Last week President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, unveiled, what the media is calling “a more modest strategy for the Mideast”. (See here) Ms. Rice said that the administration would focus its efforts on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria. The strategy also acknowledged that there are limits to what the U.S. can accomplish in nurturing democracy in the region. While I might argue with some of the specifics, the new strategy appears to be an effort to rectify some of the problems that have plagued U.S. policy in the Middle East for decades.
As U.S. involvement in the Middle East has deepened since the end of WW II, U.S. efforts to project power in the region have clashed with the desire of Middle Easterners for self-determination and political independence. The U.S. has also failed to identify its vital national interests and to focus its policies and power on addressing those interests. This lack of focus has led to policies and objectives that are not only conflicting, but in many cases mutually exclusive. These policy disconnects have led to a failure to accomplish foreign policy objectives. Those it has accomplished have been more in spite of rather than because of the policies.
My definition of a “vital national interest” is one that deals with an existential threat to the U.S. and one for which the U.S. is willing to spill its blood and to spend its treasure in order to accomplish its objectives. By this definition, the U.S. has no vital national interest in events in the Middle East. Since WW II access to the energy resources of the Middle East at a reasonable price has been a vital national interest. With the advent of “fracking” and shale, the U.S. is on the verge of becoming a net energy exporter and this has fundamentally changed energy geopolitics. U.S. interests are now more associated with non-proliferation of WMD and controlling and defeating the Sunni jihadist threat. While U.S. blind support for Israel will remain a thorn in the side of the U.S. as it attempts to deal with Middle Easterners, the larger Israel/Palestinian conflict, with the death of the two state solution, has morphed into an internal Israeli problem. The Israelis themselves will have to decide what kind of a country they want to be.
The Obama administration seems to have realized that, in order to successfully deal with the jihadist and WMD issues, they will need to deal with Iran. Iranian cooperation is crucial for the attainment of U.S. policy objectives. Success in dealing with Iran will require taking into account Iran’s requirement for sovereignty over its energy policy and autonomy in designing and implementing its foreign policy. Saudi Arabia has become marginalized on the energy issue and on the jihadist issue. It is part of the problem and not part of the solution. Saudi realization that the U.S. may be looking after its own national interest rather than following the lead of the most undemocratic regimes in the region has led to what only can be described as a “temper tantrum”. Turning down a seat on the UN Security Council (See here) to send a message to the U.S. may be the ultimate tantrum.
The U.S. may be experiencing its own “East of Suez” moment as it accepts that it has diminished influence in the global arena. (See here) This transition will be difficult for Americans to accept, particularly the empire-building neo-cons, but at the end of the day both America and the Middle East may be better for it.
