Showing posts with label Saudi Arabia. Show all posts

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Iran's strong geopolitical hand

Iran’s Surprisingly Strong Geopolitical Hand

While the short-term outlook still looks uncertain for Iran, the larger fundamentals hugely favor it.

By James M. Dorsey, March 12, 2017

Credit: Robert Hale Shutterstock.com

Takeaways

The Saudi battle with Iran is unequal because Iran brings assets to the table that Saudi Arabia lacks.
It matters to China that Iran has the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and fourth-largest oil reserves.
Saudi Arabia might make a few friends in Beijing for now, but Iran still holds far more of the good cards.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman hopes to exploit a window of opportunity while in Beijing to loosen China’s affiliations with Iran. But he faces long odds.

The Saudi battle with Iran is fundamentally unequal because Iran brings assets to the table that Saudi Arabia lacks.
Those assets, no matter how degraded, include a large population, an industrial base, resources, a battle-hardened military, a deep-rooted culture, a history of empire and a geography that makes it a crossroads.

1. Walking a Tightrope: China Maneuvers Between Saudi Arabia and Iran
2. Why Iran has the Longterm Regional Upper Hand over the Saudis

Saudi Arabia’s traditional assets – including custodianship of the Muslim holy cities, Mecca and Medina, and money — will in the middle and long term not be able to compete.

Iran as an OBOR pivot point

Iran’s strategic advantage is nowhere more evident than in global competition to shape the future architecture of Eurasia’s energy landscape.
Energy scholar Micha’el Tanchum argues that Iran is pivotal to the success of China’s trans-continental, infrastructure-focused One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative in ways that Saudi Arabia is not.
In a study published in 2015, Mr. Tanchum suggested that it would be gas supplies from Iran and Turkmenistan, two Caspian Sea states, rather than Saudi oil that would determine which way the future Eurasian energy architecture tilts: Will it be in the direction of China, the world’s third-largest LNG importer, or in that of Europe?

Iran will choose its buyers

In that context, it matters greatly to China that Iran has the ability to capitalize on the fact that it boasts the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and its fourth-largest oil reserves was significantly enhanced with the lifting in 2015 of international sanctions.

Enlarge Source: International Gas Union

According to Mr. Tanchum:

“Iran, within five years, will likely have 24.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas available for annual piped gas exports beyond its current supply commitments.”

“Not enough to supply all major markets, Tehran will face a crucial geopolitical choice for the destination of its piped exports.”

1. European Union (EU)/ Turkey via the Southern Gas Corridor centering on the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP)

2. India via an Iran-Oman-India pipeline, or

3. China via either Turkmenistan or Pakistan.

“The degree to which the system of energy relationships in Eurasia will be more oriented toward the European Union or China will depend on the extent to which each secures Caspian piped gas exports through pipeline infrastructure directed to its respective markets.”

In other words, Mr. Tanchum argued that to determine the balance of power in Eurasian energy and establish One Belt, One Road as the key determinant of Eurasia’s energy architecture, China would need to position itself as the main recipient of Iranian and Turkmen gas.

China as a natural partner

That, in turn, would enhance China’s growing economic influence in Central Asia, and further extend it to the Caucasus and the eastern Mediterranean.
China has already many of the building blocks needed to make that a reality:

close and long-standing relations with Iran

significant investment in Turkmen gas production and pipeline infrastructure

the construction of Pakistan’s section of the Iran-Pakistan pipeline.

Hooking the pipeline to One Belt, One Road would allow China to receive Iranian gas not only by sea on its eastern seaboard, but also in its land-locked, troubled north-western province Xinjiang.
However, Iran’s geo-political strengths are however not wholly dependent on aligning the Islamic republic with China.

Other friends keep the competition lively

With the development of Iran’s Indian-built Chabahar port and the undersea Iran-Oman-India pipeline that would potentially create an alternative Asia-to-Europe energy corridor, Iran is, according to Mr. Tanchum, well-positioned to play both ends against the middle.
In addition, it can adopt a key role in the trans-Atlantic community’s effort to strengthen relations with India as an antidote to the rise of China.

Iran’s surprisingly strong gas leverage

Iran’s geopolitical significance is further enhanced by the fact that competition for Iranian gas is very real and offers leverage.
Contrary to some assumptions, Iranian cooperation with Russia in Syria and elsewhere is opportunistic and unlikely to prove sustainable, rather than a sure thing Russia can count on for preferential economic treatment:
– Iranian-Russian competition is already visible in the Caucasus and Central Asia, which ironically mitigates in Europe’s rather than China’s favor.
– Iran is likely to deepen energy cooperation with Turkey. The intent here is two-fold: First, it is a bid to enhance its influence in that country
Second, it would help curtail Russian inroads in the Islamic republic’s northern neighbors – Azerbaijan; Turkmenistan, which is China’s principle gas supplier as well as Armenia (where Russia’s state-owned Gazprom has invested in an Iran-Armenia gas pipeline).
All of this positions Iran to be a very choosy supplier and negotiator.
In Beijing and beyond, Saudi Arabia might make a few friends for now, but in the longer run, Iran still holds far more of the good cards.
Anyone already aligned with Iran or considering such an alliance will think twice before walking away from the Islamic republic to back the kingdom.

Tags: China, China foreign policy, Iran, Iran foreign policy, latest, OBOR project, Saudi Arabia

About James M. Dorsey

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and an award-winning journalist.

Full bio → | View all posts by James M. Dorsey →

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Moscow - Tehran Alliance

Published on February 16th, 2017 | by Mark N. Katz8

Targeting Iran’s Regime Will Strengthen, Not Break, the Moscow-Tehran Alliance

by Mark N. Katz
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on February 13, hawkish scholar Michael Ledeen argued that “dismantling the Khamenei regime as peacefully as possible” is the best way to end what he describes as the Russian-Iranian alliance. His argument, though, contained several questionable assertions that cast doubt on the feasibility of his policy recommendations.
Early on in the article, Ledeen notes that before Russia intervened in Syria in September 2015, the survival of the Assad regime was seriously threatened despite receiving military assistance from Iran. But his assurance that “[w]ithout Russian bombers and special forces, Iran would face defeat, as would Mr. Assad” is not necessarily true. Now that Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah (as well as other Shi’a militia forces) have inflicted severe losses on the opposition to Assad, Iran and its Shi’a allies could likely defend Assad even if Russian forces withdrew. Further, with Saudi Arabia now preoccupied with the conflict in Yemen and Turkey focused on suppressing the Kurds in both Turkey and Syria, it is not clear that these two countries would be willing or able to support the Syrian opposition to the point where it could threaten the Assad regime as it did just prior to the Russian intervention.
Although Ledeen describes the Russian-Iranian relationship as “very tight,” he points out several reasons why Putin should prefer a “nonjihadi” Iranian regime. These include Iran’s strong military and nuclear capabilities. Although many in the West and Israel understandably fear Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, Russia is not equally fearful of this outcome. Indeed, many Russian scholars and observers I have spoken with over the years are incredulous that the U.S. actually fears an Iranian nuclear capability. America, after all, has tolerated a nuclear Pakistan, which many in Moscow see as far more erratic and threatening than Iran. They also wonder why the rules of nuclear deterrence—nuclear states are deterred from launching nuclear attacks by the knowledge that they will immediately come under nuclear attack themselves—are not seen as applying to Iran. The ayatollahs, after all, want to preserve their rule, not see it destroyed.
Ledeen’s assertion that Iran “supported separatist Muslim movements in the ‘stans and Chechnya” is just plain false. To this day, Russian observers express appreciation for Iran’s cooperating with Moscow to negotiate an end to the Tajik civil war in the 1990s instead of supporting the opponents of the Kremlin-backed post-Soviet regime there. And, unlike certain Arab countries, Iran did not support the Chechen rebels. The desire to maintain good relations with Moscow as well as the fear that Chechen secession would inflame secessionist movements inside Iran were far more important to Tehran than solidarity with fellow Muslims (especially ones who are Sunni).
This leads to another point that Ledeen overlooked: Russian and Iranian cooperation is not just based on common animosity toward America and Israel, but also on a common fear of Sunni jihadists. Just as groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are anti-Western, they are also anti-Shi’a as well as anti-Russian. Moscow and Tehran, then, have a common interest in working against them independent of their shared antipathy toward the U.S.
Toward the end of his article, Ledeen recognizes that the U.S. is not really in a position to offer a deal to Moscow that would draw it away from Tehran. His recommendation for breaking the Russian-Iranian alliance, then, is to help the “vast majority of Iranians” (whom he numbers in the millions) “topple the Islamic Republic and establish a secular government resembling those in the West.” But America’s efforts to promote democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya should raise doubts about its ability to do so in a much larger country such as Iran. Ledeen does not actually call for U.S.-led military intervention in Iran, but he doesn’t explain how some lesser degree of American support can enable even millions of Iranians to topple the Islamic Republic. The ayatollahs and their Republican Guard allies have, after all, been quite successful at suppressing the regime’s opponents. Ledeen does not explain how this is going to change now.
Further, it is not clear that the downfall of the Islamic Republic would actually result in a “secular government resembling those in the West.” One possibility is that an even more zealous regime could replace the current Islamist one. Another is that, like Iraq and Syria, the downfall of an authoritarian regime that holds the country together by force could result in an outbreak of secessionist conflict involving groups with cross-border ties: Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, and Baluchis. Despite the examples of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, Ledeen does not acknowledge even the possibility that the downfall of the current authoritarian regime in Tehran could lead to indefinite conflict there—which would not benefit America’s allies or interests in the region.
Last but not least: If Tehran even suspects that the Trump administration is seriously attempting to topple it as Ledeen proposes, the immediate effect will be to motivate the country to strengthen its alliance with Russia. And if Putin thinks that Washington is attempting to topple the Islamic Republic, this will only increase his fears that Washington could try to topple him too. Following Ledeen’s policy advice, then, is only likely to strengthen the Russian-Iranian alliance and not end it.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

ABD Yönetimleri Yemen'deki Suudi savaş suçlarını örtbas etmekle suçlanıyor.

February 3, 2017

Trump Admin. Covers Up Saudi War Crimes in Yemen, Exaggerates Iran's Role

Ben Norton tells Paul Jay that the U.S. and Saudis are overwhelmingly responsible for the atrocities committed in Yemen

PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay.

On Thursday morning, Press Secretary Spicer said this:

Press Secretary SEAN SPICER: I think General Flynn was really clear yesterday that Iran has violated the Joint Resolution, that Iran’s additional hostile actions that it took against our Navy vessel are ones that we are very clear are not going to sit by and take, I think that we will have further updates for you on those additional actions, but clearly we wanted to make sure that Iran knows they are on notice, this is not going unresponded to.

PAUL JAY: Not only was it not an American ship, in fact it was a Saudi ship. and it wasn't the Iranians, it was the Houthis. In fact, if this even took place. But clearly it was not an Iranian attack on an American ship.

Now joining us to discuss all of this is Ben Norton. Ben is a reporter for Alternet. His work is also featured in publications like FAIR, Media Watch and The Intercept. He was previously a staff writer at Salon.com. Thanks very much for joining us, Ben.

BEN NORTON: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

PAUL JAY: Tell us just a little bit of context, though, in terms of where things are at in Yemen, and why this is such a trigger point.

BEN NORTON: Yeah, but we should also be clear that Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary is on record now lying multiple times. In fact, in his first press conference, he went out and claimed in an outlandish lie that the inauguration crowd on January 20th, at Trump's inauguration, was historically large. In fact, it was historically small. So even though small lies like that, which are demonstrably false, I think demonstrate that we should be very skeptical of anything they say at all.

So certainly, when they go out and make an outlandish lie claiming that Iran hit a U.S. vessel, this is absolutely preposterous and, of course, it contributes this fear, this atmosphere of fear-mongering about Iran.

And Yemen, this is an issue that I've reported on a lot, but unfortunately it's not gotten much attention in the U.S. media, let alone in U.S. politics. It was not mentioned at all in the presidential election, but since March 2015, the U.S. has staunchly backed a Saudi-led war on Yemen.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. More than 80% of the population for two years now has been in desperate need of humanitarian aid, according to humanitarian groups. Not only is there a massive bombing campaign that the U.S. has backed, and Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition of 10 Arab countries all Sunni majority that are fighting rebels inside Yemen which are called the Houthis. This is not a religious conflict, but the Houthis are themselves Shi'a and that kind of shows the political alliances. There are allegations that the Houthis that the Saudi-led coalition are fighting are backed by Iran. Rhetorically, they certainly have expressed support for Iran. Politically, they're certainly aligned. The question is how much material support they've gotten from Iran, and that is debated.

I mean, most people agree who seriously look at this, and serious analysts will agree, that Iran's influence is certainly extant, but it's not large. Iran has sent weapons shipments, likely, to the Houthis through Oman, but although Oman said that they're going to stop allowing this to happen. But at the end of the day, the Houthis don't necessarily need access to foreign weapons.

Yemen is also one of the most highly militarized -- just in terms of sheer number of weapons -- countries in the world. Most households have guns. So the Houthis don't have a shortage of weapons, and at the end of the day the Houthis are themselves Yemeni, but a lot of Saudi propaganda that has been echoed by the U.S. government for two years now has claimed that the Houthis are Iranian proxies.

The Washington Post actually published a very good article based on an expert's analysis saying that, no, the Houthis actually are not Iranian proxies, and I would invite anyone interested in further information to read that.

But at the end of the day, the Trump administration is really using their ties to Iran to push for more aggressive action. And, of course, another thing to mention really quickly is that the war in Yemen has been absolutely catastrophic, and destabilizing, too.

Trump's first raid that was carried out, was carried out in Yemen and it was a complete disaster. At least one U.S. Navy SEAL died, which got a lot of attention. But what got less attention is that, according to local medics, more than 10 civilians, including women and children, were killed in the Navy SEAL raid, one of whom was an eight-year-old girl, Nawar al-Awlaki, whose father, Anwar al-Awiaki, was killed in a U.S. drone strike. He was an al Qaeda propagandist, and his 16-year-old son was also killed in a U.S. drone strike. He... Abdulrahman was a U.S. citizen.

So, I mean, when you look at Iranian policy in the region I think there's a lot of exaggeration. The U.S. is really overstating Iran's influence and the war in Yemen--

PAUL JAY: And I think there's another part of this -- the Saudis have been accused of war crimes in the Yemen war, which are at least equal to or similar to the accusations against the Assad government and the Russians, yet there's not a whisper of an accusation of war crimes against the Saudis from the U.S. government.

BEN NORTON: Absolutely. And Saudi Arabia has carried out many documented war crimes -- according to human rights groups -- with weapons that were sold by the U.S. and the U.K. Saudi Arabia has... we now have documentation that they have used cluster munitions in civilian areas in Yemen.

According to the UN report released last February, which was authored by a panel of experts on the war in Yemen, they documented Saudi-led coalition attacks on hospitals, schools, civilian homes, weddings, you can go down the list, even a humanitarian aid warehouse operated by Oxfam, even a refugee camp, and of course, the U.S. is staunchly supporting this. Not only is the U.S. providing weapons, the U.S. and the U.K. have provided military intelligence to the Saudi-led coalition. And in fact, there were reports that American and British military officials were physically in the command room with Saudi bombers when they were choosing their targets. And then, of course, the U.S. has done more than a thousand refueling sorties for Saudi planes. So several months ago, in October, when Saudi Arabia bombed a funeral and injured and killed up to 600 people, most of whom were civilians, the next day, the U.S. government helped refuel Saudi war planes.

PAUL JAY: But wasn't there a report -- I saw a report that the Obama administration was actually withholding a certain amount of arms sales to the Saudis because of the amount of civilian deaths. We're unlikely to see that under the Trump administration, but is that correct, that the Obama administration had pulled back some arms sales?

BEN NORTON: Well, there was a report that claimed that Secretary of State Kerry at the time, had made a deal with Jubeir, who is the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, and that they claimed that the U.S. was going to stop one U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia, which was worth about $1 billion. That may have actually been exaggerated. Reuters released a story quoting Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, in which he downplayed the significance politically of what happened, and he said that it was mostly a kind of bureaucratic development, it wasn't really a political decision.

But even if that is true, if we give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt, still the Obama administration did record high arms sales, not just with Saudi Arabia, but with the whole of the Middle East -- especially with very repressive regimes who the State Department acknowledges carry out extreme human rights violations.

So, in the case of Saudi Arabia, in his eight years in office, the Obama administration offered more than $115 billion -- $115 billion with a B -- in arms sales just to Saudi Arabia alone. And, of course, several billion of those have gone to weapons that have been used inside Yemen.

As I mentioned, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have photographic and video evidence of cluster munitions fragments that were made in the U.S. that were in the ruins of civilian areas, of homes and hospitals and such inside Yemen. So there's no question that at the end of the day the Obama administration was fuelling actively the war inside Yemen, which according to the UN, has led to more than 10,000 civilian deaths, and those are only the violent deaths. In fact, UNICEF this week said that last year alone 63,000 children -- this is just children -- 63,000 children died from preventable causes, mostly because of lack of access to medical care and malnutrition.

PAUL JAY: Right.

BEN NORTON: And we now know -- I mean, I've written on this, other people including Patrick Cockburn -- have written on how Saudi Arabia-led coalition backed by the U.S. and the U.K. has intentionally targeted civilian infrastructure, especially food production, inside Yemen, which has led to mass starvation. The UN has repeatedly, for more than year, warned that Yemen is on the brink of famine, and more than 14 million people are going hungry.

So, at the end of the day, the U.S. keeps blaming Iran for this ... but Iran's role in Yemen is very limited, and actually at the end of the day, it's a war led by Saudi Arabia with support from the U.S. and the U.K. against Yemenis. Because the Houthis are Yemenis.

PAUL JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Ben.

BEN NORTON: Thanks for having me.

PAUL JAY: All right, thanks, Ben. Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

Friday, December 30, 2016

Syria will stain Obama's legacy forever

Syria Will Stain Obama’s Legacy Forever

The arc of history is long, but it won't ever judge the president's Syria policy kindly.

By David Greenberg

December 29, 2016

Barack Obama’s impending departure from the White House has put many Americans in an elegiac mood. Despite an average approval rating of only 48 percent — the lowest, surprisingly, of our last five presidents — he has always been beloved, if not revered, by the scribbling classes. Just as many prematurely deemed Bush the worst president ever, so many are now ready to enshrine Obama as one of the all-time greats.
Or at least they were until the fall of Aleppo.
Since the Syrian uprising began in 2011, Americans have regarded the carnage there as essentially a humanitarian disaster. For Obama, contemplating his legacy, the awful death and destruction that Syria has suffered — the 400,000 deaths, the wholesale wasting of civilian neighborhoods, the wanton use of sarin gas and chlorine gas and barrel bombs, the untold atrocities — has raised the old question of how future generations will judge an American president’s passivity or ineffectuality in the face of mass slaughter.
Perhaps Obama has been hoping for a dispensation, since presidential reputations have never suffered much for such sins of omission. With a few notable exceptions, biographies, textbooks, obituaries, and even public memory have dwelled little on George W. Bush’s inaction in Darfur, Bill Clinton’s floundering over Rwanda, George H.W. Bush’s dithering about Bosnia, Jimmy Carter’s fecklessness in Cambodia, Gerald Ford’s cold realism toward East Timor, or Richard Nixon’s complicity in Bangladesh. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler reportedly said in 1939, predicting that the world’s amnesia about the Turks’ mass killings should allow his armies to proceed in all ruthlessness without fear of judgment. We might think of those words in considering how little attention in our history books is given to our presidents’ very limited roles in standing up to atrocities overseas.
And yet now, as Obama’s presidency winds down, and a ceasefire begins to take effect Syria that Washington played no role in negotiating, it’s becoming clear that the loss of life and the humanitarian crisis represent just the first of many consequences that historians will have to assess as they ask how the United States, under Obama’s leadership, chose to deal, or not to deal, with the Syrian Civil War. And if historians tend to give presidents a pass on failing to arrest slaughter, they are not so generous in evaluating the loss of American influence around the world.

Right now, the apparent loss of that influence seems to loom newly large. The brutal Russian-backed assault in December crushed the Syrian resistance in its main holdout city, Aleppo, calling into question whether the rebel forces will still be able to carry on any insurrection at all. President Bashar al-Assad is gathering with the despots of Russia, Turkey, and Iran to draw up the terms of resolution, pointedly excluding the United States and the United Nations. Vladimir Putin seems high in his saddle.
For years, Obama has insisted that Syria isn’t of great strategic importance to the United States. But that judgment represents not just a break from decades of geostrategic thinking but a gamble of considerable risk. If Obama is wrong, his miscalculation could have massive implications.Should Russia displace the United States as the region’s preeminent great power, it will affect America’s access to energy, its ability to fight terrorism, its capacity to ensure Israel’s survival, and its relationship with states like Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
Equally important are the implications of Obama’s Syria policy on Europe’s immigration crisis. For decades the continent has struggled, with mixed results, to assimilate Muslim arrivals from the Middle East and Africa, many of whom come bearing sharply alien cultural values. But the new waves of Syrian refugees unleashed by the failure to contain the civil war there has now created a crisis of unparalleled magnitude. Countries from Turkey and Hungary to Germany and France have been thrown into turmoil. Cultural tensions escalated, empowering right-wing nationalist parties across the continent and contributing to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. In the United States this past year, Donald Trump amplified his own pandering to anti-Mexican sentiment with new worries about an influx of Syrian refugees — stoking anti-immigrant fears. Around the world, it seems, the rise of noxious populist currents can be traced, at least in part, to the deepening of the immigration crises by the Syrian war.
Yet a third result of Obama’s ineffectuality lay in the rise of the Islamic State, a terrorist organization even more bloody-minded and bent on conquest than the al Qaeda fragments from which it sprang. Obama obviously did not create the Islamic State, contrary to Donald Trump’s absurd campaign-trail slanders. But his administration was laggard in countering its gathering strength. Although the terrorist outfit is on the defensive now, it continues to orchestrate deadly strikes in Europe, and, indirectly, to inspire lone-wolf attacks in the United States, guaranteeing that terrorism will remain a major threat on both continents for years to come.

Buses drive through the Syrian government-controlled crossing of Ramous on the outskirts of Aleppo on Dec. 18. (Photo by GEORGE OURFALIAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Syrian families, fleeing various eastern districts of Aleppo, queue to get onto governmental buses on Nov. 29. (Photo by GEORGE OURFALIAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Jameel Mustafa Habboush, a 13-year-old Syrian boy, receives oxygen as he is pulled from the rubble of a building after air strikes on the Fardous neighborhood of Aleppo on Oct. 11. (Photo by THAER MOHAMMED/AFP/Getty Images)

Syrians carry the body of a man following air strikes on the Fardous neighborhood of Aleppo on Oct. 12. (Photo by AMEER ALHALBI/AFP/Getty Images)

Fourth, the failure to contain the Islamic State early on also forced the United States to change its strategy in Syria. Turning his attention from Assad, Obama now chose to direct American military assistance mainly into the fight against the radical Islamist group. Among other effects, this reorientation of American policy made it much less likely — if not impossible — for Obama to deliver on his August 2011 vow that Assad must go.
Fifth and finally, it wasn’t only Assad who emerged emboldened. Fatefully, in 2012 Obama had declared that if Assad were to use chemical weapons, he would cross a red line that would require American military intervention. A year later, evidence surfaced that Assad did precisely that, firing rockets filled with sarin gas at towns around Damascus. But in the face of skeptical congressional opinion at home, Obama backed down from reprisals. Instead he settled for a Russian proposal that Syria merely dismantle its weapons stockpiles, but face no punishment for its war crimes.
Obama has made clear that he disdains the concept of “credibility” — the idea that the U.S. must follow through on its commitments lest it get pushed around in the future. But the reversal of policy in September 2013 on a clearly articulated principle sent shivers from Seoul to Jerusalem to Tallinn — and may well have encouraged America’s adversaries, including Russia, to test Obama further. Putin’s illegal 2014 seizure of Crimea and the ongoing fomenting of unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine were worrisome enough. But now evidence suggests that the Russian president played a direct role in hacking Democratic Party officials’ emails in an effort to tip the scales of the presidential election in favor of Trump. These disclosures have shattered any claims that Obama showed sufficient resolve against a formidable, confident, and completely immoral rival for geopolitical influence.

How all of this will affect Obama’s reputation in the long run is difficult to predict. Observers can only speculate, recognizing all the while that we can’t know which elements of Obama’s policy future historians will emphasize and which they will ignore, which they will esteem and which they will scorn.
Sadly, it seems probable that Obama won’t be judged too harshly for failing to arrest the carnage in Syria. For all our fretting, inaction in the face of genocide or mass slaughter or humanitarian disaster has never hurt our presidents much in the historical reckonings. It is true that in the wake of the Holocaust, Americans grew conscious of the sufferings of foreign peoples and of their own responsibility, as citizens of the world’s mightiest nation, to try to do something. Looking at the past through this new lens, even the sainted Franklin D. Roosevelt took a mild hit, as historians learned more about and came to question his failure to assist the Jewish refugees of Europe, to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz, or otherwise impede or retard Hitler’s killing machine. More recently, historians and journalists like Samantha Power, Ben Kiernan, and Gary J. Bass directed historians’ attention to other genocides and mass slaughters. Human rights advocates argued more vociferously that the world’s mightiest nations had a duty to try to prevent such atrocities.

An injured Syrian child receives treatment at a makeshift hospital in Douma on Oct. 3. (Photo by ABD DOUMANY/AFP/Getty Images)

Foreign diplomats from Egypt, Russia, the United Sates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Jordan meet in an attempt to revive a ceasefire on Oct. 15. (Photo by JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT/AFP/Getty Images)

A rebel fighter throws a tire onto a fire to keep smoke from billowing during battles with Syrian government forces in Douma on Sept. 5. (Photo by SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP/Getty Images)

Two Syrian refugees sit at Piraeus harbor in Athens on March 6 after at least 25 migrants when their wooden boat capsized in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. (Photo by ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/Getty Images)

But that consciousness peaked in the 1990s, and because military interventionism has fallen out of fashion since the Iraq War, it has been receding. Obama may have sought some solace in the fact that presidents’ reputations have not typically suffered for inaction in the face of mass slaughter.
They do suffer, however, for frittering away American power and prestige. Though Harry Truman wins high marks for his handling of the communist threat in Europe, he and the Democratic Party were haunted for years by the question, following Mao Zedong’s civil war victory in 1949, of “Who lost China?” — feeding a domestic political environment that arguably made his successors keener to intervene in Vietnam, Laos, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Similarly, Jimmy Carter’s inability to deal effectively either with the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan or the revolutionary Iranian government’s seizure of 52 American hostages contributed to his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 as well as to the low esteem in which his foreign policy is held by scholars. Presidents can’t, of course, always prevent the outbreak of conflicts and wars, but how they respond to those wars — and whether the U.S. emerges from them stronger or weaker, and the world safer or more precarious — is a telling measure of leadership.
On the other hand, as Obama knows well, presidents also suffer for wars gone badly. Lyndon Johnson should be remembered as one of America’s greatest presidents, but his stubborn prosecution of the Vietnam War, despite knowing it was unwinnable, has kept him out of the pantheon of greatness. (It’s possible that when the Vietnam-obsessed Baby Boomers pass from the scene, LBJ will be judged with greater balance and charity.) George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, similarly, with all its disastrous implications, is likely to remain the central episode of his presidency for a long time, outranking even his more successful response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Indeed, Obama, entering office after Bush’s ruinous adventurism, made the avoidance of another quagmire his primary goal. Encouraged by national security aides who hailed from the realm of domestic politics, Obama let the fear of crossing antiwar opinion dictate his path. Yet in treading lightly, Obama misplaced his big stick. A conciliator by nature, he had reached the presidency on promises to unite inimical groups — red-staters and blue-staters, whites and blacks — and in his inaugural address he likewise pledged to bridge the gap with the Arab world. But just as he wasn’t prepared for the implacability of congressional Republicans, who scorned his outstretched hand in a bid to bolster their own power, so he did not count on foreign adversaries taking advantage of his aversion to conflict.

Obama’s Syria legacy won’t be the only factor shaping how posterity regards his foreign policy. The uneven efforts to wind down the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the still-controversial Iran nuclear deal, the opening to Cuba, the weakening of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the struggles to revive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians — these add up to a mixed and complicated record whose implications will take time and thought to untangle. It may be that his focus on building alliances in Asia will prove, despite the collapse of his Trans-Pacific Partnership, to be of greater long-term significance than his misadventures in Syria. But for now it seems hard to escape the conclusion that in correcting for Bush’s overly aggressive foreign policy, Obama went too far in avoiding confrontations, and that in that halting and hesitant approach he wound up neither strengthening his country’s influence and status nor its power to bring about its ultimate goal of a safer and more peaceful world.
Top image credit: Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration

David Greenberg is a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers. His most recent book is Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Uncertainties require a new Mideast security structure

2017 Uncertainties Require a New Mideast Security Structure

by Adnan Tabatabai Published on December 23rd, 2016 | by Adnan Tabatabai

2016 certainly bore no good news for the Middle East. Wars are being waged with greater intensity, and the humanitarian catastrophes in Syria and Yemen are reaching unprecedented levels. Instability remains the key defining character of the region as it moves into the new year. But that is hardly news for the regional stakeholders who have been living with instability for decades now.

What is new, however, is the heightened level of uncertainty that plagues the region. Multiple developments in 2016 have unleashed unpredicted and unpredictable new dynamics.

For observers to make better sense of why the stakeholders in the region are adopting seemingly irreconcilable policies, it is important to acknowledge the level of uncertainty sensed in those capitals.

Key developments with unknown consequences can be seen on the national, regional, and global level as 2016 comes to an end. All bear implications for the Middle East. A quick look at some of the most pressing questions arising from these developments may explain why anxiety in the region is reaching new heights.

Turmoil All Around

We can start by looking at the national contexts of the major players. In doing so it’s clear each one faces extraordinary short- and long-term challenges.

Iran is in the run-up to its presidential election in May, a contest that may lead to a re-adjustment of President Rouhani’s Western-leaning foreign policy. Potentially more important, the issue of ‘succession’ to the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, already is emerging as a key factor in domestic politics. It underlies a multi-dimensional power struggle that is defined not only by the various factions competing for influence, but also along bigger systemic cleavages—i.e., between those who want to stress the republican nature of the Islamic Republic and those who seek to bolster its theocratic basis. While tendencies can be observed, no one can predict how this tug-of-war will play out. Whatever the outcome, however, the repercussions are sure to be felt far and wide.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, finds itself in a state of uncertain transition in virtually every respect—politically, economically, and socially. A young and well-educated youth is challenging the kingdom’s fundamental structures. An overly ambitious deputy crown prince is making every effort to position himself as the successor to the 81-year old King Salman. No one knows how far Mohammad Bin Salman can go. No one knows how implementable his Vision 2030 will be and whether it will embrace or alienate the old elites and the population alike. As Iran’s principal rival, and the de facto leader of the Arab world since the misnamed “Arab Spring” in 2011, what happens in Riyadh will no doubt have an outsized influence on the rest of the region and beyond.

Turkey has been leaving observers dumb-struck throughout the past year, and particularly since the July 15 aborted coup d’etat. There seems to be no limit to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions to create his Turkey, marginalize and criminalize any political or media opposition, and change the constitution in ways that will super-empower his office. It is impossible to profoundly assess where this is leading and what further consequences the process itself will bear. With outright armed conflict with the Kurds ongoing in Turkey’s east and deadly terrorist attacks striking the rest of the country, it is difficult to foresee how much more destabilization the country will face or be able to bear.

At the same time, Egypt is facing severe security threats, with ISIS attacks in Sinai and terrorist assaults elsewhere, including the recent fatal bombing of a Coptic Church in the heart of Cairo. Add to this the worsening socioeconomic plight of its population—with record and rising unemployment and 25% of households living below the poverty line—and the unrelenting crackdown against the country’s strongest political party, the Muslim Brotherhood. Some observers believe another uprising is imminent, while others say there is no such appetite among the people. That said, popular discontent with the repressive al-Sisi government must be regarded as a ticking time-bomb that could blow up the Arab world’s most populous country.

When looking at the Israel-Palestine conflict, meanwhile, 2016 made clear that the two-state solution has moved further away than ever before. While it is debatable whether this conflict is indeed the mother of all tensions in the region, as many officials in the region like to argue, its ongoing impasse certainly does harm beyond the plight of the Palestinian people—especially in Gaza—and the constant state of insecurity in Israel and the West Bank.

If all the above were not enough, the region is also facing key questions about the future of war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen, each of whose conflicts—and the vacuums they have created—ripple far beyond their national borders and invite the intervention of both regional and extra-regional actors. In the absence of a clear vision for containing and reducing the violence of these conflicts, key regional players, from Ankara to Riyadh, and from Tel Aviv to Tehran, will make every effort to minimize potential harm to their own security interests.

Moreover, “security interests” are not confined to territorial integrity. The above-mentioned stakeholders share economic, cultural, political and social ties with each other. If there is one thing regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia undoubtedly have in common, for example, it is that both want stability and intact borders—not only for the sake of their own territorial integrity, but also to maintain and expand their regional ties and influence. And yet, finding a formula to reconcile Iranian and Saudi regional interests seems more challenging now than ever.

President Trump and a Chaotic Europe

And this is when yet another major uncertainty comes in: the Donald Trump factor.

It is impossible at this point to tell whether Trump’s Middle East policy will be driven by his explicit rejection of interventionism or by the far too explicit belief in interventionism for which people like leading Deputy Secretary of State candidate John Bolton are very well known. It is also difficult to predict at this point whether the nomination of Russia-friendly Rex W. Tillerson as Secretary of State is good or bad news for Tehran and/or Riyadh. And how will both countries be affected by Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, for whom Islam is a political ideology and “a cancer?”

Moreover, with the current state of the European Union, amid Brexit and upcoming elections in the Netherlands, France, and Germany, it is even difficult to envisage how Europe, as a coherent political force in the world, will look one year from now. Events in 2016 have shown that anything is possible.

All of the above leave regional stakeholders in the Middle East no choice but to increasingly “nationalize” their security policies. The need for a new regional security architecture is stressed by many, but a tangible roadmap that can lead to it has yet to be charted.

Mistrust is rife. Accusations are sharpening by the day. All sides demand confidence-building measures from the other side. And yet, due to the prevalence of perceptions, as opposed to actual realities on the ground, things that are demanded as confidence-building measures are often things that the other side might actually be unable to deliver. Is Iran, for example, in a position to disarm the Houthis, as Riyadh demands? Are the Saudi and Qatari governments really capable of cutting financial support for jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq, as Tehran expects? Such demands are on the table, but it appears impossible to assess whether either side has the actual control and leverage to deliver.

Needed: More, and Better, Dialogue

At this point, however, it is of utmost importance for regional actors to take a few steps back and talk with each other about how they talk about each other. This is how misperceptions can be deconstructed. Tehran should know how it is perceived in Riyadh and vice versa.

Allegations and accusations must be replaced with insights and knowledge derived from actual dialogue. Additionally, the national security interests of every regional stakeholder must be taken seriously, by regional and extra-regional actors. But there is a need for many more platforms for such dialogue to permit the parties to better understand those security interests in order to begin developing formulas to reconcile them. Such a process may not start at the official level; indeed, Track 2 efforts involving well-connected yet independent analysts and think tankers may be better at preparing the ground for actual diplomacy. This requires, however, that pundits in this field show more discipline in keeping an eye on the bigger picture, instead of diving into the jungle of micro-level discussions.

The horrors of Aleppo, Sanaa, and Mosul certainly need profound attention. But even more so, debates on these complicated multi-layered conflicts demand sober, in-depth analysis about the logic behind the behavior of the various stakeholders (state and non-state) involved. Only then can constructive avenues toward detente be explored and developed.

In times of uncertainty, it is even more important to fully understand the motivations of actors like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, or Russia, and spend time making sense of their respective security calculations. Glorifying or demonizing their actions, as some overly dogmatic, partisan or ideological pundits do, will not help in addressing the uncertainties, let alone changing their behavior. And instead of mainly focusing on the current state of play in the region, analysts from the U.S., Europe, and within the region itself should devote more attention to more long-term scenarios that offer mutually acceptable ways out of the ongoing uncertainties and the fears they generate.

In this way, key decision-makers—both in the region and from outside—can be guided towards what the Middle East desperately needs: a functional regional security architecture that all parties are committed to sustaining. That goal should be the North Star that guides the parties through these perilous and uncertain times.

About the Author

Adnan Tabatabai is co-founder and CEO of the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO). As a Berlin-based political analyst on Iranian affairs, he is consulted by the German Federal Foreign Office, members of the German Bundestag, political foundations as well as journalists and authors. He writes analyses and commentaries on Iran for German and English media outlets. Tabatabai holds an assigned lectureship at the Heinrich Heine University of Duesseldorf and is an associated researcher for the INEF project “Peaceful Change and Violent Conflict—the Transformation of the Middle East and Western-Muslim relations.” He is a PhD candidate at the University Duisburg-Essen.