by Robert E. Hunter
Every US president since Harry Truman has sought to disentangle his administration from the Middle East, and all have found themselves sucked back into the region and its problems. So will it be in President Obama’s second term. A year or so ago, his team [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
Every US president since Harry Truman has sought to disentangle his administration from the Middle East, and all have found themselves sucked back into the region and its problems. So will it be in President Obama’s second term. A year or so ago, his team launched what was variously called the “Tilt to Asia” or the “rebalancing” in that direction. But like it or not, before that long-term agenda can seriously get off the ground, the president and his top officials will have to deal with the immediacy of the Middle East, from one end to the other.
The United States has more or less withdrawn from Iraq, but that country is still far from stable — that is, not being a potential source of problems for the US and the West in the future. Obama has set a rough timeline for transferring lead responsibility for security in Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves, though sizeable US and some allied military elements will remain. Even so, the prospects for “success” — defined in terms of a country that will be proof against a renewed Taliban insurgency and with a modicum of internal political developments — is hardly a good bet. Likewise in neighboring Pakistan, which looms as a potential headache of such major proportions (nuclear weapons, Islamist militancy, etc.) that Washington tries to ignore it.
The civil war in Syria is intensifying, but no one, in the US or elsewhere, seems to have good ideas about what to do, and there is precious little planning about what happens after President Assad departs the scene. Will the civil war be limited to Syria? Will it become another Lebanon, with decades of internal strife and third-party attacks on other countries, including Turkey and Israel? Or will the situation become even worse, as part of a slow-burning civil war of sorts across the region, as Sunni states like Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia try to rebalance the “loss” of Shi’ite-majority but formerly Sunni-dominated Iraq, plus competitions with Iran and other struggles, such as the suppression of the Shi’a majority in Bahrain (supported, for our sins, by the US) and the Shi’a majority in the oil-rich Saudi Eastern Province progress.
Then there is Iran. During the US political campaign, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu extracted pledges from both candidates that “containment” of a potential nuclear-armed Iran would be unacceptable, and the re-inaugurated president has reiterated his pledge that he will do what is necessary to stop such a development. Unfortunately, this puts the US president in a place where no president and no great power should ever go: where being able to decide, in the US national interest, whether or not to go to war depends on the “good behavior” of two other countries with agendas and interests of their own, Iran and Israel.
Meanwhile, the bloom is off the rose of the Arab Spring, Egypt is in incipient turmoil, young and unemployed populations across the region are experiencing their revolution of rising but frustrated expectations, and the region as a whole continues to experience its long-standing deficit in representative governance. And then there is Islamist militancy, here in Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan, there in Mali, tomorrow somewhere else – although how much that really matters to US security is an open question now that a decade of homeland security seems to have bought protection for our nation, so long as no terrorist gets his hands on a nuclear weapon (a most unlikely scenario).
Did I mention the Palestine question? Secretary of State John Kerry says that not moving to resolve that problem would be a catastrophe. Hyperbole, most likely, but somehow the US reputation is on the line in the region if we are unable to deliver any kind of positive change, which for nearly 34 years has proved to be a Sisyphean task. Finally, the US, as the world’s “indispensable nation,” has to show that it can lead and be seen as responsible for its own and others’ security — at least in some key parts of the globe. And, at the same time, it needs to get on with its most important national security challenge: to strengthen the US economy, rebuild its crumbling infrastructure, provide education and health care to its people, and deal with budget and debt questions of considerable magnitude.
Thus, as Lenin would ask, Shto delat? What is to be done? There are no answers that are guaranteed to pay off, but here are some ideas.
First, the US government and its people need to understand that we can’t let go of the Middle East, as much as we are tired of war — did anyone mention pledges regarding an Iranian bomb? Our fate here, Kismet, was settled a couple of generations ago, and, try as we might, we still have national security interests in the region that others will not just pick up, even if — as is no doubt true – there are limits to what we and others can do to shape the massive internal upheavals that are taking place from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Hindu Kush.
Second, this administration needs to start seeing the entire region as an integrated whole, rather than as a series of disparate crises that are somehow loosely related to one another. There can be no progress on Israel-Palestine so long as Israel is terrified of Iran, worried about Egypt and Syria, and isolates Gaza from any relief for its economic and social misery. A quieting down of the terrorist/Islamist threat cannot even begin so long as rich people in Saudi Arabia continue to support the doctrines and bankroll the fighters that are spreading instability and fear among secular populations. Afghanistan will never cease being a source of concern unless all relevant external countries are willing to agree on some framework for its future, if only for it to be proof against excessive external meddling — and this also means that the US must return to its practice after 9/11 of trying to find common interests with Iran in Afghanistan, which was scotched by the strategic folly that was called the Axis of Evil.
Third, the US needs finally to understand that security in this region, as we have learned there and elsewhere, must be a combination of military forces, appropriately applied (and appropriately limited), along with the triumvirate of governance-reconstruction-development. We know the lessons and have since Bosnia in 1995. But US agencies are still “stove-piped,” the money for non-military activities is not there, and we continue to judge the contributions of our European allies to shared security in terms of defense budgets rather than in terms of what they can do to help societies progress – where several of them are better at it than we are. Further, we need to begin developing a long-term plan for a potentially all-inclusive new security structure for the Persian Gulf region, to replace the jerry-built structure shattered by wars there from 1979 to 2003 and beyond.
Fourth, we need finally to see Iran with clear eyes. The issue is not just nuclear weapons or the lack thereof. Deep and long-lasting regional competitions for influence are at the heart of the matter, and we have been sucked into them, wittingly or not. And in the last three administrations, we have been unwilling to put on the table a negotiating position that has a chance to succeed, by recognizing that the security interests of the US, Israel, and Iran must all be considered. No country can negotiate seriously when it is under military threat, facing sanctions that only help to strengthen the regime domestically, and with no serious proposals on the “plus” side. Ironically, those who most talk about going to war with Iran also tend to be those who most oppose the US’ dealing directly with Iran and putting a realistic set of proposals on the table. A first-year graduate student in strategic studies could dissect that approach. We are not even prepared to propose areas of clear common interest, such as freedom of the seas, an Incidents at Sea Convention — such as we concluded with the Soviet Union during the dark days of the Cold War — and formal Iranian membership in the effort to counter piracy at sea.
Fifth, we will have to prioritize and also be clear about what really matters to us – to the USA – and what doesn’t, in the process developing some “strategic patience.” All the while, however, we have to remember that others look to us for leadership and steadfastness. A curse, perhaps, but our curse.
Most important, however, are two things that the first Obama administration, like the Clinton and Bush II administrations, did not do but can no longer avoid. The first is to recognize that, 22 years after the end of the Cold War, it is time to relearn how to “think strategically” about new circumstances and to abandon reflexive, outdated approaches to considering the world, our place in it, and how to respond in the US national interest. Easier said than done, but we did it in the past. Regrettably, we have become sclerotic in our methodology, with too many of our think tanks and “policy planning staffs” producing brilliant tactical suggestions but little strategic wisdom or “actionable “ guidance on major redirections for policy.
Related to this, indispensable to success, is for President Obama and his team to search for, engage, and listen to those people in the country – some in relatively junior positions in the government, most outside — who know the Middle East and Southwest Asia region from one end to the other, who can think strategically, who can handle the need for making intelligent tradeoffs, and who do know how to embed choices and decisions in US domestic politics – which, incidentally, need to come second, not first, as has been the case for at least the last three administrations.
Quite a list of tasks. But the last-named is the most immediate and probably the most consequential: “Hire good people and listen to them.” If the administration gets that right — and that will be clear one way or another in the next few weeks — success for US interests in the Middle East will still not be guaranteed. But if the administration gets that wrong, failure is assured.
– Robert E. Hunter, former US ambassador to NATO, was director of Middle East Affairs on the NSC Staff in the Carter Administration and in 2011-12 was Director of Transatlantic Security Studies at the National Defense University.
Photo: President Barack Obama sits in the Oval Office on his first day in office, Jan. 21, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
]]>by Jim Lobe
As I noted in the piece published on IPS Friday, “It’s All About Israel,” Israel and the presumed threat posed by Iran to its security dominated Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Thursday. It was the one opportunity Committee members — [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
As I noted in the piece published on IPS Friday, “It’s All About Israel,” Israel and the presumed threat posed by Iran to its security dominated Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Thursday. It was the one opportunity Committee members — and, for that matter, the entire Senate — had to publicly probe the nominee’s basic beliefs about the myriad challenges confronting U.S. national security in what Robert Gates described, while he was still working for George W. Bush, as an increasingly “multi-polar world.” That the panel chose to focus almost exclusively on the challenges facing Israel, rather than the United States, speaks volumes about the influence of the Israel lobby on the U.S. Senate. It also speaks volumes about the very basic lack of seriousness or curiosity on the SASC’s part about the geo-strategic issues that one would expect to be at or near the top of the Pentagon’s agenda. As Chas Freeman put it to me, the whole scene made it look like senators were “busking for campaign dollars” rather than grappling with the multi-faceted problems the U.S. armed forces face around the world.
So I wanted to give some additional idea of just how negligent I think the Committee’s questioning was by compiling a list with some brief annotations or explanations of countries, non-state actors, and regions and the number of times each was mentioned in the hearing. (If someone has the software to create a map of the world based on the number of mentions a country gets based on this list, I’d love to publish it on Lobelog.)
I should mention at the outset, however, that one of the most surprising discoveries to me was this: Al Qaida — you know, the group and its affiliates that have supposedly been Public Enemy #1 since 9/11 and that Republicans have been arguing for several months now has still not been defeated and is now popping up all over the place, planning attacks on the American homeland — was mentioned a grand total of twice during the eight hours of testimony. That compares with 24 mentions of Hezbollah and 11 of Hamas, neither of which has been accused by the U.S. government of planning attacks on the U.S. homeland, let alone actually carrying any out. The disproportionate focus on these two non-state actors — contrasted with the virtually complete lack of curiosity about Al Qaida and its affiliates — is yet another manifestation of the degree to which the SASC appears to be far more concerned about Israel’s security than that of the United States. (I should note that SASC senators have submitted written questions to Hagel which no doubt cover a much broader number of issues than were raised at the hearing. But the hearing is the only opportunity to raise these issues in ways that get broader attention, and that’s what makes it so important.)
I have left out two countries that were mentioned numerous times: Vietnam (41 references) and Germany (9 references) because all mentions of those two countries were biographical; that is, they didn’t relate to current policy, but rather only to Hagel’s experience and relationship to them.
In any event, here is the partially annotated list. The number on the left refers to the number of mentions in the transcript:
178 – Israel
171 – Iran (threat to Israel)
30 – Iraq (where we just concluded a war in which nearly 4,500 U.S. servicemen and women were killed)
27 – Afghanistan (where we still have well over 60,000 U.S. troops deployed and the exit strategy remains unclear.)
24 – Hezbollah (threat to Israel)
23 – Russia (only other major nuclear power which also will have a major influence on U.S. policy toward Iran, Syria, and withdrawal from Afghanistan, among other issues.)
22 – Palestine or Palestinians (threat to Israel)
18 – Syria (a country torn by civil war and a possible threat to Israel.)
11 – North Korea (a nuclear power believed to be preparing another nuclear test.)
11 – Hamas (threat to Israel)
10 – Pakistan (a nuclear power whose cooperation is critical to U.S. Afghanistan policy.)
9 – Egypt (a country undergoing heavy turbulence to which the U.S. provides $1.5 billion a year in military aid; potential threat to Israel.)
6 – Asia (yes, the entire continent, consisting of over half the world’s population toward which our military is supposed to be “pivoting.”)
5 – China (critical to U.S. policy toward Iran and many other hotspots, not to mention its being the geo-strategic focus of the above-mentioned “pivot.”)
5 – NATO (Washington’s most important alliance and the one with which it conducted an aerial campaign in Libya, is still fighting in Afghanistan, and just set up Patriot missile batteries in Turkey close to the Syrian border.)
5 – European Union (all references were related to the EU’s refusal to put Hezbollah on its terrorism list.)
2 – Libya (the country where Republicans have complained that Obama’s “leading from behind” has led to disaster.)
2 – Yemen (the country where the Pentagon is working with the CIA to carry out drones strikes against suspected Al-Qaida militants)
2 – Bahrain (another country in turmoil which is also home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet)
2 – Somalia (another country in turmoil where the U.S. military has attacked suspected Al Qaida and Al Shabaab leaders)
2 – Al Qaida (in all its forms)
1 – Mali (where the U.S. just provided logistical and intelligence support for a French campaign against Al Qaida in the Maghreb)
1 – Jordan
1 – Turkey (NATO ally neighboring Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon)
1 – Japan (closest U.S. ally in Asia with which Washington has a mutual defense treaty. U.S. has 50,000 troops based there.)
1 – South Korea (second closest U.S. ally in Asia. U.S. has 28,000 troops based there.)
1 – France (U.S. NATO ally, permanent UN Security Council member, just carried out U.S. military-backed campaign in Mali. Actually the only reference was about President Clinton granting a waiver to a French oil company operating in Iran.)
So that’s the list. Now, consider those countries which did not get a single mention during the eight hours of the hearing despite their possible strategic importance to the United States. This is necessarily a partial list, but just contemplate what the SASC was not interested in:
India (a nuclear power, world’s second most-populous nation, neighbour to Pakistan and China, avidly courted by the U.S. military in the last decade.)
Indonesia (world’s fourth most-populous nation, world’s most-populous predominantly Muslim country, avidly courted by the Pentagon over the last decade.)
Brazil (world’s fifth most-populous nation, dominant power in South America.)
Mexico (with Canada, closest U.S. neighbor which is receiving U.S. military training as part of its drug war.)
Saudi Arabia (biggest U.S. arms customer by far; closest U.S. ally in Arab world with world’s biggest oil reserves.)
Qatar (home to giant U.S. air force base; aggressively supported rebels in Libya, Syria)
Nigeria (Africa’s most populous country; major oil producer; threatened by Boko Haram insurgency allegedly tied to Al Qaida in the Maghreb; Pentagon actively seeking ties with military,)
United Kingdom (Washington’s closest NATO ally and permanent member of UN Security Council).
In this context, it’s appropriate to remember what Hagel told David Aaron Miller in that fateful 2008 interview, to wit:
And this guy kept pushing and pushing. And he alluded to the fact that maybe I wasn’t supporting Israel enough or something. And I just said let me clear something up here, in case there is any doubt.
I said, ‘I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator.’ I support Israel, but my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States — not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel. If I go run for Senate in Israel, I’ll do that. Now I know most senators don’t talk like I do.”
You bet they don’t, Chuck.
Photo: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) questioning defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel over an appearance the former senator made on Al Jazeera in 2009.
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