David J
By David J Rothkopf
What would it look like if America actually had a Middle East strategy?
To begin with, of course, it would hardly look like what we are seeing today. At the moment, we are confronted with an unprecedented region-wide series of crises that are each seemingly being treated by US policymakers as though they were unrelated. American responses to each have been reactive, typically veering between the passive and the inadequate. While there has been lots of rumination about what could go wrong if we embraced risky or bad policies, there has been less focus on how to achieve our goals and seemingly precious little thought given to the consequences of our inaction. In short, at a particularly fraught moment in a dangerous and vital part of the world we seem to be without a clear vision or a plan for achieving it.
As a consequence, America’s vital national interests are suffering. A region of substantial economic importance to the US and to the world is spiralling into ever deeper instability. Allies are at risk.
Bad actors who pose a material security threat to the US and those allies are growing and multiplying and gaining strength. Unchecked or inadequately, haphazardly challenged, recent disturbing trends could grow much, much worse.
Still, our goals in the Middle East are straightforward: We have economic interests there such as the provision of energy resources, trade flows and investments we wish to protect and cultivate. We wish to maintain strong relationships with countries that can help us advance our geopolitical interests -- enhancing our influence, counterbalancing the power of potential rivals.
It’s clear that what we seek in the region is not only the kind of development that promotes and protects those who are well-disposed toward the US, but stability. But not just any stability -- and this is an important point. We want a stable, prospering Middle East that is friendly to us but is also an inhospitable environment for our enemies. As the Mubarak regime showed, the stability of the oppressive autocrat resistant to change is an illusion. The region is a graveyard for strongmen who ignored the street.
A long-term US strategy must therefore embrace not just momentarily stabilising choices but those that will promote changes that make stability more durable. The stability tipping point in any society is when the majority of people feel working within the system is more within their interest than working outside of it. The Arab Awakening was a sign that many countries in the region were teetering at this point. Extremists sought to take advantage of this
To counter their initiatives we must support those who recognise the need to create systems that offer a better alternative than the mayhem and medieval values jihadists and their ideological cousins are selling -- in short, existences that are rewarding in both this life as well as in the next. Further, of course, we must recognise that stability in the Middle East cannot be imposed by outsiders. It must be cultivated from within.
It is the Sunni versus Sunni battle between extremists, who are the advocates of militant radical change and proponents of political Islam, and more moderate groups who are seeking to preserve Islam but do so in a way that is either more open to the evolution historical trends demand or at least does not seek to forcibly impose their views on nonbelievers. It is a battle between those who seek to violently force the clock backwards and those who believe that piety and progress can be made to coexist. One senior Arab diplomat with whom I spoke called it the new Middle East Cold War.
While the conditions and specific upheavals in each state in the Middle East are, as noted earlier, different, it is this battle that is responsible for the greatest amount of today’s unrest and violence.
Certainly, our traditional allies in the Middle East have come to see the problem as one. Consider the degree to which Israel and Egypt have cooperated to deal with Hamas. Consider that unifying animus towards the Muslim Brotherhood that has linked together not only those two former warring states but also many other countries.
While in some of these states there are individuals who support such extremist groups, the governments themselves are united in concern about the unchecked spread of the Islamic State.
It is a concern so great that it has even caused some to set aside for the moment unease with the support of Iran or Bashar Al Assad in the battle against that rising threat. It is so great that it has led to the formation of a new, closer Russian-Israeli relationship.
Perhaps it is a measure of the severity of such a threat that it inspires alliances, cooperation, and special degrees of tolerance among such strange bedfellows. But the loose coalescing of this group should be seen by a US that does not wish to shoulder too many risks and is sceptical of its ability to influence outcomes far from home as the great strategic opportunity of the moment.
American leadership in the years ahead will turn on our ability to reinvent our alliances and international institutions so that we can effectively achieve international goals.
This requires diplomacy. And it will require active and dependable commitments of many resources including aid, arms, intelligence, logistical support, air power of the manned and unmanned variety, and special operations. But it will also require a few other underdeveloped US skill sets -- diplomacy, the ability to listen, loyalty to longtime friends, a willingness to accept differences in values and approaches within alliances.
If this is a top priority it will also mean recognising that undercutting vital potential partners like Egypt or Israel or potential Gulf allies with our be ha vi or should be reassessed.
Relationships are complicated and we can still offer pressure when needed, but we need to keep our priorities -- stability in the region and the elimination of the extremist threats -- clear. That doesn’t mean blind support. Regimes that embrace activities that are likely to ultimately lead to instability should be steered away from those activities precisely because they are dangerous to our overall goal. Difficult problems will exist, of course. Eliminating Iranian nuclear weapons must be a US goal.
And Iran can be an ally against the Islamic State. It also can play an important role in ultimately producing change in governments in Syria and Iraq. But that is the kind of complexity that major strategies of this kind entail. Divisions and alliances don’t come neatly.
There are no risk-free initiatives. Indeed, if this recent period of flying without a flight plan reveals anything, it is that the search for risk-free options may be among the most dangerous paths to choose of all.
Because, as we have seen, given America’s unique role in the world, our consigning ourselves to the sidelines or sporadic, very limited interventions that exist outside a broader strategy only creates a bigger opening for our enemies, for the spread of fundamental threats, and for the possibility that this will someday be seen as a period of profound strategic failure for the US in the region and the world.
WP-BLOOMBERG
By David J Rothkopf
What would it look like if America actually had a Middle East strategy?
To begin with, of course, it would hardly look like what we are seeing today. At the moment, we are confronted with an unprecedented region-wide series of crises that are each seemingly being treated by US policymakers as though they were unrelated. American responses to each have been reactive, typically veering between the passive and the inadequate. While there has been lots of rumination about what could go wrong if we embraced risky or bad policies, there has been less focus on how to achieve our goals and seemingly precious little thought given to the consequences of our inaction. In short, at a particularly fraught moment in a dangerous and vital part of the world we seem to be without a clear vision or a plan for achieving it.
As a consequence, America’s vital national interests are suffering. A region of substantial economic importance to the US and to the world is spiralling into ever deeper instability. Allies are at risk.
Bad actors who pose a material security threat to the US and those allies are growing and multiplying and gaining strength. Unchecked or inadequately, haphazardly challenged, recent disturbing trends could grow much, much worse.
Still, our goals in the Middle East are straightforward: We have economic interests there such as the provision of energy resources, trade flows and investments we wish to protect and cultivate. We wish to maintain strong relationships with countries that can help us advance our geopolitical interests -- enhancing our influence, counterbalancing the power of potential rivals.
It’s clear that what we seek in the region is not only the kind of development that promotes and protects those who are well-disposed toward the US, but stability. But not just any stability -- and this is an important point. We want a stable, prospering Middle East that is friendly to us but is also an inhospitable environment for our enemies. As the Mubarak regime showed, the stability of the oppressive autocrat resistant to change is an illusion. The region is a graveyard for strongmen who ignored the street.
A long-term US strategy must therefore embrace not just momentarily stabilising choices but those that will promote changes that make stability more durable. The stability tipping point in any society is when the majority of people feel working within the system is more within their interest than working outside of it. The Arab Awakening was a sign that many countries in the region were teetering at this point. Extremists sought to take advantage of this
To counter their initiatives we must support those who recognise the need to create systems that offer a better alternative than the mayhem and medieval values jihadists and their ideological cousins are selling -- in short, existences that are rewarding in both this life as well as in the next. Further, of course, we must recognise that stability in the Middle East cannot be imposed by outsiders. It must be cultivated from within.
It is the Sunni versus Sunni battle between extremists, who are the advocates of militant radical change and proponents of political Islam, and more moderate groups who are seeking to preserve Islam but do so in a way that is either more open to the evolution historical trends demand or at least does not seek to forcibly impose their views on nonbelievers. It is a battle between those who seek to violently force the clock backwards and those who believe that piety and progress can be made to coexist. One senior Arab diplomat with whom I spoke called it the new Middle East Cold War.
While the conditions and specific upheavals in each state in the Middle East are, as noted earlier, different, it is this battle that is responsible for the greatest amount of today’s unrest and violence.
Certainly, our traditional allies in the Middle East have come to see the problem as one. Consider the degree to which Israel and Egypt have cooperated to deal with Hamas. Consider that unifying animus towards the Muslim Brotherhood that has linked together not only those two former warring states but also many other countries.
While in some of these states there are individuals who support such extremist groups, the governments themselves are united in concern about the unchecked spread of the Islamic State.
It is a concern so great that it has even caused some to set aside for the moment unease with the support of Iran or Bashar Al Assad in the battle against that rising threat. It is so great that it has led to the formation of a new, closer Russian-Israeli relationship.
Perhaps it is a measure of the severity of such a threat that it inspires alliances, cooperation, and special degrees of tolerance among such strange bedfellows. But the loose coalescing of this group should be seen by a US that does not wish to shoulder too many risks and is sceptical of its ability to influence outcomes far from home as the great strategic opportunity of the moment.
American leadership in the years ahead will turn on our ability to reinvent our alliances and international institutions so that we can effectively achieve international goals.
This requires diplomacy. And it will require active and dependable commitments of many resources including aid, arms, intelligence, logistical support, air power of the manned and unmanned variety, and special operations. But it will also require a few other underdeveloped US skill sets -- diplomacy, the ability to listen, loyalty to longtime friends, a willingness to accept differences in values and approaches within alliances.
If this is a top priority it will also mean recognising that undercutting vital potential partners like Egypt or Israel or potential Gulf allies with our be ha vi or should be reassessed.
Relationships are complicated and we can still offer pressure when needed, but we need to keep our priorities -- stability in the region and the elimination of the extremist threats -- clear. That doesn’t mean blind support. Regimes that embrace activities that are likely to ultimately lead to instability should be steered away from those activities precisely because they are dangerous to our overall goal. Difficult problems will exist, of course. Eliminating Iranian nuclear weapons must be a US goal.
And Iran can be an ally against the Islamic State. It also can play an important role in ultimately producing change in governments in Syria and Iraq. But that is the kind of complexity that major strategies of this kind entail. Divisions and alliances don’t come neatly.
There are no risk-free initiatives. Indeed, if this recent period of flying without a flight plan reveals anything, it is that the search for risk-free options may be among the most dangerous paths to choose of all.
Because, as we have seen, given America’s unique role in the world, our consigning ourselves to the sidelines or sporadic, very limited interventions that exist outside a broader strategy only creates a bigger opening for our enemies, for the spread of fundamental threats, and for the possibility that this will someday be seen as a period of profound strategic failure for the US in the region and the world.
WP-BLOOMBERG
