Change Agent
y now, it is definitively clear that the Obama administration has lost its way on Middle East policy. So much so, that it now poses tremendous dangers to the United States, Western interests, and the region as a whole. The cost of these mistakes will be, and already has been, measured in serious geopolitical losses, regional crises, and violent conflicts.
To a greater extent than any of its modern predecessors, the Obama administration has abandoned traditional diplomatic and international affairs concepts in its approach to the Middle East. This is not to say that there is no continuity at all in Washington’s Middle East policy. Yet the basic change in America’s approach under Obama has been far greater than the fluctuations in style and attitude that have punctuated previous handovers of power in the U.S. political system.
While the onset of the Arab Spring in early 2011 altered Administration policy from its original trajectory toward greater emphasis on reform and democratization (although not in every case), the basic patterns of the past two years have by and large continued. Some of the these “new think” attitudes include:
The importance of popularity. While wanting to be liked by other countries and their people is something of a theme in U.S. foreign policy history—one that stands in sharp contrast to almost every other government in the world—it has never been as high a priority as it is in the Obama administration. The desire to be popular has thus far profoundly shaped Administration policies, and the claim that Obama had made the United States popular again—though not necessarily supported by reliable polls—has been one of its main purported successes.
To be popular, of course, has required avoiding conflicts with others (even at times when there are real differences of interest) and showing special sensitivity (at times pandering) to what others wanted to hear. This was a perceived contrast with the George W. Bush administration, which was seen as making America especially disliked.
Getting along with Islam. To be liked has been interpreted as requiring an extreme sensitivity toward Islam—one that has gone far beyond the careful treatment of the religion provided by the preceding president in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The current president’s unique personal experience with, and sympathy toward, Islam has been a partial factor in this outlook. This was visible in President Obama’s speeches in Cairo and Istanbul (in April and June 2009, respectively); his banning of anything that even seemed to hint at a problem with radical political Islam (Islamism); and such symbolic gestures as ordering the head of NASA to focus on finding some great Muslim contribution to space exploration.
The redefinition of the Middle East in Islamic terms. This is a revolutionary albeit virtually unnoticed change, and the core idea of the President’s Cairo speech. Since the 1950s, the Arabic-speaking world’s politics have functioned largely within the framework of Arab nationalism. Western policies, in turn, have dealt with the area in those terms. Yet Obama’s “Islamic” approach has undermined that foreign policy line. This would be of tremendous importance with the outbreak of the “Arab Spring,” which has pitted Arab nationalist regimes and identity against Islamist identification and opposition movements.
A very specific view of terrorism and the threat to U.S. interests. In the Obama administration’s view, al-Qaeda is a dangerous enemy because it attacked the United States directly. But Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and even the Taliban (it allegedly has a moderate wing with which the United States is negotiating), can be moderated and rendered non-hostile. If not for pressure from pro-Israel forces, the Administration would probably extend this approach to Hamas as well (something Obama’s terrorism advisor, John Brennan, has advocated in private). Thus, there is no War on Terrorism (since only a small portion of terrorism is hostile and dangerous) and there is no war on revolutionary Islamism; only a war on al-Qaeda.
Emphasis on reconciling enemies rather than supporting friends. Believing in the importance of popularity, the potential moderation of Islamists, the avoidance of conflict, and so forth, the Administration has placed significant emphasis on winning over enemies. The Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, and Syria should be engaged. Compromise is possible with the Taliban (or at least part of it). And no serious, sustained criticism is forthcoming of the Palestinian Authority or the Islamist-oriented Turkish regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
At the same time, the concerns not only of Israel but also America’s traditional Arab allies—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the smaller Gulf Arab monarchies—have been systematically neglected and minimized. Its approach to the “Arab Spring,” for example, has been deeply counterintuitive; while the Administration came down firmly on the side of the opposition movements against pro-American regimes (such as Mubarak’s Egypt and Ben Ali’s Tunisia), it gave little help or even verbal support to the opponents of the anti-American regimes in Iran and Syria.
Downplaying American leadership. At the same time, the Obama administration has, very explicitly, criticized past U.S. policy as being insensitive, imperialistic, and bullying. Instead, it has placed greater dependence on the choices of allies, the UN, and even the Arab League (notably on the Libya issue). And while other administrations criticized Israel and gave support to the Palestinians, the Obama administration has gone further in trying to distance itself from the Jewish state in public perception. This situation should not be exaggerated; U.S.-Israel relations, after all, continue to function well on the military level. But that is precisely the point: whatever the actual state of affairs, the Obama administration has wanted to be seen publicly as distant from Israel and more supportive of the Palestinians as part of its strategy to win support from Muslims and Arabs.
Belief that change must be good and democracy inevitably triumphant. Similar to its domestic worldview, the Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the “Arab Spring,” arguing that nothing could go wrong and that a revolutionary Islamist “hijacking” of these events and takeover of power was not possible. Ironically, this was a caricature of the very Bush policy that Obama’s supporters had ridiculed.
All of these ideas are dead wrong, dangerous, and likely to lead to defeats for the United States, the weakening of its allies, the strengthening of its enemies, and the spawning of future crises.
Off the rails
The shortcomings of Obama administration policy emerge with startling clarity when one inventories precisely what has happened and how it has managed these challenges.
In Afghanistan, U.S. military strategy was based on the erroneous belief that American military forces could help create a stable and developing democratic polity. After an overly-long decision-making process, Obama opted for withdrawing U.S. forces while seeking a deal with the “moderate wing” of the Taliban. The problem is that a war in Afghanistan is unwinnable; that the Taliban will not disappear and is already going on the offensive in anticipation of U.S. withdrawal; that Pakistan is a thoroughly unreliable ally; and that the Afghan government is a mess. The Obama administration might get credit for withdrawing U.S. forces but the situation in Afghanistan is going to be a disaster. Clear anarchy at best, and a Taliban reconquest at worst, will not make the Obama administration’s Afghan policy look so good in future.
Recent events in Egypt are arguably the greatest single setback to U.S. interests since Iran’s 1979 revolution. In the first phase, the Obama administration strongly supported the overthrow of longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, trading his regime for an uncertain future. Thus, it lost the best U.S. partner in the Arabic-speaking world, a government that opposed revolutionary Islamism in general, along with Iranian ambitions. Now, Egypt’s second phase seems likely to produce an anti-American government of fixed Islamist and radical nationalist views, one that is unlikely to support U.S. goals, likely to empty of content the Egypt-Israel peace (and conceivably even go to war with Israel), and probably itself become a supporter of anti-American and revolutionary Islamist forces in the region. It is difficult to conceive of a more total setback, yet the most basic points of the above analysis remain generally unrecognized in Washington.
After a long effort at engagement with Iran that wasted precious time, the Administration did finally support strong sanctions on Tehran in late 2010. The problem is that a number of loopholes were built into sanctions legislation, at least in its current form, that essentially excused China, Russia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Moreover, while the Administration was ostensibly tough on Iran’s nuclear program, it did not even seem to recognize the larger strategic threat posed by the Islamic Republic. That is, little was done to oppose the expansion of Iranian influence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, or elsewhere. The principal Iranian challenge is through the use of backing revolutionary Islamist groups, covert warfare, funding, propaganda, and sponsoring terrorism—all elements to which the Obama administration has no serious response. Indeed, the current administration’s concept of “containing” Iran focuses almost exclusively on preventing Iran from using nuclear weapons—a worthwhile endeavor but far from the entire picture. Moreover, despite some positive verbiage, it has made no systematic effort to support the Iranian opposition in its struggle against the clerical state. Thus, Iran’s expanding power and influence can scarcely be said to have been troubled by Administration policy so far.
Although the Obama administration’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq makes sense on its own terms, in the context of a perceived weakening of American resolve and failure to confront Iran and other radical forces, it contributes to a sense in the region that—for allies—America is not reliable and—for enemies—it is highly vulnerable. The Iraqi government is faction-ridden and plagued with internal problems. This, of course, is not the Obama administration’s fault, but it makes the future of U.S.-Iraqi relations most insecure. While Iran won’t easily gain hegemony there, it is a serious geopolitical competitor to the United States, especially if Tehran is perceived to be winning by regional neighbors.
The best way to characterize U.S.-Israel relations during Obama’s presidency is as relatively unchanged in material terms but very much undermined in terms of mutual trust and strategic cooperation. In other words, the bilateral military relationship has continued with little alteration, but the Administration’s obvious eagerness to distance itself from Israel, its lack of understanding of that country’s needs, and specific mistaken U.S. policies have made Israeli leaders wary of trusting Obama, of taking risks, and of making concessions at his behest. Ironically, Obama himself has been the greatest saboteur of an already stricken “peace process.” His mistaken initial focus on the cessation of all construction of settlements; his refusal to criticize or pressure the Palestinian Authority; his ill-fated call for quick negotiations in the fall of 2009; and many other actions served to torpedo any possibility for negotiations. The truth is that Obama and his White House team have little understanding of the issues involved, and none at all of Israeli interests and motivations.
The Gaza Strip, meanwhile, stands as one of the Administration’s greatest failures—though not one of the better-understood ones. The policy of Israel, Egypt, and the Bush administration was to keep pressure on the Gaza Strip in order to ensure that the Hamas regime there remained weak and unstable, less able to launch war on Israel or spread its revolutionary Islamism. In addition, the idea was that a gap between a prosperous Palestinian Authority (PA)-ruled West Bank and a relatively impoverished Gaza Strip would increase popular support for the PA and decrease support for Hamas in both places. The Obama administration, however, trampled on this strategy. After the first Gaza flotilla, it handed the flotilla (and Hamas) a victory while getting nothing in exchange by pressuring Israel to reduce sanctions on the Gaza Strip to a minimum. Then it paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the PA for use in subsidizing former PA employees in Gaza—an understandable step, but a damaging one. Finally, by helping to bring down the Mubarak government, the White House guaranteed a pro-Hamas regime in Cairo and a virtually open border for shipping in weapons, money, and terrorists. It thereby laid the foundation for a future Hamas-Israel, and possibly Egypt-Hamas versus Israel, war.
The deterioration of the political situation in Lebanon was not helped by the policy of the Bush administration in its latter years. But Obama has made the situation much worse. Rather than back the moderate Sunni-Christian-Druze coalition, his Administration has followed a policy based on both non-intervention and a pro-Syrian stance. Despite some occasional statements, the U.S. government did nothing to stem a Hezbollah-led, Syrian- and Iranian-backed takeover of the Beirut government. The lack of U.S. support demoralized the moderate forces, while the openness of the U.S. government to Hezbollah’s empowerment was also most damaging. On Obama’s watch, Lebanon has changed over to the anti-American, pro-Islamist camp. Yet, once again, Washington does not even seem to comprehend the seriousness of its defeat there.
As with several other aspects of Obama administration policy, its dealings with Libya are close to being beyond belief. Frightened by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was “scared straight,” abandoning his nuclear program and changing his diplomatic course. There is, of course, no doubt that Gaddafi is a terrible dictator. Yet the U.S.’ decision to back an unknown opposition with NATO forces in a protracted civil war seemed precipitous to say the least. And once in, the Obama administration made every mistake that its leaders and supporters had spent years criticizing previous governments for: it pursued a military intervention that had not been thought through, made an open-ended commitment based on wishful thinking that the war would soon be won, overstretched U.S. forces, and put U.S. prestige into the hands of a questionable ally.
Among the many shortcomings of Obama policy is its inability to figure out that the Muslim Brotherhood is an anti-American, revolutionary Islamist group that wants to wipe Israel off the map and transform Egypt into an Islamist state. Reaching that conclusion did not seem the most difficult of tasks. Yet top Administration officials have asserted that the Brotherhood was moderate, nonviolent, non-Islamist, even secular. Before anyone even asked for his opinion, Obama declared that the United States had no problem seeing the Brotherhood in Egypt’s next government. In other words, the Administration gambled big-time, and on little intelligence, that either the Brotherhood would not win elections or that, if it did gain power, the group would turn out to be moderate. This could well turn out to be one of the greatest miscalculations in U.S. diplomatic history.
As in other cases, the Obama administration failed to perceive a major strategic shift in Turkey, and thus developed a policy totally out of sync with the situation and contrary to U.S. interests. The Turkish regime, whatever the cleverness of its tactics and the patience of its progression, is an Islamist one. Over the past several years, that government has moved into alignment with Syria (at least before that country’s upheaval) and Iran, while backing Hamas and Hezbollah, and becoming passionately anti-Israeli. It also acted contrary to U.S. policy on a number of issues, noticeably trying to sabotage the U.S. sanctions effort against Iran, while steadily diminishing freedoms within Turkey. Yet, despite some mention of the human rights issue by mid-2011, the Obama administration acted as if nothing had changed and that Turkey remained a stalwart ally. As the Turkish government whipped up anti-American fervor, the U.S. government continued to blithely ignore the danger. Indeed, its constant praise for the Turkish regime—even holding it up as a model for Arabic-speaking states—made the Turkish opposition feel betrayed and Turkish public opinion to conclude that there was no cost to be paid for sticking a finger in America’s eye.
Even in this list of remarkably bad policies, however, the Obama administration’s approach to Syria stands out as especially misconceived. The idea that the United States was going to pull Syria away from Iran (a patron that backed its ambitions, lavishly subsidized Syria and Syria’s clients, and provided it with both religious cover and strategic protection) was simply ludicrous. Equally misconceived was the belief that the United States could moderate the most radical and anti-American of contemporary Arab regimes, which has behaved in that way because such a posture well served the regime’s interests. The Obama administration thus undid many of the Bush-era sanctions while ignoring Syria’s help to terrorists killing Americans in Iraq; its backing for Hamas and Hezbollah; its efforts to seize control of Lebanon; its sabotaging of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and myriad other destructive actions. And when the Syrian people revolted against their regime—at a time when the Obama administration was proclaiming its support of change and democracy in the context of the Arab Spring—the U.S. government failed to rally to their side, thereby giving aid and comfort to the Assad regime. It would be difficult to imagine a policy more totally opposed to U.S. interests—and to sheer common sense.
Consequences to come
To say that Obama policy in the Middle East has been disastrous is not a partisan or ideological statement but merely a recounting of the facts. The damage to U.S. interests and regional stability are perilous indeed and will take years to reverse—if in fact it can be reversed at all.
Yet to focus on U.S.-Israel relations or on U.S. policy toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict is to miss the main point. For all the drama and passion expended on those issues, they are essentially a sideshow. The real problem is the decline in the U.S. strategic position in the region, the failure to address the great conflict going on in the region, the self-inflicted reduction of U.S. credibility and leverage, and even actions that strengthened America’s enemies.
None of the points herein are unknown in the Middle East. On the contrary, all of them are well understood, both by America’s worried friends and by its emboldened enemies. Of equal importance is the failure of the Obama administration to learn from its mistakes and experiences. This only augurs ill for the future; a number of crisis scenarios based on the developments presented above would pose tremendous challenges to an administration ill-equipped, both in terms of capability and worldview, to handle them.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA, and Middle East editor and a featured columnist at PajamasMedia. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). Yale University Press will publish his new book, Israel: An Introduction, in January 2012.
