direct terrorist threats to the US from Southwest Asia and the Middle East have substantially declined, but efforts to create a New Afghanistan and New Iraq have almost totally failed. The cost: many thousands of Americans killed along with many more locals, tens of thousands maimed, and three trillion dollars and counting.
The US has committed several key errors, some out of lack of knowledge, some out of the felt need to respond to external events, and some in misguided response to the desires of US partners in the region.
After 9/11, the US chose not only to extirpate those responsible for the first attack on the continental United States since 1814, but also to overthrow the Taliban regime, occupy the country, pull in all 27 other NATO allies to help, and try—but fail—to create a New Afghanistan. Then in 2003, a small group of advisors around President George W. Bush leveraged popular reaction to 9/11 to invade Iraq, one of the greatest foreign policy mistakes in US history.
The results have to be seen as having made the late Osama bin Laden the most powerful—or at least the most consequential—person in the world so far in this century.
With the invasion of Iraq, the US blundered into the midst of civil war in the Middle East. It overthrew a Sunni regime that dominated a Shia majority population. Most of the troubles the US now faces in the Middle East flow from that fact. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states have sought to “redress the balance,” in particular by getting the US to overthrow the minority Alawite (Shia) regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. But in deciding at least in principle to do so, Washington never asked the question “What next?” and the linked question “Cui bono?” (“Who benefits?”). Or if it did pose these questions to itself, it never adequately answered them, certainly never in public.
Thus the United States became an active party in a Sunni-Shia civil war, first unwittingly on the Shia side (invasion of Iraq) and subsequently on the Sunni side. It has also been supporting the geopolitical interests of states that oppose Iran, among other countries, which are competing for power among themselves, thus double-binding the US in support of others’ regional agendas that should mean little or nothing to the United States and its interests.
Meanwhile, radical Islamist fundamentalists in a number of Sunni states poured ideology, money, and arms into Syria, as well as elsewhere in the region. Among other things, these terrorist-promoters have fostered the killing of US and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. It is not apparent that either of the last two US administrations has done anything effective to stop this flow of death from supposedly friendly Gulf Arab states.
The rise of the Islamic State (IS) seemed to catch the US by surprise, in what was an intelligence failure equal to that before 9/11. It was, however, a logical outcome of tolerating the spread of Islamist fundamentalism, along with money and arms to support it, plus calling for Assad’s overthrow without considering the likely consequences. Then came the beheading of two American journalists (now followed by the beheadings of a Briton and a Frenchman), which spurred President Obama to what is now major military action to “degrade and destroy” IS and to renewed US direct engagement in a Middle Eastern conflict with an almost completely unknowable outcome.
This has made the masked terrorist who carried out the first beheadings the second most powerful person so far in the 21st century.
The emergence of Pure Evil is a “special case” and imposes a moral imperative to act, though not just by the United States. But even if there is nearly universal repugnance to IS and its grisly business, and a united effort to expunge it, each and every country and sub-national group in the region is calculating its own interests and opportunities and what it can gain for itself from the willingness of the United States to act.
In its efforts to counter IS, which Obama put most clearly and dramatically in his speech last week to the United Nations General Assembly, the United States, among other things, has thus become even more fully immersed in the interlocking regional civil wars of Sunni/Shia and geopolitical competitions. “Exploiting America” has returned to the fore across the region.
In the process, the US will step up arms supplies to so-called moderates in Syria, in the hope that they will turn these weapons just against IS and not against Assad. Yet the question “What Next?” following Assad’s overthrow still goes unanswered. Indeed, the likely result would be a mess even worse than the current one, certainly an intensified Syrian civil war and its spilling over elsewhere even more than now. At a Senate hearing this month, three US Senators posed this problem to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey. In response, they more or less waved a magic wand and said that such a diversion of weapons from the counter-IS battle to the counter-Assad battle would not happen.
Meanwhile, the United States seems uncertain on whether or not to welcome Iranian support in countering IS, and appears to change its mind on an almost daily basis. As with Syria’s Assad, the US has major issues with Iran, in particular the time-bound negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program as well as Iran’s continued hostility toward Israel. Here, too, the US is failing to ask and answer the relevant questions about the key US security interests in the region.
Life is unfair, as John Kennedy said, and it is unfair that the US is expected, by one and all, to take the lead in trying to sort out the spreading mess in the heart of the Middle East. But if it is even to begin getting things right, within the limits that anyone, in or out of the region, can get things right, the United States has to create a clear set of goals and methods. These must include backing off on trying to overthrow the Assad regime until it is possible—if it is possible—to work toward a process whereby all groups in Syria, including Alawites, will have some sort of guarantee that they will not be slaughtered in a situation of complete chaos.
These goals and methods have to include a stop, a full stop, to the export of ideology and hate, money and arms, from the Sunni states to IS, al-Qaeda, and other terrorists. They have to include greater participation in the Middle East by America’s NATO allies and the European Union against terrorism and its causes, in politics and economics if not in military action. To paraphrase Robert Browning on Heaven: “Or what’s an alliance for?” They have to include a reasonable approach to what we must hope is the concluding phase of the nuclear talks with Iran, plus Iran’s adoption of a reasonable foreign policy, while understanding that it will never be fully accepted back in the world unless it stops certain collateral efforts, as in the Israeli-Palestine conflict where Tehran has no legitimate national interest.
At the same time, the US has a right to ask Pakistan to stop activities that decrease the chances that Afghanistan will have a chance to succeed as a nation after the US and NATO radically reduce their force engagement at the end of this year. The US has a right to ask the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to stop his efforts (paralleling those by some of the Gulf Arab states) to cause the nuclear talks with Iran to fail.
The day has passed when regional parties, purporting to be friends and allies, can ask the United States to sort out their problems while offering little or nothing in return—or even making matters worse for America.
At heart, the Obama administration needs, finally, to seriously answer the question: “What Next?” along with the connected questions “What For?” (that is, “What are our real interests?”) and “How, over time, can we get there?” Until these questions are answered to the best of the administration’s ability and until it acts upon the answers, Osama bin Laden and the masked IS butcher will continue to be the 21st century’s two most consequential people.
]]>by Jim Lobe
Following up on Paul Pillar’s excellent takedown of Dennis Ross’s remarkably crude display of Islamophobia (whereby Saudi Arabia is considered a “non-Islamist state,” while Syria’s Baathist regime is “Islamist”), it seems we can add Iranophobia to the list of the somewhat irrational feelings held by the man who was supposed to coordinate Iran policy during much of Obama’s first term.
It was demonstrated most recently in an op-ed, “Iran Remains Our Biggest Challenge,” published in the print edition of last Sunday’s Washington Post and co-authored with former Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman, who is identified by the Post as a distinguished fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments but who also serves as a director of the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative (successor to the Project for the New American Century), and Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. Ross himself is described as a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and “special assistant to the president for the Middle East and South Asia from 2009 to 2011.” (What all three men have in common is membership in the neoconservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA’s) ultra-hawkish task force on Iran which, among other things has recommended that the US provide to Israel Washington’s most powerful bunker-buster bombs and the means to drop them on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ross and Edelman serve as the task force’s co-chairs.
The op-ed’s argument has become an increasingly familiar refrain by neocons and the Israel lobby and their supporters in Congress since Obama first declared his intent to “destroy” the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or IS); namely, whatever Washington does, it should not ally itself or cooperate in any with Iran or its regional allies in pursuit of that goal. Whatever threat may be presented by IS, they contend, is dwarfed by those posed by Iran and its presumed nuclear, hegemonic, and anti-American intentions.
Let’s stipulate at the outset that the authors have some valid points. For example, they argue essentially that the US cannot expect the indispensable cooperation of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies if it does anything that could be seen by Riyadh as cooperating with Iran. In their view, Riyadh and Tehran see their rivalry as a zero-sum game, and Riyadh is far more important to Washington’s anti-IS efforts than Tehran. (Of course, Monday’s meeting between two countries’ foreign ministers, as well as Rouhani’s optimism about bilateral relations at Tuesday’s press breakfast may offer some counter-evidence to their argument, not to mention the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia have worked out their differences in the past, most notably in stabilizing Lebanon.) Similarly, any disinterested observer would have to agree with the authors that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is highly suspicious of, and deeply hostile to the United States (just as, perhaps, Josef Stalin felt about Winston Churchill during World War II, or Ho Chi Minh and his successors felt about China during the Vietnam War.) What the authors contend is “the essential axiom of Middle East politics”—that “the enemy of my enemy is sometimes still my enemy”—is not unique to the Middle East, as much as these culturally sophisticated Washington analysts believe it to be.
But, at the same time, let’s consider some other aspects of their analysis.
On the one hand, they observe that “…both Washington and Tehran have an interest in defanging a militant Sunni group”—an assertion that is difficult to argue with. Yet, a few paragraphs later, they write: “Today, in the two central battlefronts of the Middle East—Syria and Iraq—Iran’s interests are inimical to those of the United States.” Yes, granted, in Syria, Iran prefers to keep Assad in power, while Washington wants him out. But, as the authors noted in the previously cited paragraph, both share an undeniable “interest” in defeating ISIS wherever it appears.
As for Iraq, it seems that both countries share the objective not only of defeating ISIS there, too, but also of stabilizing the country and maintaining its territorial integrity. After all, Tehran clearly played a role—and perhaps a decisive one—in ensuring the departure of Nouri al-Maliki as Iraqi prime minister and rallying the highly factionalized Shia leadership behind Haider al-Abadi—a result clearly supported by Washington as well. If Iran’s interests were truly “inimical” to Washington’s, Maliki would probably still be prime minister. No doubt, Iran is urging Abadi to retain the closest possible links to Tehran and to confine his outreach to the Sunni community to the minimum necessary to separate it from ISIS, while Washington would prefer a more wide-ranging power-sharing arrangement that would also substantially reduce Tehran’s influence in Baghdad. In that respect, the ultimate aims of the US and Iran in Iraq are different; but, at this critical moment, the overlap in their mutual interests appears far more significant.
Then there is the authors’ rather bizarre assertion about Iran’s role during and immediately after the US-led offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan, an assertion that contradicts the testimony of virtually everyone directly involved in the aftermath of the Taliban’s ouster in late 2001 and the creation of the new regime in Kabul:
[quote]“In Afghanistan, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the misapprehension was born that the United States needed Iran’s assistance to rehabilitate its war-torn charge, and this misbegotten notion has since migrated from crisis to crisis. The tactical assistance that Iran offered in Afghanistan in 2001 was largely motivated by its fear of being the next target of U.S. retribution.” [endquote]
This is a radically revisionist interpretation of those events for which the authors provide no supporting evidence whatsoever. In fact, it was quite clear even before the Taliban was ousted that Iraq—not Iran (as much as Ariel Sharon would have preferred)—was the next target, at least for those, including then-Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and then-VP Dick Cheney, not to mention Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who were by then dominating policy making. It was Rumsfeld, for example, who was telling aides on 9/11 itself that the attack offered an opportunity to take out Saddam, and it was Perle and a host of his fellow-neocons who were busy trying to tie Saddam to 9/11 and raising the specter of a nuclear-armed Iraq, a nightmarish vision quickly embraced by Cheney himself! While Tehran was no doubt made uncomfortable by the presence of US forces close to its eastern border, it would be very difficult for Iran’s leaders to seriously believe that they were “the next target” given all of the anti-Saddam hysteria that had been whipped up by the neocons back in Washington, especially when Iran’s good friend and informant, Ahmad Chalabi, was being promoted by the war party here as the presumptive leader of a newly “liberated” Iraq.
No, despite its concerns about the presence of US ground forces, Tehran’s cooperation with Washington in ousting the Taliban and constituting a successor government that could successfully resist the group’s return, respect the rights of the Shia community there, and stabilize the country appears to have been motivated entirely by the very rational calculation of Iran’s national interests, interests that coincided substantially with those of Washington. It was, of course, only when Iran found itself grouped with Saddam and North Korea in the “axis of evil” that anti-US hard-liners in the regime got the upper hand in the internal debate in Tehran, no doubt turbo-charging Khamenei’s pre-existing suspicions about Washington’s intentions and trustworthiness. By all accounts—from US, European, and Iranian officials directly involved in Afghanistan policy—the explicit hostility expressed by George W. Bush in his January, 2002, State of the Union speech marked a turning point in Iran’s willingness to cooperate with a US administration that had turned abruptly and seemingly gratuitously—not to say irrationally (given the extent of Iran’s cooperation in Afghanistan up to that point)—hostile.
Now let’s consider some of the other assertions made by the authors such as: The ebbs and flows of the war on terrorism should not be allowed to conceal the fact that the theocratic Iranian regime and its attempt to upend the regional order remains the most consequential long-term challenge in the Middle East.
Well, let’s see, we’ve been engaged in the “war on terrorism” now for 13 years and have been told—even by the Obama administration—that we’ll be battling IS alone well into the next presidency. And, in those 13 years, it seems that Washington’s biggest, bloodiest, and most expensive pre-occupation by far has been combating Sunni Muslim extremism—as manifested by al-Qaeda and its many affiliates, the Taliban, and Sunni insurgencies, of which the latest is the Islamic State—most of them inspired by the Wahhabi theology native to (when not promoted by) our “non-Islamist” ally, Saudi Arabia. (A lot of effort has also been devoted to working out a reasonable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which virtually every administration has called a highly consequential long-term challenge in the region, but apparently Ross, for obvious reasons, doesn’t want to bring that up in this context.) While curbing Iran’s nuclear program and weakening Iran’s closest allies in the region—most importantly, Syria and Hezbollah—have gained a lot of attention, it has not been so much in the context of the authors’ “war on terrorism.”
As for “upend[ing] the regional order,” Iran’s efforts have been miniscule compared to those of the Bush administration (in which Edelman served) when it invaded and occupied Iraq. And let’s not forget that it has been Saudi Arabia and the UAE that have led and financed the counter-revolution against the democratization movements of the Arab Spring across the region. Which raises the question, what kind of “order” do the authors believe the US should be defending? And how likely is any kind of “order” to be established if the US, as they recommend, undertakes “a systematic effort to isolate Iran in its immediate neighborhood” given its size, population, geostrategic importance, and its unquestioned influence in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as with Assad and Hezbollah? (Fareed Zakaria, who spent a lot of time with Rouhani in New York this week, makes this case quite persuasively in “The Enemy of Our Enemy” published in the Post’s print edition Friday.)
Here’s another statement—or neoconservative cliché—that deserves some serious scrutiny:
[quote] The Islamic Republic is not a normal nation-state seeking to realize its national interests but an ideological entity mired in manufactured conspiracies.[quote]
Compared to whom? Was the US a “normal nation-state” when its leadership invaded Iraq under the highly questionable, if not manufactured, pretext that Saddam represented an imminent threat to our national security due to his alleged support for al-Qaeda and possession of weapons of mass destruction (and then, post hoc, that we were trying to “upend the regional order” in favor of democracy and human rights)? Is Saudi Arabia a normal nation-state when it actively promotes and finances the spread of Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world and beyond and actively supports a bloody and highly repressive dictatorship in Egypt in order to extirpate the Muslim Brotherhood? Of course, this notion—that the Iran is more an ideology than a government—has been around since 1979 (and heavily promoted by Israel’s political leadership), but most serious Iran experts believe that, at the age of 35, the Islamic Republic has settled into middle age, pursuing its national interests as it defines them—and, above all, its survival—in a relatively rational and predictable way.
[quote] The United States and Iran stand at opposite ends of the spectrum of Middle East politics.[endquote]
Given the Rubik’s Cube of Middle Eastern politics at the moment, what does this mean? Even if you accept Ross’s frankly idiotic bipolarization of the region between “Islamists” (like the Muslim Brotherhood, IS, Assad, Hamas, Turkey, Qatar, and Iran) and “non-Islamists” (like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Gen. Sisi, the PLO, Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE), the spectrum is decidedly non-linear and thus challenges the notion of what constitutes “opposite ends.” The region is obviously multi-polar with many different actors whose interests are sometimes clearly at odds and sometimes clearly overlap. The failure to take that multi-polarity into account is what makes the analysis so crude and unhelpful, to say the least.
Yes, if you consider Syria the critical dividing line, then Iran, which has supported Assad, takes a position that is precisely contrary to Washington’s. But why should Syria serve as the critical reference point? If you take Bahrain, where Iran and Saudi Arabia are at opposite corners, it appears that Washington is somewhere in-between, though leaning increasingly toward Riyadh’s point of view, especially now that Manama has joined the US-led air campaign against IS in Syria. But if you take Iraq, as noted above, Washington and Tehran are closely if uncomfortably aligned, especially compared to, say, Saudi Arabia or IS.
If you take Israel—which appears central to the worldviews of Ross and Edelman—in particular, as your point of reference, then the notion makes a bit more sense, especially given Netanyahu’s avid courtship of the region’s Sunni-led states (minus Turkey and Qatar, at least for the moment) against Iran. But despite the strenuous efforts of the neocons, Netanyahu, and the Israel lobby to make them appear so, the fact is that Israel’s and US interests are not identical, including regarding Iran itself. Israel, after all, is doing virtually everything it can to sabotage the chances of Washington striking a nuclear agreement with Iran, while the Obama administration is trying very hard to reach one, in part because it believes strongly that its regional position will be much improved and because the alternative is potentially so destructive. Similarly, Israel believes that the perpetuation of the Sunni-Shia conflict across the region serves its interests, in part because it diverts the world’s attention from the Israel-Palestinian struggle. Washington, on the other hand, has made clear that the continuing sectarian conflict serves only to further destabilize the region, which is very much contrary to its interests. In that respect, Israel and the US are in very different camps.
In any event, the repetition of these hoary stereotypes of Iran disguised as expert analysis—at a moment when Washington’s need for Tehran’s (at least tacit) cooperation in both Iraq and Syria, not to mention Afghanistan, has become, as noted by Zakaria, so clear—helps illustrate the intellectual and analytical bankruptcy of these authors and their ideology.
]]>Last week epitomized the highs and lows of hoping for an improvement in US-Iran relations. A BBC report on Sept. 5 that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had approved Iranian cooperation with the US military in the fight against ISIS was met with near elation in many quarters. Some analysts (myself included) felt this announcement would clarify the strategic value of normalized US-Iran relations for the publics and policymakers of both countries. But after the ensuing Iranian denials that cooperation was in fact approved, the Americans went even further by denying even the possibility of formal cooperation. A Sept. 8 State Department briefing reiterated the exclusion of Iran from the broad 40-nation coalition announced by President Obama to combat ISIS, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s Sept. 12 assertion in Ankara that including Iran “would not be appropriate” because of its involvement in Syria and its alleged status as a “state sponsor of terror in various places” put the icing on the cake.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Iranian hardliners have taken heart from this very public snub. Even Marziah Afkham, the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, a stronghold of pragmatists who favors improved relations with the West, felt compelled toregister “serious doubts about [the coalition’s] seriousness to fight against the root and true reasons for terrorism.” She noted without elaboration that “[s]ome of the countries in the coalition are among the financial and military supporters of terrorists in Iraq and Syria.”
Unlike US policymakers, Iranian statesmen—and the wider public—have a long memory. As the recent anniversary of Sept. 11 reminds us to “never forget,” we can do little but remember the lives lost and contemplate how the United States was drawn into a global conflict with religious extremists 13 years ago. For Iranians, however, the fateful date came four years before.
The Taliban reached global prominence in 1998, a year when its fighters launched a devastating offensive in northern Afghanistan. Much as the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS) last month swept across northern Iraq, forcing the Kurdish Peshmerga to retreat to within 40kms of Erbil, the better-armed and better-organized Taliban overcame all resistance by the Iran and Uzbekistani-backed coalition there during that summer. On Aug 8, it captured Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan’s fourth largest city, located just 100km from the border with Uzbekistan. Overwhelming local militias, Taliban troops and their allies massacred an estimated 2,000 Hazara civilians in what Human Rights Watch called “one of the worst atrocities of Afghanistan’s long civil war.” In addition, they stormed the Iranian consulate, killing a journalist and ten members of the diplomatic mission, despite assurances from the government of Pakistan, a chief sponsor of the Taliban at the time, that diplomats would not be targeted.
The diplomats’ murder—as well as the massacre of civilians—outraged both the Iranian regime and the broader public. Foreign Ministry officials mourned their fallen colleagues, whom they celebrated as martyrs akin to those who died ”defending the borders of this great country during eight years of holy defense” during Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq. An official statement broadcast on Iranian state television asserted Iran’s ”right to defend the security of its citizens” and warned that “the consequences of the Taliban action is on the shoulders of the Taliban and their supporters.”
For Iran, there was no question that the Taliban enjoyed the support of two states: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Without significant financial support from Saudi sources and the help of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Taliban would not have been able to stage such a brutal offensive. While it had taken Kabul two years before, the conquest of Mazar-e Sharif consolidated the Taliban’s position as the ruler of virtually all of Afghanistan, a status that no doubt contributed to its increasingly close cooperation with al-Qaeda.
Iran responded by building up its forces along the Afghan border and conducting major military exercises. But the Islamic Republic felt unable to commit to a costly and unpredictable war in Afghanistan unilaterally. It was only three years later, with 9/11, that the US came to realize the full nature of the threat posed by al-Qaeda and its Taliban collaborators.
Suddenly, Iran and the United States had a common enemy. As Washington mulled its strategy to rout the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, officials in Tehran reached out to offer strategic support. Years of experience in Afghanistan had given the Iranians deep insight into how the Taliban operated in the ethnically and geographically complex nation.
The secret discussions that occurred between American and Iranian officials in the weeks that followed were the highest-level talks held between the two countries since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis. Many analysts believed that the new-found alignment of strategic interests, combined with President Mohammad Khatami’s reformist policies and conciliatory tone, would spur the US and Iran to normalize relations and actively cooperate against the terrorist threat.
In a grave blunder, however, neoconservatives and other hawks in the Bush administration opposed collaboration with Iran, thus depriving coalition forces of a valuable ally. Two months later, in a triumph of politics over pragmatism, Bush gratuitously lumped Iran together with Iraq and North Korea in his infamous “axis of evil,” a move that greatly strengthened hard-line forces in Tehran who had long argued that Washington simply could not be trusted.
It is striking how this situation mirrors that faced by the US and Iran today as both countries face the threat posed by ISIS. The Rouhani administration has opened the door to reconciliation, and the rise of reinvigorated Sunni extremism in the region gives Washington and Tehran a common enemy. Indeed, Iran has sent arms and advisers to Iraq to help the Peshmerga and Iraqi forces roll back ISIS’s recent advances.
Nonetheless, the US remains unwilling to include Iran in its coalition efforts. This position has given hardliners in Iran yet another opportunity to instill doubts about Washington’s sincerity and trustworthiness. Unsurprisingly, the events of 1998 and 2001 weigh heavily on Iran’s collective memory. Indeed, the conservative website Javan Online last week recalled “Iran’s bitter experience of cooperation with the US in Afghanistan,” citing it as reason to dismiss cooperation with Washington against ISIS. The conservative refrain that members of the coalition are “among financial and military supporters of terrorists” is also rooted in the historical memory of the 1998 offensive. Iran also continues to view Saudi Arabia as a key source both of funding for ISIS and other radical Sunni groups and of their intolerant and violent ideology, just as it was for the Taliban.
That Riyadh and its Gulf allies should be treated by Washington as central partners in the anti-ISIS coalition, while Tehran is excluded from any formal participation is particularly galling to Iranians who have suffered the brunt of US sanctions. Not only is this, in their view, illogical. To them, it also suggests that Washington is simply unable to learn from its past mistakes.
–Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is a founding partner of the 1st Europe-Iran Forum, a conference focused on commercial opportunities in Iran to be held in London in October. He has conducted extensive research on Iranian political economy and social history.
Photo: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif shakes hands with US Secretary of State John Kerr on July 14, 2014 in Vienna.
]]>by Jim Lobe
Just as this week marks the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as noted Wednesday by Amb. Hunter, it also marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, the “Great War” that, among other things, began the long (and often bloody) process of dismantling the imperial [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Just as this week marks the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as noted Wednesday by Amb. Hunter, it also marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, the “Great War” that, among other things, began the long (and often bloody) process of dismantling the imperial system that had dominated the pre-war international system. The war had many causes, but historians have generally ranked excessive nationalism — and the militarism that went along with it — pretty high on the list. While reactionary and conservative forces in each country were clearly bullish on the war from the outset, the speed and enthusiasm with which liberals and socialists throughout Europe rallied to the cause, in spite of the universalist principles that they had long espoused, offered testimony to the extraordinary magnetism of the nationalist impulse.
As I have argued previously, most neoconservatives, despite their mainly opportunistic avowals of democracy and universal rights, are exceedingly nationalistic, not to say downright chauvinist, with regard both to the United States — whose moral “exceptionalism” they believe should exempt it from the constraints of international institutions (like the UN) and international law — and to Israel, which they routinely depict as a lonely island of “democracy” and “civilization” surrounded by a raging sea of barbarism and extremism, struggling against all odds simply to survive. Virtually any means the latter’s leaders deem necessary, including violations of the laws of war as documented by independent human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (as we have seen over the past several weeks in the third Israeli war in Gaza in six years), to defeat its enemies are not only defensible, but, in the words of neocon princeling Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel, “just,” as well.
Coinciding with the Great War’s centenary, the expression of this kind of militaristic nationalism — and the mantras about “civilization” versus the ”barbarism” or “terror” of the enemy — vividly recalls the rhetoric used by both the western imperialist powers whenever they encountered violent resistance by the “natives” as they conquered most of what is now referred to as the “Global South” from the “Age of Discovery” onwards, as well as the propaganda offices of the main combatants during the war itself (just check out the war posters) would seem potentially embarrassing to the core neocon messages about the exceptional nature of the United States and Israel.
And thus it was particularly notable when, in the very first issue of the Weekly Standard of 2014, Kristol carried out what might be called a pre-emptive strike against what he thought might prove to be a major theme — the futility and stupidity of nationalism and war — in this year’s commemoration of the Great War. In the lead editorial entitled “Pro Patria,” he rued the impact of the war on the West’s morale, blaming it for what he called “civilizational decline” and quoting with approval the ode by Horace, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”), which had been bitterly denounced in a famous poem by Wilfred Owen, a British soldier-poet, as an “old lie.” Kristol warned:
This year, a century later, the commemorations of 1914 will tend to take that [Owen’s] rejection of piety and patriotism for granted. Or could this year mark a moment of questioning, even of reversal?
Today, after all, we see the full consequences of that rejection in a way Owen and his contemporaries could not. Can’t we acknowledge the meaning, recognize the power, and learn the lessons of 1914 without succumbing to an apparently inexorable gravitational pull toward a posture of ironic passivity or fatalistic regret in the face of civilizational decline. No sensitive person can fail to be moved by Owen’s powerful lament, and no intelligent person can ignore his chastening rebuke. But perhaps a century of increasingly unthinking bitter disgust with our heritage is enough.
Kristol goes on to contrast Owen’s denunciation of war and nationalism to the concluding stanza of the “Star-Spangled Banner” penned 200 years ago by Francis Scott Key in celebration of the Battle of Fort McHenry — “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just/ And this be our motto: “In God is our trust” — and asks:
A century after World War I, two centuries after Fort McHenry, do we dare take our bearings not from Owen’s bitter despair but from Francis Scott Key’s bold hope?
The essay, of course, raises not a few questions about what exactly Kristol — the quintessential chicken hawk – has in mind. No doubt he sees the “full consequences” of Owen’s attitude as including the reigning anti-war sentiment that facilitated the rise of Fascism and German Nazism in Europe in the 1930s, which, in turn, eventually resulted in an even greater war. But the “full consequences” also included the beginning of the end of European imperialism — a very oppressive system for the vast majority of the world’s population. Of course, true to his neoconservative worldview — and the fact that the State of Israel was made possible by that same system (the Balfour Declaration and all that) — Kristol clearly sees the decline of western imperialism (“civilizational decline”) as a great tragedy.
Similarly, Kristol’s celebration of the theo-nationalist spirit expressed in what became the US national anthem as an unreservedly healthy tonic for today’s popular disillusionment with wars, especially those in Afghanistan and Iraq, and over Libya, all of which he so ardently championed, is subject to different understandings. While he no doubt sees Key’s exhortation to “conquer” as applying solely today to the US, Israel, and “the West” more generally, there is no reason to think that the sentiment expressed therein is not shared by Palestinians, including Hamas militants, Arab nationalists, or, frankly, any jihadis who claim that God, or Allah, and justice are on their side. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria [and deus] mori” was not only a Roman proverb frequently invoked by denizens of the British Empire many centuries later; it’s been an inspiration to ardent nationalists and believers of all nations, creeds and religious persuasions, especially those, one might observe, who face tremendous odds in overcoming a far more powerful foreign oppressor. Indeed, is Horace’s (and Kristol’s) affirmation, conceptually at least, so very different from that line in the Islamic Resistance Movement’s (a/k/a Hamas) charter that asserts: “Death for the sake of Allah is its most coveted desire,” as was noted most disapprovingly just this week by Kristol’s fellow-Likudist, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, in one of a flood of neocon and Israeli efforts to justify Israel’s hugely destructive campaign in Gaza?
For those who are more interested in Kristol’s notions of nationalism and its importance, it’s worth noting that he will be offering an intensive course entitled “The Case for Nationalism” on the subject from Dec. 8-12 for just $3,000 for non-Israelis. The course, which is co-sponsored by the Hertog Foundation — Roger Hertog is a board member of both the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Commentary magazine, among other neoconservative associations — and the Tikvah Fund, whose faculty and speakers constitute a veritable who’s who of the Jewish neoconservative world, will take place at (and given his nostalgia for the British Empire, Kristol will love this) King George Street 44 in (West) Jerusalem.
Here’s the rather bewildering, not to mention historically and intellectually dubious (but rhetorically very Straussian), course description, which I necessarily quote at length:
Led by Dr. William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and one of the leading public intellectuals in America, this institute will examine the political and moral questions surrounding nationalism and nation-states. The course will begin by examining the case for and against nationalism, drawing upon some of the major works of modern political theory. It will then look in detail at three “regimes”—Europe, America, and modern Israel—drawing upon a mix of classic texts, speeches, and case studies.
In Europe, we see the dominant moral and political idea of our age—“human rights”—in its most advanced form. All persons everywhere are entitled to equal dignity and equal protections. The most dangerous threats to human rights—terror and empire, religious extremism, natural catastrophe, market dysfunction—all transcend national borders. Human rights cannot be secured by nations, and excessive national pride is a threat to the new ideal of the free, sovereign, cosmopolitan individual. The nation must be overcome and replaced by a centralized governing body that is large enough to protect global citizens from global threats.
In America, we see the ideals of universal liberty and natural rights combined with a belief in the exceptional character and special responsibilities of the American nation. Does American power serve the interests of world order? Do Americans believe in their own exceptionalism, or do they seek to become a nation among the nations?
The question of nationalism takes on special significance for citizens of Israel, the world’s only Jewish State. Zionism is a form of nationalism, and the founding of Israel represents the culmination of ancient longings for the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland. But it was also founded in partial response to World War II and the Shoah it perpetrated on European Jewry. If the intellectual architects of the European Union believe that the national form causes violence and stands in the way of a more harmonious world, the intellectual architects of the State of Israel believed the opposite—that only a state dedicated to the protection of the Jewish people will ensure their welfare and prosperity.
Taken together, these urgent questions invite us to think about the deepest meaning and true character of political life, returning us yet again to the great texts and thinkers who illuminated the problems of politics with greatest clarity and force.
Of course, the belief by the architects of the European Union that nationalism can contribute to violence and “stands in the way of a more harmonious world” is based in large part on the lessons drawn from both the Great War and its successor. And doesn’t a state “dedicated to the protection” of one people foster violence and stand in the way of a more harmonious world if that “protection” translates into actively defeating the legitimate national aspirations of another people, denying their own self-determination, and occupying them militarily and colonizing their territory in violation of international law? Isn’t that the kind of question we should be pondering in this centenary year?
If you can’t get to the seminar, Kristol’s latest editorial offers what I suppose is his much-abbreviated lesson in the form of an extended quotation by Douglas Murray, the associate director of the London-based Henry Jackson Society of which Kristol, among many other prominent US neoconservatives, is an “International Patron:”
Israel is surrounded by enemies, as we have been for much of our history. But today we like to think that enemies are a thing of the past. There are no enemies, just phobias we haven’t been cured of yet.
A gap may well be emerging. But not because Israel has drifted away from the West. Rather because today in much of the West, as we bask in the afterglow of our achievements—eager to enjoy our rights, but unwilling to defend them—it is the West that is, slowly but surely, drifting away from itself.
Today Israel is also distinguished by a deep sense of its values and ethics as well as a profound awareness of their source—things we also used to have. Deep questions of survival, the tragedy and triumph of the past, present and future remain the stuff of every Israeli house I have ever been to. . . .
[I]t is Israel that remains the truly western country. It is Israel which takes its history seriously, thinks deeply about where it is going and what it exists for. It is Israel which takes western values seriously and fights for the survival of those values. . . . [I]t is Israel that is still truly a western country. Far more than many parts of western Europe now are.
Wow. Today’s Israel apparently would have felt right at home in August 1914.
Photo: Willy Werner’s depiction of “Flanders Fields.” Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library/Canadian Press
]]>“Speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That pretty much sums up the advice provided by a steady stream of withering critics of President Obama’s foreign policy.
Spurred by off-the-cuff remarks the president made at a news conference in the Philippines last April, the elite blogosphere lit up across the spectrum [...]]]>
“Speak loudly and carry a small stick.” That pretty much sums up the advice provided by a steady stream of withering critics of President Obama’s foreign policy.
Spurred by off-the-cuff remarks the president made at a news conference in the Philippines last April, the elite blogosphere lit up across the spectrum with attacks on Obama’s “small ball” diplomacy. Apparently his detractors think that ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while avoiding costly new military entanglements, preventing terrorist attacks on American soil, ratifying a strategic arms limitation treaty with Russia, removing chemical weapons from Syria, freezing Iran’s nuclear program, closing secret detention facilities, and mounting a humanitarian response to Haiti’s massive earthquake don’t count for much.
Amid all the puffery, what few seem to recognize is how closely Obama’s foreign policy hews to what Stephen Walt describes as the realist philosophy. The president has refrained not only from “naïve idealism” but also from “threat-mongering and the misguided military engagements that flow from both tendencies.” An approach that “relies on the United States deploying every possible economic and institutional lever before resorting to armed force,” as the Washington Post characterized the Obama doctrine, is a sign of wisdom, not of weakness.
In defending his steady, pragmatic approach to the complex challenges around the world, Obama lashed out against those who have failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq war. “Frankly,” he said, “most of the foreign policy commentators that have questioned our policies would go headlong into a bunch of military adventures that the American people had no interest in participating in and would not advance our core security interests.”
No Boots on Ground
Neither the American public, Congress, nor most of Obama’s hawkish critics actually have the stomach for “boots on the ground,” be it in Syria, Ukraine, or anywhere else that red lines have been crossed, rights trampled, and lives destroyed. After over a decade of war that left the U.S. economy in tatters, such an approach would not be politically sustainable. Recent polling data shows that nearly half of Americans want the United States to reduce its role in global affairs, and a majority say that Washington should “mind its own business” internationally.
True, the “alternatives” proposed by right-wing critics of Obama’s foreign policy often fall short of outright intervention overseas. They recommend arming opposition forces, conducting provocative military exercises, pre-positioning military equipment, ratcheting up sanctions, and taking firm rhetorical stances. But while they caution against drawing “red lines,” their prescriptions amount to throwing a few Molotov cocktails and then retreating to the safety of their armchairs.
Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) call for supplying the Ukrainians with anti-armor and anti-aircraft systems, shifting military assets eastward, and urgently expanding NATO. Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asserts that “radios, body armor, night-vision goggles and such could well alter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculus.” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer would have us respond to Russia by creating “the possibility of a bloody and prolonged Ukrainian resistance to infiltration or invasion.”
What President Obama understands is that sending weapons to ill-equipped and poorly trained forces is highly unlikely to deter far more capable adversaries or to change the eventual outcome. On the other hand, it is quite likely to prolong the suffering of civilians, increase the risk of weapons ending up in the wrong hands, and draw us ever closer to direct military confrontation. And once we intervene, we have a responsibility to think about not just “the day after,” but the months and years and decades after.
The Lessons of Libya
This, in fact, is precisely the lesson we learned in Libya, where factional fighting has intensified over the last weeks. As the Washington Post editorialized, “The Obama administration and its NATO allies bear responsibility for this mess because, having intervened to help rebels overthrow Gaddafi, they then swiftly exited without making a serious effort to help Libyans establish security and build a new political order.” Post-conflict recovery requires significant commitments that often include boots on the ground. For instance, nearly 15 years after the end of the conflict, NATO retains 5,000 troops to keep the peace in Kosovo.
Libya has been a cautionary lesson for the Obama administration: political order is rarely established on the battlefield. Leaving military action, direct or indirect, as a last resort is not an indication of indecisiveness or lack of resolve. It’s an acknowledgement that the use of force has a poor record of creating lasting stability at an acceptable cost. And it’s a refusal to take on long-term financial commitments without informed public consent.
Owning the Legacy
Ultimately, however, Obama’s foreign policy legacy will not be secured unless he addresses head-on the belief that we have the right, the responsibility, and the power to achieve our objectives by threats, intimidation, and coercion. Many of the greatest challenges to our own national, economic, and human security — climate change, pandemic disease, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the desperation of over a billion people living in extreme poverty — transcend borders and defy military solutions.
It’s time to give up on the notion that we can or should control the world. Instead we should focus on building a more effective and constructive model for engaging with it. Given a better articulation and the development of new diplomatic tools, this could be the enduring value of the Obama doctrine.
*Diana Ohlbaum is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former senior professional staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
This article was first published by Foreign Policy in Focus and was reprinted here with permission.
]]>by Thomas W. Lippman
It was like a movie in which different characters see the same events in completely different ways.
At one of those Washington think-tank panel discussions the other day, senior U.S. national security and military officials insisted that the American commitment to security and stability in the [...]]]>
by Thomas W. Lippman
It was like a movie in which different characters see the same events in completely different ways.
At one of those Washington think-tank panel discussions the other day, senior U.S. national security and military officials insisted that the American commitment to security and stability in the Persian Gulf is iron-clad and will not change. The U.S Navy’s Fifth Fleet and the 35,000 soldiers and sailors in the region are staying, they said, and Iran will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons. They reminded the audience that President Barack Obama, his secretaries of state and defense, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told all this to Gulf Arab leaders over and over, most recently during the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia in March.
“We are present in a major and significant way,” one senior Pentagon official said at this gathering, organized by the Atlantic Council. “We are not leaving and we are not inattentive.”
The next morning, different panelists, assembled by the Middle East Policy Council, acknowledged that the message had been delivered unequivocally and often, and agreed that Obama and the others were no doubt sincere. Unfortunately, they said, Gulf Arab leaders don’t believe it.
“They think we don’t have the will to uphold our principles,” said Mark T. Kimmitt, a former senior official of both the State and Defense departments. “It’s not about our strength on the ground. It’s about our willingness to use it.” Given the record of the past few years, he said, “There’s not a lot of reason for the Gulf Arabs to be happy.”
“There are deep structural sources of anxiety” about the United States among leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, said Colin Kahl, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in Obama’s first term. First among these, he said, is “the widespread perception that the United States is simply politically exhausted” after more than a decade of war and has no appetite for further involvement. Witnessing the U.S. troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, “They wonder when the U.S. will begin to draw down in the Gulf.” The GCC leaders were taken aback, he said, by the strong popular opposition among Americans to military intervention in Syria, and drew their own conclusions.
Michael Gfoeller, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia, said the Saudis and others have been disconcerted by the way the United States and its partners have conducted nuclear negotiations with Iran without input from them. In their view, he said, Washington is proceeding “with almost no input from us and yet we are going to be the front line of what we think is going to be a nuclear armed Iran…They think that when we don’t consult with them it’s a sign that we don’t take their national security seriously.”
These panelists said it was useful that President Obama went to see King Abdullah and other senior princes in Riyadh, but not sufficient to overcome the doubts that have been built up about U.S. staying power. Ford Fraker, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that a week ago he asked Prince Muqrin, now second in line to the Saudi throne, how he assessed the Obama-Abdullah meeting. Muqrin, who speaks fluent English, “looked at me and said, ‘We did have the opportunity to clarify a number of important issues,’ and that’s all he said,” Fraker reported.
The two forums amounted to a fascinating but also baffling conversation about a topic that has been a focus of analysis in Washington and the Gulf states for months. The United States and its allies in the region have compelling interests in common — combating al-Qaeda and its affiliates, seeking a solution in Syria, ensuring the free flow of oil through the Gulf, stabilizing Yemen and Iraq, and countering what they see as the malign activities of Iran in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Bahrain. The Gulf states buy American weapons, depend on the United States for military training and assistance with cyber-security issues, and share intelligence about terrorist financing. And these relationships have been in place for many years. Why, then, have the Gulf leaders, and particularly the Saudis, been so vocally unhappy about U.S. policy?
The first answer participants gave was the nuclear negotiations with Iran, from which they are excluded. In the view especially of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, panelists said, these negotiations are dangerous either way: if they fail, nothing will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but if they succeed, sanctions will be lifted, Iranian oil exports will surge, and Iran will be free to pursue its quest for regional hegemony. Moreover, in the Gulf view, if the negotiations succeed, the United States will have another incentive to reduce its military commitments in the Gulf.
Gulf Arab leaders, panelists said, are well aware of the constraints that are curtailing Pentagon spending. Cuts will have to be made somewhere, and they see their region as a target, especially if the United States reaches some accommodation with Iran.
The Gulf leaders were shocked by the alacrity with which Washington turned its back on Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak after demonstrations against him broke out in 2011. They think “Maybe the United States won’t be a reliable ally for them,” Kahl said. These doubts have been stoked, he and other panelists said, by all the talk about growing U.S. oil output in the fracking boom, and the possibility that the United States will feel itself safely insulated from developments in the Gulf.
Despite assurances from Washington to the contrary, panelists said, the Saudis and Emiratis believe that the United States is focused exclusively on the nuclear issue in its negotiations with Iran, ignoring other troubling aspects of Iranian policy. Kahl said it’s actually a good idea to confine the current negotiations to the nuclear issue because Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani does not control the other Iranian activities that so trouble its neighbors. Those matters are under the jurisdiction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Kahl said, and it would be counterproductive to bring the IRGC into the nuclear discussions.
In a separate commentary published during the same week as the panel discussions, Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that, “One Saudi businessman complained to me recently that there was no discernible U.S. global strategy, and that its absence makes it impossible for Saudi Arabia to construct any strategy at all. The quandary is common among many U.S. allies, and it raises fundamental questions about U.S. commitments abroad. Is there anything for which U.S. allies can rely on the United States, and under what circumstances might it change? Equally confounding, how can America’s friends make themselves vital to the United States if the United States has no clear understanding and ordering of its own interests?”
In some ways, however, as several of the panelists noted, it is not just the United States that seems to be groping for an effective regional strategy. The six monarchies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council have deep policy differences among themselves, about Iran, about Syria, and about the dangers of religious extremism. Oman, for example, hosted the secret diplomacy that led to the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and is reportedly planning a $1 billion natural gas pipeline link to the Islamic Republic. And on Saturday, the Washington Post reported that the United States has identified Kuwait as the major source of funding for jihadist groups fighting in Syria — groups that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are trying to defeat. If Alterman’s Saudi friend is having difficulty discerning a comprehensive U.S. strategy in the region, perhaps it’s not surprising.
Several of the panelists said that the key to assuaging the anxiety among GCC leaders is more and closer consultation, more often. It’s well and good for the president and cabinet members and officers from the U.S. Central Command to go to the region from time to time, they said, but the Gulf leaders want to see the deputy assistant secretaries and other policy worker bees out there more often. To some extent they made the Gulf leaders sound like spoiled children demanding mommy’s full attention right this minute.
Photo: President Barack Obama meets with King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during a bilateral meeting at Rawdat Khuraim in Saudi Arabia, March 28, 2014. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
]]>by James A. Russell
The sight of Afghans lining up in droves on April 5 to cast their ballots braving threats of violence offers us some heartening images in a world that seems awash in bad news with Russia’s destructive behavior, continued anarchy and death in Syria, and other parts of the [...]]]>
by James A. Russell
The sight of Afghans lining up in droves on April 5 to cast their ballots braving threats of violence offers us some heartening images in a world that seems awash in bad news with Russia’s destructive behavior, continued anarchy and death in Syria, and other parts of the world teetering dangerously on the precipice between peace and war.
The pictures coming out of Afghanistan may partially salve the wounds of those that bore the brunt — and paid for — the 13-year war waged by the West against the Taliban. Those estimated 7 million Afghans that lined up to vote clearly deserve the sympathy, admiration, and respect of the international community.
Curiously, however, the images of those brave Afghans made me think of a famous quote attributed to Napoleon at some point in the early 19th century, in which he is said to have pointedly asked: “What’s the war about?”
We may draw comfort from the storyline being reported on the Afghan elections, but is that what the war was about?
The understandably favorable press coverage of the Afghan elections in some ways diverts our attention from the more troubling and largely unexamined aspects of America’s decade-plus of war in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost more than a trillion dollars, led to over a million refugees, and thousands dead and maimed civilians and soldiers.
How is it that what started out as a straightforward, punitive expedition to go after the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks became the most ambitious experiment in social and political engineering and the longest war in American history? When did we decide to do this, exactly? Did we think about the potential costs of such an ambitious effort and, perhaps most important, did we ever ask ourselves whether the stakes in Afghanistan justified the magnitude of the effort?
To be sure, it is not unknown for policy goals in wars to become inflated and/or changed so fundamentally as to bear little relationship to the initial reasons for the war. What started out in August 1914 as a war of Serbian independence gradually morphed its way into a war to contain Germany and then became the war to end all wars. In Vietnam, what began as war against communism in southeast Asia evolved into yet another grand experiment in social engineering that then became joined at the hip with the idea of “peace with honor,” which needlessly extended the war’s carnage.
More recently, the US invasion of Iraq must be considered a poster board of this phenomenon, in which we cycled through at least a dozen post-invasion war objectives before settling on another grand and misguided social engineering project.
A disturbing feature of the Afghan and Iraq wars was that the enemy had little to do with the inflation of our policy goals over the course of our involvement. They resisted our presence simply because we were occupying their countries. In both of those wars, the enemy imposed no new or distinctive political requirements on us that forced us to inflate our policy goals beyond all recognition. The undeniable truth is that we imposed these inflated goals upon ourselves and did so with little apparent deliberation, debate, or thought.
How did this happen? Seeking an answer is certainly worthy of debate and discussion — even if we are forced to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves. It’s hard not to point a finger at what has become the feckless nature of American politics, today dominated by rigid ideology on the right, money, and special interests, all of which have led to the disintegration of common sense across party lines in foreign and domestic policy.
This fractured domestic political landscape in some ways paralleled the broken decision-making process that governed strategy and foreign policy after 9/11, which produced decisions with catastrophic consequences to American interests and objectives around the world. In this environment, soldiers were sent off to war for made up reasons by ideologues that were never challenged in a democracy that is based on a system of checks and balances. We lacked political and military leaders and a public that paid close attention while demanding no answers to Napoleon’s timeless question.
As for the Afghan elections — we should all be glad that Afghans are voting, but we should be under no illusions that a successful election means that Afghanistan will develop into a pluralistic political system that solves internal differences peacefully at the ballot box. We can only hope that’s what will happen in a process that may take generations to unfold.
Perhaps more significantly, it is manifestly unclear whether any government in Afghanistan can survive given the malign intentions of Pakistan, which has aided and abetted the Taliban and other insurgent groups with arms, money, training and a safe haven from which to plan their attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan shows no inclination to abandon its plans to destabilize the country despite America’s best efforts to buy it off with billions of dollars over the course of the war.
These are uncertainties that cloud Afghanistan’s future — whatever the outcome of the apparently successful elections. Our inability to address and answer Napoleon’s pointed question about the war in Afghanistan says more about us than those brave Afghans casting their votes for a better future, although we could surely use a little more of their courage in our own democracy.
Photo: Voters line up at a polling station on Jalalabad Road, Kabul city, on April 5, 2014. Credit: Casey Garret Johnson
]]>by Derek Davison
The CIA and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) have been embroiled for several weeks in a dispute over the declassification of a sweeping Senate report, the product of an investigation into the George W. Bush-era CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” program. The SSCI’s chair, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), has accused the CIA of [...]]]>
by Derek Davison
The CIA and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) have been embroiled for several weeks in a dispute over the declassification of a sweeping Senate report, the product of an investigation into the George W. Bush-era CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” program. The SSCI’s chair, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), has accused the CIA of removing documents related to the investigation from the committee’s computers, and of attempting to intimidate committee staffers by requesting a Justice Department review into how the committee was able to obtain an internal CIA review of the program. Now, as the White House and CIA review the SSCI report for declassification, its major findings have been leaked to the public, and they reveal that the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques, and the conditions under which it held its detainees, were “brutal and far worse than the agency communicated to policymakers.”
While the public still does not know what the committee’s report says (the committee voted 11-3 on April 3 to declassify its executive summary and conclusions, but the CIA and White House must conduct a final review before it can be released), members of the committee have talked openly about its findings. Senator John McCain said that the report “confirms…that the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners is not only wrong in principle and a stain on our country’s conscience, but also an ineffective and unreliable means of gathering intelligence.” Defenders of the program, like Fox News contributor Liz Cheney, argue that it produced important intelligence that helped the United States to thwart terrorist plots and to degrade Al-Qaeda’s capacity to sponsor further attacks, but what we know of the findings of the SSCI report contradicts that argument. Not that it should matter; any debate over the enhanced interrogation program must, as Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights has argued, reckon the morality of torture, not its effectiveness.
It is torture that we’re talking about, euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation” aside. In a remarkable editorial in the April 11 Washington Post, former contract interrogator Eric Fair described what he saw and did during his time in Iraq:
In April 2004 I was stationed at a detention facility in Fallujah. Inside the detention facility was an office. Inside the office was a small chair made of plywood and two-by-fours. The chair was two feet tall. The rear legs were taller than the front legs. The seat and chair back leaned forward. Plastic zip ties were used to force a detainee into a crouched position from which he could not recover. It caused muscle failure of the quads, hamstrings and calves. It was torture.
Fair concludes that the “stain” of the torture program demands a full accounting, for the sake of the nation as well as those who participated in the program directly.
History tells us that we should not be surprised by the Obama administration’s reluctance to fully investigate allegations of wrongdoing by its predecessor. Barack Obama made it very clear, even before he took office, that he preferred to “look forward as opposed to looking backward” when it came to the subject of investigating potential Bush administration crimes, and he has adhered to that position over the past five-plus years.
Obama is not the first president to turn a blind eye to possible transgressions by a former administration. The obvious example of this phenomenon was Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon for any crimes related to the Watergate scandal, in 1974. But Ford had been Nixon’s Vice-President, making his act somewhat understandable. Bill Clinton’s decision not to investigate alleged crimes that took place under the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations was, as Robert Parry notes, motivated by the same desire to focus on advancing his own agenda, to “look forward as opposed to looking backward,” which Obama intimated as president-elect.
While it may behoove a particular administration to avoid the appearance of vindictiveness toward previous administrations, the decision not to investigate something as pernicious as the officially sanctioned torture of prisoners sacrifices the US’ credibility in the long run. It should not go unnoticed, for example, that while the US Ambassador to Kosovo is urging that nation to conduct a tribunal over the issue of organ trafficking by Kosovar Albanian militias in order to “build up its international credibility,” two branches of the US government are openly at odds over whether to even publicly acknowledge the past abuses of our “interrogation” program. It probably doesn’t go unnoticed that while the US refuses to reckon with its abuse of detainees, it is also refusing to issue a visa to Iran’s newly appointed UN Ambassador on the grounds that he was a background participant in the 1979 takeover of the US embassy in Tehran (he’s now part of Iran’s “reformist” camp). If the US can’t honestly reflect on its own past, how does it have the standing to demand the same of other nations?
The CIA’s resistance to a candid assessment of its torture program, even under an administration that firmly and officially disavowed that program upon taking office, speaks to an overall unwillingness to face accountability for any excesses wrought by the US’ ongoing “War on Terror.” While the Senate has investigated the failures in pre-war intelligence that led to the Iraq War, there has been no consequence to anyone involved in those failures. It is safe to say that there will be no consequences for anyone involved in the torture program as well, given the Obama administration’s deference to CIA efforts to stonewall even the release of a report detailing what actually took place.
It is impossible to imagine, then, that any future administration will have any interest in reckoning with other morally and legally questionable national security policies of this period, like the use of drones or the enlargement of the surveillance state. When it comes to the “War on Terror,” the rule seems to be “what’s past is past.”
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