Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter and Anwar Sadat at Camp David.The foreign-policy debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is expected to spend a lot of time on the attacks on embassies in Libya and Egypt, which were either sparked by an absurdly bigoted anti-Islamic film or used this film as cover for a pre-planned terror attack. Whatever its value as a debating point, this episode has laid bare the bipartisan incoherence of U.S. policy toward the Middle East.
Mitt Romney’s immediate response focusing on the question of whether the administration had “apologized for America” was widely criticized as misinformed and ill timed. But Romney’s mishandling of the issue distracted attention from the administration’s own disarray, symbolized by President Obama’s confusion over whether Egypt is or is not a U.S. ally.
The crisis in Syria provides an even more graphic illustration of the incoherence of the foreign-policy debate. It is generally agreed that the civil war now raging in Syria is, or ought to be, a matter of grave concern to the United States. The administration’s position, demanding an end to the rule of Bashar al-Assad but taking few concrete steps to bring this about, has been widely criticized. But the proposed alternative policies run the gamut from immediate military intervention on the side of the rebels to tacit, and occasionally overt, support for the status quo.
This confusion, in turn, reflects the way the Arab Spring has upended the dominant narratives in U.S. discussion of Middle Eastern policy. All previous discussions were premised on the view that in the absence of an external—that is, U.S.-driven—push, existing regimes were durable fixtures.
Several examples illustrate some of the problems with this U.S.-centric view of the dynamics at play in the Middle East:
● Once it was evident that claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction were, at best, the result of a misreading of intelligence to reach a desired conclusion, the primary retrospective justification for the Iraq War was the belief that Saddam’s dictatorship otherwise would have lasted for generations. The Arab Spring suggests that perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and American lives, and trillions of dollars, were spent to bring forward regime change by a mere decade or so.
● Some realists such as Robert Kaplan have argued that support for autocratic regimes may provide the best way to pursue U.S. policy goals. However, this argument depends on the assumption that such regimes are stable and durable. At best, the fall of an autocratic regime means that the policy assets derived from links with the autocrat are dissipated. At worst, there is the risk that the new regime will be hostile to the United States precisely because it is viewed as having propped up the old one—Iran being the most notable case in point.
● Advocates of a strong prodemocracy policy typically have assumed that democratic governments will produce policy outcomes favorable to the United States and consistent with U.S. beliefs about good economic policy, social and civil liberties, and so on. But the whole point of democracy is that governments reflect the views of the majority of the people, which are likely to be less similar to the United States than the views of ruling elites.
● Many in favor of an unqualified pro-Israel policy have relied on the argument that Israel, as the only democracy in the region, was deserving of support for whatever policies its government proposed. Now that Israel is just one of a number of democracies (all of them imperfect), this argument can be turned on its head. The majority of democratic governments in the region clearly do not support the current stance of U.S. foreign policy.
Thus, U.S. policy responses to recent events appear to be incoherent. There is, however, a much deeper problem underlying these specific failures: there is no clearly defined U.S. national interest at stake in the Middle East. As a result, U.S. intervention in the region has been driven by lobby groups with mutually inconsistent beliefs, goals and interests, yielding policies that largely negate each other. The one outcome that has been achieved with almost perfect consistency is to make Washington disliked and distrusted by most political leaders in the region—and even more by the general population.
The Danger of Outdated Assumptions
The perception that the United States has crucial national interests in the Middle East goes back to three events in the 1970s. The first was the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 and the subsequent OPEC oil embargo. The resulting lines at gas stations are still etched in political memory. The second was the signing of the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978. The third was the fall of the Pahlavi regime in Iran and the subsequent occupation of the U.S. embassy by radical Islamist “students,” who held fifty-two Americans hostage for 444 days.
These events entrenched a set of false, and mutually contradictory, beliefs that have led the United States into a long series of policy disasters.
Comments
John Quiggin’s arguments debunking three events (1973 war, 1978 peace and the fall of the shah) while cogent still fails to account for US Mideast policy. American interference in the region pre-dates those events. Washington plotted against the Syrian government in the 1950s (decades before the Asads), abetted the fall of Iran’s Mosaddegh in 1953, and landed marines in Lebanon in 1958 to mention just three occurrences. What came out of the 1950s was the US support for monarchal authoritarian governments over military authoritarian governments--support Morocco, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, etc. whereas oppose Egypt, Syria, Iraq, post-Idris Libya etc. Missing as well in Dr. Quiggin’s analysis is the impact of the neocon plan for American hegemony drawn up in the 1990s and implemented with fervor the last eleven years. The Project for the New American Century combined the work of politicians, academics, militarists and pundits to set forth a program of far reaching goals. Promising a secure and tranquil future when certain nations and non-state organizations were “neutralized.” The fall of Arafat, the isolation of Hamas, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2006 war against Hezbollah, the present elimination of Asad’s Syria and the every mounting pressure to “take out” Iran were all outlined. Both the Bush II and Obama administrations are influenced and guided by these ideas. Finally, Prof. Quiggin makes a strong argument that oil is not of importance to America and therefore not a national interest. Although true that America’s economic health is not dependent upon Persian Gulf oil, Washington has made Mideast its business as to who controls the supply controls those nations that are greatly dependent upon it--Japan, India, etc. Should the demand of oil become critical, then those who can restrict its flow can dictate to those nations who require it for economic development. Perhaps that is why Chinese watchers get so upset when Beijing makes investments in oil production in Africa because it weakens Washington’s straggle hold. We may not need the oil, but our ability to limit nations’ access to it imparts power. George W. Bush made it quite clear that America was going insure itself total dominance now and forever. The world should have taken him far more seriously. Those that obey our demands will be rewarded, as for those that oppose our hegemony (no matter how weak like Syria) must learn that “resistance is futile.”
Professor Quiggen gets it almost 100% right. Oil is the only real, substantial, and *legitimate* interest the U.S. has in the region. And here's the only two things he misses: (1) With regard to that oil what could be clearer than that the *less* involvement/meddling we do in the region the better. Because without that the situation is simply that the arabs and persians have oil, they can't drink it, and the only reason they'd have to deprive us of it is if we were unwilling to pay for it, which we are. And dmaak 112 overlooks the fact that of *course* with the end of the Cold War our interests changed, so that now our interest in involvement/meddling there has changed to where that interest *is* indeen in bugging out. (2) And twhe other major point Quiggen misses is that, as noted above, because our oil interest is handled by itself just so long as we stay out of ME region our only *other* major reason to be there is trying to achieve a peace deal between Israel and its Palestinian and arab neighbors. But that is an utterly artificial, illegitimate interest, and the reason is that it is our care and feeding and support and subsidization of Israel that *causes* us to have such an interest in that in the first place. An interest that is so perverse that it has gotten to the point where it is obviously us who cares more about the "interest" of Israeli/Palestinian-arab-moslem peace than either of those sides do. And that's just stupid.
The types of crimes committed by the fbi/cia/dod,etc., as I have witnessed over the course of my lifetime are not new to mankind; indeed, for as long as man has walked on the face of the earth he has been confronted with his own savagery and inhumanity to fellow man. War has become legal; fbi/cia covert intelligence operations (including mass murder and other assassinations & tortures) are well known by many but never spoken about in polite conversations because they are also legal by awful custom. Thus, the end game for man is now being shaped by the most barbaric feature of his character: men's criminal urge to destroy one another for myriad purposes. Mark Twain perhaps captured this truth as he said, " A crime preserved in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law." http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/intellectualgian.html http://hamsayeh.net/society/2176-amerika-is-dead.html http://phillyimc.org/en/must-prosecute-fbicia-assassins-clandestine-murders-0
Seems like Ike, and to lesser extent, Truman had the opportunity to side with the old colonialists or break a new course by hardily supporting indepedence and sovereighnty of the colonies. Eisenhower drew the line at Suez Canal, but there is little to explain US involvement in 1953 Iran other than supporting British Petroleum in ITS fight against nationalization of oil. So, US interests were falsely defined as identical to preserving the interests of the form colonialists. Thought of in this way, you are absolutely right. Good thing your (presumably) tenured in Australia.The wrong path has led to numerous wars, assassinations and coups against newly formed states, the Cold War, US projection of power throughout the world, today's militarized foreign policy, an easy excuse for Arab autocrats to rule and a one-sided, myopic support of Israel. All should be looked at as failures of US foreign policy not as inevitable obstacles in a contructive one.