Joel
On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Israelis, with grudging US support, have been talking about bombing
> Iran for a decade now in a vain bid to stop the development of its nuclear
> program. The election of the Western-educated Hassan Rohani makes that
> prospect all the more unlikely. Rohani was instrumental in negotiating the
> suspension of Iran's nuclear enrichment program under the reformist
> president Mohammed Khatami and has indicated his eagerness for renewed
> talks. More to the point, the US and its allies will not want to do
> anything to derail the revived movement of middle and working class
> Iranians against the current regime. The urban masses gave Rohani the
> presidency and for cultural and economic reasons are seeking improved
> relations with the West.
>
> Israel is always an unpredictable and troublesome wild card for the US,
> but it seems clear that the US defence and foreign policy establishment has
> reconciled itself to "containing" rather than preventing a nuclear-armed
> Iran. Hillary Clinton said as much last year. The reported dispatch of 4000
> Iranian troops to Syria plus Rohani's election will likely place more
> pressure on the Obama administration to negotiate a settlement of the
> conflict and stabilize the situation in the Middle East. Whether it can do
> so in light of the multiple interrelated class, religious, and ethnic
> conflicts in the region is another matter.
>
> The underlying historical factors encouraging the Americans to pursue a
> policy of peaceful coexistence with Islamist regimes and movements, along
> the same lines as they once did with the Communist regimes in USSR and
> China, are shrewdly summarized below:
>
>
> The west’s dominance of the Middle East is ending
> By Gideon Rachman
> Financial Times
> June 17 2013
>
> Those calling for deeper US involvement in the Syrian conflict are living
> in the past
>
> Should the west arm the Syrian rebels? That is the issue of the day in
> Washington, London and at the Group of Eight summit. But behind this debate
> lies a bigger question. Can western powers continue to shape the future of
> the Middle East as they have for the past century?
>
> The current, increasingly fragile borders of the Middle East are, to a
> large extent, the product of some lines on the map drawn by Britain and
> France in the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. The era when Britain and
> France were the dominant outside powers ended definitively with the Suez
> crisis of 1956 – when the US pulled the plug on the two nations’
> intervention in Egypt. During the cold war, the US and the USSR were the
> big players. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, America stood
> alone as the great power in the Middle East: organising the coalition to
> defeat Saddam Hussein in 1991, protecting the flow of oil from the Gulf,
> containing Iran and attempting to broker a peace settlement between Israel
> and the Arab states.
>
> Those who are urging the US to get more deeply involved in the Syrian
> conflict now are living in the past. They assume that America can and
> should continue to dominate the politics of the Middle East. But four
> fundamental changes make it no longer realistic, or even desirable, for the
> US to dominate the region in the old way.
> These changes are the failures of the Afghan and Iraq wars; the Great
> Recession, the Arab spring and the prospect of US energy independence.
>
> Over the past decade, the US has learnt that while its military might can
> topple regimes in the greater Middle East very quickly, America and its
> allies are very bad at nation-building. A decade of involvement has left
> both Afghanistan and Iraq deeply unstable and wracked by conflict. Neither
> country is securely in the “western camp”.
> The result is that even the advocates of western intervention in Syria,
> such as Senator John McCain, proclaim that they are opposed to “boots on
> the ground”. Instead, they are pushing to supply weapons to the Syrian
> rebels – arguing that this is necessary to secure a more desirable
> political outcome.
>
> President Barack Obama has given some ground to the “arm the rebels” camp.
> But his reluctance and scepticism are evident – and amply justified. If a
> full-scale western occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan was unable to
> secure a decent outcome, why does anybody believe that supplying a few
> light weapons to the Syrian rebels will be more effective?
>
> The Great Recession also means that the west’s capacity to “bear any
> burden” can no longer be taken for granted. European military spending is
> falling fast – and cuts in the Pentagon budget have begun. With the direct
> and indirect cost of the Iraq war estimated at $3tn and the US government
> borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that it spends, it is hardly surprising
> that Mr Obama is wary of taking on new commitments in the Middle East.
>
> The third new factor is the Arab spring. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt
> was a long-time ally and client of the US. Nonetheless, Washington decided
> to let him fall in early 2011 – much to the disgust and alarm of other
> long-term American allies in the region, notably Saudi Arabia and Israel.
> But the Obama administration was right to drop Mr Mubarak. He could not
> have been propped up without risking a Syria-style bloodbath.
>
> More fundamentally, the US has recognised that, ultimately, the people of
> the Middle East are going to have to shape their own destinies. Many of the
> forces at work in the region – such as Islamism and Sunni-Shia sectarianism
> – are alarming to the west but they cannot be forever channelled or
> suppressed.
>
> Finally, the ability of the US to take a more hands-off attitude is
> greatly enhanced by the shale revolution in the US, which lessens American
> dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
>
> Accepting that western domination of the Middle East is coming to an end,
> however, should not be confused with saying that western nations will not
> defend their interests.
>
> The US has large military bases in the Gulf and, together with its allies,
> will still try to prevent the Middle East becoming dominated by a hostile
> power. Despite its role in Syria, Russia is not a plausible regional
> hegemon. But Iran worries the US; an attack on its nuclear programme
> remains an option, despite the encouraging result of this weekend’s
> presidential elections. Jihadist forces, linked to al-Qaeda, will also
> encounter western resistance – one reason why the Syrian opposition
> continues to be treated very warily. And the US and its European allies
> will remain deeply involved in regional diplomacy over Syria.
>
> Western humanitarian instincts will play a role too – as they did in the
> decision to support the Libyan rebellion. But, as Syria is demonstrating,
> there is a limit to what the west will take on. Even former Australian
> foreign minister Gareth Evans, the intellectual godfather of the doctrine
> of the “responsibility to protect” civilians, is warning against military
> intervention in Syria.
>
> Despite the US decision to begin to supply military assistance to the
> rebels, Mr Obama is obviously still wary of deep involvement in the Syrian
> conflict. More than some of his advisers and allies, he seems to appreciate
> the limited ability of outside powers to control the new order that it is
> emerging in the region. The era of direct colonialism in the Middle East
> ended decades ago. The era of informal empire is now also coming to a close.
>
>
>
>
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-- joel schalit skype: jschalit mobile: +49 160 98190521 email: jschalit at gmail.com web: www.joelschalit.com work: www.souciant.com