By James Russell
As suggested most recently by Stephen Walt, a regrettable and recurring theme of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy in the Gulf and the Middle East over the last four years has been the lack of any sense of strategic priorities or objectives in the region. What lies [...]]]>
By James Russell
As suggested most recently by Stephen Walt, a regrettable and recurring theme of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy in the Gulf and the Middle East over the last four years has been the lack of any sense of strategic priorities or objectives in the region. What lies ahead for the president’s second term?
I wish I thought that the administration had (gasp!) actually examined the possibility of containment (remember the strategy that won the 50-year Cold War?) as a viable strategy both to convince Iran not to build its own nuclear weapon and/or deal with the Islamic Republic if it does cross the nuclear threshold.
But “containment” has now become a watchword for those concerned about the political correctness surrounding the terminology we are supposed to use to discuss strategy and policy options to achieve related objectives. Actual strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski was himself loathe to even mention containment during a recent speech about Iran because it’s becoming such a loaded political term.
The unfortunate truth is that this country can’t have any kind of real and informed opinion about whether to go to war with Iran until it decides on its strategic objectives and is prepared to subject its strategy to open and transparent debate in the marketplace of ideas. There was once a day when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee actually served this purpose. Imagine that!
Instead, we are today left with the Israeli lobby and its acolytes proclaiming a coming day of doom if Iran gets the bomb and the marginalization of commonsensical arguments from people like Walt and Paul Pillar who are asking the basic questions about strategic objectives that should be answered before the United States decides to go to war with Iran.
And, we are left with the Iraq war model in which attempts are simply made to present a case that war is somehow inevitable. Even more disturbingly, we are left with a legislative branch that seems mindlessly bent on pushing the country down the path to war, step by step, with its ever-tightening noose of sanctions that only increase the chances of war and Iran deciding that it has no choice but to build its own bomb.
In this void of strategic thinking, the Obama Administration seems to trundle along managing the inbox in a haphazard and unpredictable way.
Syria burns; the Israelis tell the US to get stuffed once more while fully ready to jam a JDAM down the throat of anyone that sneezes in their direction; Egypt could be descending into a dictatorship; Bahrain and the Gulf States teeter; Iraq falls into Iranian orbit — and that’s just the beginning.
But what is the Administration really worrying about, according to the press? Who exactly makes it onto the drone strike joint prioritized effects list (those to be assassinated). If ever there was a tactical problem in searching for a strategy, it is this issue — strategy turned on its head. How the president found himself picking out and/or participating in the monthly target list meetings (reminiscent of President Johnson in the 1960s) is frankly mind-blowing, but says a lot about the lack of strategic direction for a country that is still the leader of the free world.
How do we explain this lack of direction? It’s easy to blame advisers on the National Security Council who are not strategists and the fact that we are now “between” new cabinet secretaries. It’s easy to blame our regional brain lock by the Israeli lobby. It’s easy to blame a disinterested public and their elected representatives. All of these have in some way contributed to the current state of affairs in which a straightforward and commonsensical argument by a Stephen Walt vanishes into the proverbial wind. This is all true — except that it’s been a hallmark of the last four years. The US has essentially “made it up” as it went along.
I wish I could say that I thought the next four years would be different, and I fear for the future and the prospect of more ill-advised wars started for spurious and stupid reasons that are disconnected from well thought out strategy and policy.
- James Russell is an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. From 1988-2001, Mr. Russell held a variety of positions in the Office of the Assistant Secretary Defense for International Security Affairs, Near East South Asia and the Department of Defense. The views in this post are his alone.
]]>The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released here Friday.
Based on consulations with a group of nine bipartisan [...]]]>
The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released here Friday.
Based on consulations with a group of nine bipartisan economic and national security experts, the findings showed the effects of U.S. escalatory action against Iran could range from 64 billion to 1.7 trillion dollars in losses for the world economy over the initial three-month term.
The least likely scenario of de-escalation, which would require U.S. unilateral steps showing it was willing to make concessions to resolve the standoff, would result in an estimated global economic benefit of 60 billion dollars.
“The study’s findings suggest that there are potential costs to any number of U.S.-led actions and, in general, the more severe the action, the greater the possible costs,” Mark Jansson, FAS’s special projects director, told IPS.
“That being said, even among experts, there is tremendous uncertainty about what might happen at the higher end of the escalation ladder,” added Jansson, the second author of the report after Charles P. Blair, an FAS senior fellow on state and non-state threats.
The six plausible scenarios of U.S.-led actions against Iran included isolation and a Gulf blockade, which would include U.S. moves to “curtail any exports of refined oil products, natural gas, energy equipment and services”, the banning of the Iranian energy sector worldwide (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 325 billion dollars), and a comprehensive bombing campaign that would also target Iran’s ability to retaliate (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 1.082 trillion dollars).
The report is explicit in not endorsing any particular policy recommendation, although others are not so reticent.
United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) are leading hardline Washington-based advocacy groups arguing for sweeping economic measures against Iran.
“The White House must build on this momentum, intensifying economic warfare in an effort to shake the Islamic Republic to its core,” wrote FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz in June.
Paul Sullivan, an economics professor specialising in Middle East security at Georgetown University, told IPS that, “The fact that the hardest core of the neoconservative ‘strategists’ have not thought through the costs of escalating conflict with Iran is proof of their group intellectual inadequacy.
“The main effects to the U.S. if there is escalation is through the price of oil and increased military and other national security costs,” said Sullivan, who evaluated the scenarios as an expert but could not comment on the specific figures due to Chatham House Rules.
“If there is an attack on Iran, with the expected counterattacks the price of oil could quite easily go to 250 dollars or higher. This could push the U.S. right back into a recession,” he said.
As tensions rise over the decades-long dispute over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, analysts are increasingly examining a range of costs associated with escalating the so-far cold conflict between the U.S. and Iran.
The Iran Project Report released in September showed that the cost of Iranian retaliation would be “felt over the longer term” by the U.S. and could result in a regional war.
“In addition to the financial costs of conducting military attacks against Iran, which would be significant…there would likely be near-term costs associated with Iranian retaliation, through both direct and surrogate asymmetrical attacks,” according to the report, which was endorsed by a long list of high-level, bipartisan national security advisers.
The Iran Project report’s findings support the notion that greater escalatory action will result in greater costs – shown in financial terms by the FAS findings: “A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to all-out regional war,” notes the report.
An Oct. 19 event on the economic and military considerations of war with Iran at the Center for the National Interest (CNI) offered similar assessments.
“You could lose eight million barrels a day of production, and it would not come back quickly,” said J. Robinson West, who has also held senior positions in the White House, the Energy Department, and the Pentagon under various Republican administrations. “We believe the price of oil will go above 200 dollars a barrel.”
On Oct. 20, the New York Times reported that the U.S. and Iran had “agreed in principle for the first time” to direct negotiations.
But Tehran and Washington did have “limited bilateral talks” in 2009 “when the Iranian leadership saw a potential in the newly elected Obama administration to address some of Iran’s bottom lines regarding the country’s right to enrichment,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar and affiliate graduate faculty at the University of Hawai’i, told IPS.
On Wednesday, President Obama denied the Times report but did not dismiss the notion of one-on-one talks. In fact, he strongly suggested that the U.S. would seriously engage if the Iranians proved their sincerity.
“If Iran is serious about wanting to resolve this, they’ll be in a position to resolve it,” he said during his first press conference following his successful presidential re-election campaign.
“The situation is different now insofar as the Iranian leadership is much more sceptical of Obama’s words regarding his desire to resolve the nuclear issue instead of going for the Islamic regime’s jugular after a show of desire for talks,” said Farhi.
“To be sure, there will always be hardline naysayers in Tehran no matter what. A similar situation exists in the U.S.. But if the past is any guide, Tehran will come around and abandon its current resistance to bilateral talks if it sees a potential for breakthrough,” she said.
]]>About 32 percent of all stock trades in the US stock markets are being done “off market” in “dark pools” and other confidential “trading platforms”. Trading on well-known markets such as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ has been dropping precipitously.
The “dark pools” have taken over some increasing [...]]]>
About 32 percent of all stock trades in the US stock markets are being done “off market” in “dark pools” and other confidential “trading platforms”. Trading on well-known markets such as the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ has been dropping precipitously.
The “dark pools” have taken over some increasing chunks of the market shares that used to go to these and other major exchanges. Also, as the article from Business Week points out, massive amounts of money have fled the normal stock and other equity markets due to a lack of confidence and trust in those markets.
This video from the Wall Street Jounal explains what “dark pools” are. Most people are likely very much in the dark about them.
To put it simply, “dark pools” are pools of liquidity and financial capital that are flowing from one trader to another. One customer of a broker might need to move a large amount of a certain security, stock, derivative, bond or bill without it being noticed on the public markets. ”Dark pools” are confidential, secret and certainly not registered with the SEC or on any public notice boards of the trades.
If the large trade were to flow into the data banks of the algorithms of the high frequency traders — who really run the market to a very big extent — then the price of the security the trader wants to move can drop rather quickly. So, it is thought by these surreptitious security traders that one can retain more value by keeping the trades secret. “Dark pools” have been developing in China, the EU, and even in places like Indonesia, the Philippines, and all across the world.
Increasing development of the dozens of confidential platforms is in part a response to the development of high speed trading. High speed trading has a huge influence on the stock markets in the US and in many other countries. As the risks to trading have increased with the faster diffusion into the marketplace of high speed trading, so too have the “dark pools” and other surreptitious trading platforms developed.
There have been many instances of obvious mispricing of securities by some of these black box algorithms, such as sending the price of many well capitalized companies heading towards penny stocks in the matter of seconds during “flash crashes”, as happened in May 2010. One of the biggest energy companies in the world, Exelon, was deemed almost worthless on the markets for a moment. Proctor and Gamble became a penny stock.
One of the main reasons behind this flash crash was the high frequency trading companies’ algorithms (hyper complex mathematical stock and derivative trading models) kicking in to react to an order to sell 75,000 E-Mini Standard & Poor’s 500 futures contracts. If this seems somewhat to very obscure to you do not get worried that you are out of the loop on what is really going on in the stock, futures and derivatives markets. My guess is 99 percent of the people in the US, if not the world, are pretty much clueless about what is happening and who is doing what.
It is not just the existence of “dark pools” or of high speed trading that lends to huge potential volatility — even worse is the combination of the two. There is an increasing opacity to securities markets while at the same time an increasing dominance of very complex, black box mathematical algorithms that trade at velocities that are beyond the comprehension of just about everyone, including some of the people who are at the top of these trading companies.
One of my biggest concerns about high frequency trading is that the models, the algorithms used for trades, may not be built to handle major commodity price shocks, such as what may occur with an invasion of Iran and the response and counter-response that may happen after that.
One only has to consider the 1998 collapse of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) that was sparked by the combination of the East Asian Financial Crises in 1997-1998, the default of Russia and the collapse of the ruble, as well as other complex factors, to see how this may happen again.
Please note LTCM was established by a bunch of Nobel Laureates and had some of the best and brightest “rocket scientists” of algorithm development on their staff. This article from CATO also discusses the government sponsored and constructed bailout of LTCM. Sound familiar? This was in 1998.
I find the potential robustness of these models in times of even moderate stress to be suspect.
We can now add in the problems that could result from the “dark pools” to the “high frequency trading” to those of the shadow banks that I mentioned in a previous article.
Indeed, the risks to the toppling of asset values and economies via oil and other commodity shocks are looming if there are any serious military shocks, most particularly if significant oil facilities such as Ab Qaiq are seriously damaged in the medium to long runs.
It is not just an attack of Iran that would shock the markets, but what follows after that. Iran is unlikely to back down and cower. It will counter attack. The Iranians have stated this quite clearly.
The effects of these shocks could also be magnified due to the fragility of the global economy. That volatility can be further magnified by the fall of the assets that back the shadow banking systems of securities and derivatives. This could be made even worse via high frequency trading and the increasing opacity of markets via “dark pools”.
One might expect large investors to initially flock to the “dark pools” to dump their securities. This may be kept quiet for a short while. However, sooner rather than later, the expected huge movements of assets that will be attempted to be dumped to preserve value will be noticed and talked about. Then the high frequency trades kick in full force. Add to this the fall in assets backing up the hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives and you have quite a problem.
Can you imagine the “flash crash” developing into a “smash crash” from a spreading conflict in the Gulf?
I really wonder how those black box computer programs would respond when the price of oil goes beyond the outer boundaries of their assumptions – and stays there.
Many markets have become too fast, too incomprehensible, and too opaque for the average investor and even for most governments. Some of these markets may be heading toward a dangerous tipping point on some issues not far in the future anyway.
A war in an area with 70 percent of all known commercially available conventional oil reserves and all of the excess oil capacity in the world may help that tipping point to arrive faster and in a more furious way.
Very few know what is really happening in the “dark pools”. Very few know what is really happening inside those black box algorithms of the high frequency traders. Shadow banking remains in the shadows.
Policy recommendation: governments and others need to look more into these dark regions to fully analyze certain strategic economic, political and other decisions. The world economy has changed vastly even in the last few years with massive liquidity traps and small reactions to monetary and fiscal policy than in the past and the existence of many great unknowns that contain massive amounts of assets within them. These policy responses need to be global as well as national given the massive international flows of money each day, often in the trillions of dollars if one also adds in foreign exchange transactions.
This odd amalgam of the old and new financial systems may be resilient to normal shocks and small shocks, but big shocks could make things rather bad indeed.
Governments and others need to understand and navigate in the dark corners of finance — and there are many of them — in order to understand what might happen next.
]]>“U.S., allies in Gulf naval exercise as Israel, Iran face off”: Reuters reports on the mineclearing exercise scheduled to take place in the coming days in the Strait of Hormuz:
Publicly announced in July, the operation, known as IMCMEX-12, focuses on clearing mines that Tehran, or guerrilla groups, might deploy [...]]]>
“U.S., allies in Gulf naval exercise as Israel, Iran face off”: Reuters reports on the mineclearing exercise scheduled to take place in the coming days in the Strait of Hormuz:
Publicly announced in July, the operation, known as IMCMEX-12, focuses on clearing mines that Tehran, or guerrilla groups, might deploy to disrupt tanker traffic, notably in the Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and the Arabian peninsula.
…. However, it was a clearly deliberate demonstration of the determination on the part of a broad coalition of states to counter any attempt Iran might make to disrupt Gulf shipping in response to an Israeli or U.S. strike on its nuclear facilities – a form of retaliation Iran has repeatedly threatened.
“Israeli PM makes appeal to US voters: Elect president willing to draw ‘red line’ with Iran”: Though some commentators judged that Netanyahu’s Meet the Press appearance was meant to dissociate himself from Republican criticism of the Obama Administration, the Associated Press did not accept that Netanyahu’s appearance was aimed at smoothing over the animosity between him and the president:
His remarks were an impassioned election-season plea from a world leader who insists he doesn’t want to insert himself into U.S. politics and hasn’t endorsed either candidate. But visibly frustrated by U.S. policy under President Barack Obama, the hawkish Israeli leader took advantage of the week’s focus on unrest across the Muslim world and America’s time-honored tradition of the Sunday television talk shows to appeal to Americans headed to the polls in less than two months.
Ali Gharib writes at the Daily Beast that with this appearance, Netanyahu is still trying to force the US to accept his definition of a “red line”:
This flap has not been about imposing a red line, but about shifting it—from actual weapons production to the capability to produce weapons—something elucidated even in the pages of the neoconservative Weekly Standard. Meet the Press host David Gregory asked U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice about it. Why, in an otherwise tough interview, he didn’t ask Netanyahu to expound the distinction is beyond me.
“Ambassador Susan Rice: U.S. Not ‘Impotent’ in Muslim World”: The US Ambassador to the UN told ABC’s Jake Tapper that the protests in Libya and other Muslims countries such as Egypt, Sudan and Yemen, were not evidence of a US decline in influence in these states:
I [Tapper] … asked Rice, “President Obama pledged to repair America’s relationships with the Muslim world. Why does the U.S. seem so impotent? And why is the U.S. even less popular today in some of these Muslim and Arab countries than it was four years ago?”
“We’re not impotent, we’re not even less popular, to challenge that assessment,” Rice said in response. “What happened this week in Cairo, in Benghazi and many other parts of the region was a result, a direct result, of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting.”
Rice further denied that the embassy storming in Libya was pre-planned to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, a point which the Washington Post says contradicts Libyan claims.
“Revolutionary Guard Chief Holds Press Conference”: Al-Monitor runs a summary translation of remarks made by Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a widely-publicized Tehran speech. Jafari discussed the prescence of Iranian advisors in Syria but avoided making a firm commitment to the military defense of Assad’s government:
Regarding Syria, Jafari made a number of revealing comments. He said, “everyone knows the corps (sepah) had and has a unit by the name of the Islamic Movements, formed to help the oppressed and export the revolution, and which works in this direction. From the time the Qods force was formed, the goal of this force was the defence of innocent nations, particularly Muslims. A number of the Qods forces are present in Syria, but this isn’t the same as a military presence in this country.”
He continued, “if we compare the presence with Arab and non-Arab countries we will see that Iran doesn’t have such a presence. We are helping intellectually and advising Syria as a resistance group, as the Supreme Leader also indicated and Iran is proud of this issue and the help it is providing for it. The corps will partake in any kind of intellectual assistance or even economic support, but it does not have a military presence and this is at a point where some countries are not refraining from terror[ism] in this country. We of course forcefully condemn this matter, and don’t accept it.”
When Jafari was asked whether Iran would support Syria militarily in the event of a military attack, given the security agreement between the two countries he replied: “this issue depends of the circumstances. I can now say with assurance in the event of a military attack against Syria, whether Iran will also support militarily is unclear, and it completely depends on the circumstances.”
“The Innocence Protests Expose Deeper Tensions in Yemen”: TIME provides some context for the storming of the US embassy in Yemen, a country where the US (alongside Saudi Arabia) is participating in a Yemeni government counterinsurgency campaign, which is highly reliant on drone strikes, against Yemeni Islamists and elements of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP):
]]>It would be naive to think that Thursday’s infiltration and wholesale destruction of one of the most, if not the most, highly secured buildings in the country was the product of a few hundred angry protesters. A fuller explanation seems to lie in the capital’s tense environment, where rival elites are jockeying for power in an uncertain political landscape.
…. On the eve of the U.S. embassy attack, the President dismissed stalwart Saleh loyalist Major General Abdul Wahab al-Anesi from his powerful posts as director of the Presidential Office and chairman of the National Security Bureau, as well as sacked four pro-Saleh governors across the country.
The following morning, CSF (Central Security Force) forces under the command of Saleh’s nephew Yahya were pictured at a checkpoint outside the embassy signaling the mob of angry protesters to enter the premises. Video footage of the waning moments of the embassy attack showed exhilarated rioters embracing a CSF soldier before sprinting out of the compound.
Shadow banks may control about 25 to 30 percent of the word’s financial system. They may be about 50 percent of all banking assets in the world. I say may in both of those sentences because it is hard to tell how big this financial sector is. The United States may [...]]]>
Shadow banks may control about 25 to 30 percent of the word’s financial system. They may be about 50 percent of all banking assets in the world. I say may in both of those sentences because it is hard to tell how big this financial sector is. The United States may make up about 40 to 50 percent of all shadow banking. However, shadow banking is spread throughout the world.
Shadow banks are not as regulated as regular banks. They also go about gathering capital for lending in a different way than regular banks. They often securitize assets such as commercial and residential mortgages, corporate bonds, consumer loan packages, and the like. Shadow banks also find other assets and derivatives of those assets to back up their securitized debt instruments. Many use US Treasury bills and other sovereign debt (the debt instruments of many nations and their equivalent of Treasury bills, for example) to act as risk mitigation and collateral in the “loan” making process.
Shadow banks also rely on something called the repurchase (repo) markets to liquefy debt and other assets in the short run – even though most of these assets are long run ones, like mortgages and long term bonds. Simply put, repos are a way to quickly pay off short term debts and also to get some of the debt off the books of the shadow banks either overnight or even for longer periods.
Ok, this is all very complicated. Frankly, for the shadow banks that complexity has protected them over the years. It has also led to some very big crashes because the people who should have understood what was going on did not. That includes many governments and even some of the leadership of the shadow banks themselves.
So what we have is a large massive part of the world financial system basing its capital on sliced and diced assets with sometimes questionable risk calculations and even sometimes questionable valuations of the assets. How much might it be? How does $40 trillion dollars sound?
The valuation of the assets could be a real problem if there is a war with Iran that gets out of hand and leads to significant damage to oil and gas fields and facilities in the Gulf. If energy prices spike and spike again for the short run, the market could bear that. If the oil and gas prices spike and stay way up in many markets then we have a much bigger problem.
One of the mechanisms of asset destruction in the shadow banking system can be a huge increase in energy prices followed by recessions or worse in many places, including in the already fragile EU, China and the US. Other commodity and goods prices will be affected as well.
Many shadow bank assets are heavily leveraged. Does this sound familiar? Leveraged shadow bank assets took down the US and part of the world economy when the housing market went bust in 2007-2008.
Many shadow banks are heavily into derivatives and even derivatives of derivatives. If the underlying assets of the derivatives collapse due to falling economies then the derivatives collapse along with them.
It is quite possible that under some war and conflict scenarios attached to scenarios of oil and gas prices that the economic impacts of a protracted and quite damaging war with Iran could be magnified well beyond the normal way this is considered.
Shadow banking is huge. It needs to be considered in calculations about military conflict. The losses could be gigantic on the financial markets.
Some shadow banks might benefit from war if some of the sharpies in the shadow banks have already set up derivatives and options as hedges betting on a war. They cash in if the war happens.
Either way some people in the shadow banks could lose. Some could win.
The regular folks lose. The top guns in the shadow banks will drive their Ferraris. The regular people may end up selling apples.
You see, a war with Iran now would be very different than if it happened in 1979. Back then the shadow banking system was tiny. Derivative markets were tiny compared to what they are now. The leverage and risk inherent in sometimes unstable sliced and diced assets in the tens of trillions was just not there.
Is this something to think about? I surely believe so. I am going to look much more deeply into this situation and hope to have more to write about it to clarify and educate, hopefully before possibly catastrophic events take place.
Policy conclusion: take great care and do your homework on the realities of the risks within the world economy before stepping off the cliff toward a potentially very costly war.
To read more about shadow banking try:
]]>This week’s decision by the Bahraini court of appeals to uphold the prison terms against Bahraini opposition activists is a travesty of justice and an indication that Bahraini repression continues unabated.
Bahraini officials, when confronted with angry world reaction to the court’s decision, cynically hid behind the claim they would [...]]]>
This week’s decision by the Bahraini court of appeals to uphold the prison terms against Bahraini opposition activists is a travesty of justice and an indication that Bahraini repression continues unabated.
Bahraini officials, when confronted with angry world reaction to the court’s decision, cynically hid behind the claim they would not interfere in the proceedings of their “independent judiciary”.
Despite the threat to U.S. national interests and the security of U.S. citizens in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Gulf, Washington remains oblivious to the ruling family’s violent crackdown against peaceful protesters in the name of fighting “foreign elements”. Pro-democracy Bahrainis are wondering what we are waiting for.
Because of our muted reaction to what’s happening in Bahrain, the ruling family and their Saudi benefactors have not taken seriously Western support for democratic transitions in the Middle East.
The United States and Britain maintain deep economic and security relations with these states but also enjoy strong leverage, including the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, which they must revisit in the face of continued egregious violations of basic human rights by some of these regimes. Bahraini civil rights organisations and activists are expecting the United States to use its leverage to end regime repression.
Despite their pro-Western stance, there is nothing exceptional about the autocratic Gulf Arab regimes. And they should no longer be given a pass on the importance of democratic reform.
Staying in power will require Bahrain’s Al Khalifas and other Gulf tribal family rulers to do more than push a vicious sectarian policy and employ slick public relations firms. Their cynical and deadly game might buy them some time, but, in the end, they will not be able to escape their peoples’ wrath.
In the absence of genuine reforms in the next three years, the Gulf’s autocratic regimes will be swept aside by their peoples. The “people power” that emerged from the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and now Syria, cannot be kept out of these tribal states. In reality, they all have been touched by peoples’ demands for dignity and justice.
While Iran might be exploiting the protest movement to discredit these regimes, the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain goes back to the 1960s and 1970s – way before the Islamic Republic came on the scene.
Even more troubling for U.S. national security are the continued efforts by Al Khalifa to whip up anti-American attitudes among Bahrain’s more rabidly anti-Shia and xenophobic Sunnis. Bahrain and some of their Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) allies perceive the growing rapprochement between the U.S. and the new Islamic democrats, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia, as a sign of tacit opposition to Gulf autocrats.
They believe the U.S will throw them under the bus if their peoples rise up against them. They also worry that if the nuclear issue in Iran is resolved, a possible U.S. rapprochement with Tehran would embolden their Shia communities in their struggle for equality and justice.
For 40 years, Prime Minister Khalifa has been the key opponent to reform in Bahrain. In recent ears, however, a new generation within the ruling family, known as the “Khawalids,” has taken up the anti-Shia, anti-reform, and anti-American cry.
They have used pro-government newspapers, blogs, and social media to vilify the Shia, the United States, and the pro-democracy movement. With tacit government encouragement, they frequently describe elements of the opposition as “diseased cells” that must be removed from society.
In the process, they have encouraged extremist Salafi and other Sunni groups to spread their message of divisiveness, sectarianism, and hate.
What Bahrain and the other Gulf sheikhdoms fail to realise is that when they encourage extremist groups to fight the “enemies” of the regime, a time will come when radical Salafi “jihadists” will turn against the regime. The Saudi experience in Afghanistan and Iraq should offer them a sobering lesson. This dangerous game does not bode well for their survival.
As domestic challenges also grow in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom’s interest in Bahraini domestic policy will diminish. Recent estimates indicate Saudi oil exports over the next decade and a half will shrink significantly because of growing domestic needs for energy to generate power and desalinate seawater.
When this happens, Al Khalifa will have to face their people on their own.
- Emile Nakhleh is the former director of the CIA’s Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World”.
]]>Recent news out of Israel prompts me to write briefly about a recent experience.
Three weeks ago I was asked to serve as an adviser to the participants in a dispute-resolution exercise at a British academy. The focus of the exercise was Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. The participants were divided into four teams: Iran, [...]]]>
Recent news out of Israel prompts me to write briefly about a recent experience.
Three weeks ago I was asked to serve as an adviser to the participants in a dispute-resolution exercise at a British academy. The focus of the exercise was Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. The participants were divided into four teams: Iran, Gulf Arab states, Israel, and the West.
After various alarums and excursions that took the participants to the brink of a war in the Gulf, the Israelis decided that they should talk to the Iranians. A “high-level Norwegian diplomat” was conjured up to convey a request for talks to Tehran. The Iranian team was unready to engage directly but was content for the Norwegian to shuttle back and forth as an intermediary.
When time ran out, Iran and Israel were on the verge of agreeing to cease demonising each other; to refrain from interfering in each other’s affairs; to desist from covert operations against each other; and to accept each other’s nuclear and missile assets in return for some kind of no-first-use assurance. In short, they were heading towards a mutually acceptable modus vivendi. This seemed likely to lower tensions in the region and reduce the likelihood of a war that might end up costing many lives and affecting the living standards of billions.
The Western team was relieved by this development and hastened to settle the enrichment dispute by concluding an NPT deal with Iran. The Arab group had decided early on that their over-riding interest was to avoid the outbreak of conflict in the Gulf. They had set out to strengthen their relations with Iran and to build bridges between Iran and the West—even at one early point between Iran and Israel, albeit unsuccessfully. So they had no difficulty with an NPT deal, recognising that the most likely alternative to a negotiated settlement of the nuclear dispute is conflict, sooner or later.
I am not pretending this scenario can be transposed to the real world. All the participants in this exercise were British. Their understanding of relevant historical and cultural factors was limited. Their emotions were hardly in play, not enough, at any rate, to impact on their reasoning. And yet….
Israel’s defence and intelligence professionals seem to have come to the same position as their US counterparts. They not only believe it would be hard to destroy all Iran’s nuclear assets from the air; they also doubt whether this is necessary in the absence of evidence that Iran is bent on making nuclear weapons. (In the absence of such evidence there is no chance the UN Security Council would authorise an attack; so the use of force would also be a violation of international law.)
These professional assessments make it logical to cease threatening Iran with damage and destruction unless it abandons an activity, uranium enrichment, which is permissible under the NPT. They make it logical, instead, to focus on minimising the risk that Iran’s leaders will decide to use enrichment capability for military purposes. Hyping the Iranian “threat”, conducting covert operations that include the assassination of innocent scientists, imposing pressure on the West to wage economic war against Iran, and repeated threats to use force are not risk-minimising policies. Arriving at some sort of mutual non-aggression understanding is.
Risk-minimisation would of course be a momentous inflection for Israel’s politicians. Since 1992 they have been playing up Iran as a threat to Western states, as well as the survival and security of Israel, and they have been pressing the West to hurt Iran economically. It is a clever policy that has brought significant political advantages.
Perhaps, though, a point has been reached at which the risks are starting to outweigh the gains. By dint of threatening to attack Iran unless the West tightens its grip on the Iranian economy, Israel is starting to affect global living standards through higher oil prices, and Israel is pushing the world towards a war that could cripple the global economy through energy shortages. North Americans may be ready to forgive Israel for hiking the price of gas and reducing their living standards; Europeans, Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans may be more resentful.
So the moral courage and integrity of Israel’s defence and intelligence professionals deserve a cheer. They are implying that there is no justification, whether from a realistic threat perspective or under international law, for attacking Iran economically or militarily. Can one hope that Israel’s politicians can now work up similar courage and integrity and recognise two things?
First, that Israel’s long-term interest as a member of a global community lie in abandoning a twenty-year policy that is starting to have unintended consequences, modest at this point but potentially grave: damage to the global economy and living standards everywhere.
Second, that Israel can hope to trade both the abandonment of that policy and acquiescence in an NPT deal between Iran and the West for a non-aggression understanding with Iran, enhancing the security of Israeli citizens.
In short, it’s time Israeli politicians went looking for a “high-level Norwegian diplomat”.
– Peter Jenkins was the UK’s Permanent Representative to the IAEA for 2001-06 and is now a partner in ADRg Ambassadors. View an archive of Peter’s Lobe Log contributions here.
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