Israel’s America Trap, Part 3: When “Democracy” trumps Realpolitik

Thursday Oct 27, 2011

American predictability is based on anticipated irrationality... a danger to her increasingly skeptical regional allies.

 

If the alternative to a repressive regime allied with and supportive of the US War on Terror is an Islamist regime likely more repressive and supportive of the enemy, why the enthusiasm in Washington for regime change?

 

American foreign policy has an evangelical soul. Nor is it content merely to evangelize, to bring the “good news” to those deemed less fortunate; it can also be activist in imposing regime change. It is within this context that American actions in Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya should be viewed.

 

The Arab Middle East typically divides between monarchies and “republics,” all to some degree authoritarian. Since there is no tradition of a “democratic” opposition the only replacement parties are either military or Islamist. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was forced underground by Mubarak following the assassination of Anwar Sadat. And today the Brotherhood’s most visible offspring are al-Qaeda and Hamas. Earlier this week an MB-inspired Islamist party in Tunisia, described by the New York Times as “moderate” although boasting a militant history, won the preliminary election in Tunisia; another MB-inspired party is likely to form the next government in Libya.

 

Although the Bush administration floated several rationales (sidestepping “oil”) to justify its invasion of Iraq the theme that always resurfaced was its desire to free the Iraqi people from the tyrant and bestow upon them democratic governance. Similarly when Obama identified with Cairo’s Tahrir protesters and ordered Mubarak out the intention was to replace the Egyptian tyrant with a liberal democracy. And how many Libyans died the result of the US-led allied intervention to protect them from their tyrant? And to what end, the likely successor regime a branch of the same Muslim Brotherhood?

 

The day following its grisly murder of Qadafi the leader of the National Transitional Council (NTC) Mustafa Jalil announced, "As a Muslim country, we have adopted theIslamic Sharia as the main source of law.” Does Obama really believe that Libya’s likely Brotherhood or al-Quaida successor regime will provide a more humane and liberal replacement Qadafi, that it will provide liberty and justice for all, for women? How will an Islamist Libya better confront Islamist terrorism than the deposed Qadafi regime, partner in America’s war against terror?

 

If America’s intervention in Egypt was motivated by “power to the people,” are the Egyptians and the US happy with the continuation of the military regime for which Mubarak was, after all, only the public face; would the Egyptian protesters have been better off with that other likely successor, the MB and Sharia law? In 1979 the US ousted its long-time ally the Shah of Iran in support of the student protesters of Tehran. Within four months the student leaders were murdered or imprisoned or, if lucky, had fled Iran.  

 

 

Reuters June 29, 2010: President Obama meets with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office.

 

If Bush chose to ignore regional leaders warning against deposing Sadam, Obama also chose to ignore the same regarding Mubarak: “It was no coincidence that the most outspoken proponents of Mr. Mubarak’s rule were Israel and Saudi Arabia who, with Egypt, formed the backbone of American dominance in the region.” During the crisis, US officials received “daily calls from Israel, Saudi Arabia and others who feared an Egypt without Mr. Mubarak would destabilize the entire region.” Whenever they got the chance, the Saudis told the United States to avoid undermining Mubarak.

 

Is it even possible that Obama’s advisors, from Biden and Clinton to his professional Middle East staff, failed to understand that Tahrir Square represented a disorganized and politically inchoate social protest, that the only organized and experienced alternative to the military were the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood? But the military, in power since Nasser overthrew the monarchy in 1952, was not likely to voluntarily leave the scene, as confirmed on 15 October, 2011: “Two members of the military councilthat took power after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak said for the first time in interviews this week that they planned to retain full control of the Egyptian government even after the election of a new Parliament begins in November. The legislature will remain in a subordinate role similar to Mr. Mubarak’s former Parliament, they said, with the military council appointing the prime minister and cabinet.”

 

Saudi Arabia: “The Obama administration and its support for democratic change in the Middle East has been on a collision course with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other traditional monarchies of the Persian Gulf. The crunch finally came this week with a sharp break over how to deal with protest in Bahrain.” The Saudis share a border with Yemen to the south, a causeway to Bahrain off their coast to the east. Any Iranian involvement in these countries would be a concern to the Saudis, and an issue they would look to the United States to back them on. But “the administration of President Barack Obama has dismissed any link between the Shi'ite revolt in Bahrain and Iran…U.S. officials have been arguing that Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy must make political compromises to give more power to the Shiite majority there… This American enthusiasm for change has been anathema to the conservative regimes of the Gulf, and on Monday they backed Bahrain’s ruling Khalifa family with military force, marching about 2,000 troops up the causeway that links Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.”

 

Is the principal of yet another Iran-inspired, Shiite-dominated “democracy” on the doorstep of the Saudis worth the threat to the production and transport of oil, to America’s home port to the Fifth Fleet tasked with protecting the waterway and the Straights of Hormuz through which the oil must transit? Where is American proportionality, a sense of American priorities, material national interests over ideology?
 

Implications for the region and for Israel: Relations between states, and particularly within alliances, are based on known and predictable interests. American foreign policy since 2002 has been anything but predictable. A rational assessment by the Bush administration should have concluded that, as Israel, the Saudis and virtually all Arab regimes warned, the principle regional threat lay not in Iraq, but Iran. Who could have predicted that the US would defy its own self-interest and replace Sadam with an Iran-friendly Shi’ite government in Iraq? Similarly in Egypt eight years later: what rationale assessment of American regional interests could justify Obama deposing Mubarak, the lynchpin of American influence in the Arab world?

 

Was it rational policy that informed Obama’s decision to go nose-to-nose with the Saudis over Iranian interference in Bahrain, thereby alienating even further the region’s largest and most influential oil producer; that the president would lead an allied war against Qadafi, another supporter of US policy regarding al-Qaeda? American policy may, by now, be predictable, but that predictability is based on anticipated irrationality. America has become a danger to her increasingly more skeptical regional allies.

 

A decade of confused US policy has greatly emboldened Iran in its challenge to America and its regional allies. Minus a hesitant United States the only other state capable of confronting Iran is Israel. And while American abrogation of responsibility for the security of the region may, in the end, force Israel to act in its own interest, whatever the military outcome of the conflict Israel would face new existential challenges. Regardless whether the decision to attack originates in Washington or Jerusalem Iran would retaliate against US bases forcing an American response. And blame for “forcing” the US into the war would likely have very significant consequences for the so-called “special relationship.”

Israel’s America Trap, Part 2: Appeasing Iran

Friday Oct 21, 2011

Attacking Iran would be costly… so appeasement became the default policy of Bush and his successor.

 

Why have two successive administrations avoided confronting multiple Iranian provocations against American interests in the Middle East? Why has the US refused to deal directly with Iranian funded and sometimes officered attacks on American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, against Iran-supported terrorism, its nuclear weapons program. Surely America’s leaders recognize that even the appearance of weakness emboldens Iran and erodes Arab confidence in America’s ability and resolve to stand behind its defense commitments, to defend its regional interests and allies?   

 

Last week I discussed the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, its growing “alliance” with Ahmadinejad to limit American casualties by limiting the scope of the war. This week I turn to Obama and how the Bush policy of dependence and appeasement continues to evolve under the new administration.  

 

Whoever ordered the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran its assurances “with confidence” that had Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 allowed Bush to abandon his cosmetic threats against Iran and “surge” his way into an “honorable” exit and allow his successor to deal with the conseq1uences of his 2011 withdrawal date. In his favor Obama inherited the Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan quagmire from Bush. But his more reasoned and less confrontational approach backed by sanctions would prove as ineffective as his predecessors bluster in dissuading Ahmadinejad from his hegemonic ambitions.  

 

The problem with sanctions is that there is much evidence indicating they are usually ineffective. Certainly this was true for the North Korea nuclear program. And Iran is both more resourceful and has more wealth and natural resources than her far eastern predecessor. Obama’s failure was not in having tried the more reasoned approach but in not appreciating its failure. Iran and the Arabs and perhaps all other countries expected the president to eventually stop putting off his deadlines and act as promised. With each successive deadline deferred Ahmadinejad’s gravitas grew on the Arab street, and Arab leaders dependent on America’s promise of a defense shield, grew increasingly anxious.

 

“The problem is that Obama’s White House, like George W. Bush’s, fears that taking too active a role against Iran and its assets will put U.S. military personnel at risk of Iranian retaliation in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to some U.S. intelligence estimates, Shiite Iran is responsible for far more American deaths and injuries in America’s two Middle East combat theaters than al-Qaida or other Sunni factions… Washington’s policy of not confronting Iran about its openly aggressive behavior has created a situation in which our troops are now effectively being held hostage.”

 

Unable to disengage from Iraq “with face” Obama followed his predecessor’s policy of spending American lives and treasure in an obviously no-win war.

 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the White House meeting planning withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, 22 January, 2009. The secretary and his Joint Chiefs chairman had long opposed a military strike against Iran.. Reuters

 

If Iran saw the US as its gladiator against Sadam’s Iraq, it was apparent that the Bush administration needed little encouragement (table talk to that effect preceded his election to the presidency). The administration must have been eager regarding Iranian supplied intelligence, particularly as it was supported by that second source, Iran’s man in the White House Ahmed Chalabi. Doubts regarding Chalabi’s loyalties surfaced not long after the invasion began. But by then the Bush was confronting Iran-backed militias, Iraq teetering on civil war. Under the circumstance the White House apparently saw its best option as cutting a deal with the devil, the backer of the militias, Iran: if Bush could not retreat at least he could limit American losses by limiting the scope of the war.  

 

For Iran, America was the perfect foil. Bush had eliminated their feared adversary at little cost to Iran. And the longer the Americans could be bogged down in Iraq the more freedom Iran would have to pursue its ambitions in the Arab world, and the nuclear weapons that would provide teeth to their ambitions. As for America, boots were on the Iraqi ground, it was not possible to just leave. Attacking Iran would be costly, so Bush chose to cut his losses and pay the price of reducing the loss of American lives by limiting the scope of the war. Appeasement became the default policy of Bush and his successor.  

 

“If the only country able and willing to go after Iran’s nuclear program is Israel, the only one who is capable of stopping the Israelis, Tehran realizes, is the United States. And so Iran and the United States now find themselves in one of the Middle East’s oddest alliances, with the United States unwittingly [?] aiding Iran in its effort to get the bomb.”

 

The United States attacked Iraq for reasons known only to the Bush administration. Certainly the excuses advanced at the time, WMD; democracy for the Iraqis; protection of the Arab oil monarchies and Israel, etc. were, as discussed last week, fallacious. As to the war’s achievements:

 

In lives lost: Iraq, the country the US set out to “save from Sadam,” more than 150,000 dead, civilian and fighters, between 2003-11, and millions more refugees;

 

America, as of 28 May, 2010, 4,404 lives lost, and another 32,000 wounded (small compared to Vietnam over a comparable period);

 

Financial costs of this under-the-table funded war in dollars: according to the Department of Defense, at least $757.8 billion. But this figure does not begin to cover interest accumulating and owed on the borrowed funds, and money spent and anticipated for the care of our wounded, etc. Agreeing with an MIT study, The Washington Post recently put the real cost the war at around $4 trillion, and described the impact on the US economy:

“This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared… As a result of two costly wars funded by debt, our fiscal house was in dismal shape even before the financial crisis -- and those fiscal woes compounded the downturn… The global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the war.”

And what has the United States achieved by “saving” the Iraqi people from their oppressive Baathist regime, by turning over the reigns of power to the formerly downtrodden Shiite masses? After eight years and four thousand America lives, four trillion dollars already spent or in the pipeline America transformed Iraq from firewall against, to vassal state of America’s principle regional enemy, Iran. And under Iranian influence that American-installed Shiite-ruled Iraqi government is showing their hapless benefactor to the exit.

 

In 2008 Bush signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw all troops by 2011. But to withdraw means Iraq is easy prey for an Iranian takeover, throwing open the entire region to the Iranian threat.  

 

JCS chairman Mike Mullen delivers a “deadline” for Iraq to permit a residual American force after withdrawal. Reuters

 

“An Obama administration proposal to keep a few thousand American troops here after the end of the year to train the Iraqi military is being scaled back, as the administration has concluded that the Iraqi Parliament would not give the troops legal protection.”

 

And if, as likely, the proposal fails the Times article continues, “they could still return next year [sic] to negotiations that would allow the return of some American personnel.” That is, after Iran is even more entrenched in the running of the “democratic” Republic of Iraq!

 

Perhaps more than anything else, the Bush-Obama policy of appeasement towards Iran best represents America’s failure at strategic foresight, its declining position in the world, its voluntary or not withdrawal into isolationism.