Allstate Insurance has gotten
a lot of advertising mileage out of Mr. Mayhem. I believe that we
are going through a fundamental change in the overall strategic
dynamic in the region that threatens to turn Mr. Mayhem loose in the
Middle East.
President Trump’s decision
to pull back the token U.S. Special Forces troops working with the
Syrian Kurds paved the way for the Turkish incursion. The decision
to acquiesce in the potential crushing defeat of our closest allies
in the fight against ISIS and push them into the arms of the Russians
and Iranians is probably the final stage in the reorientation of U.S.
policy. Not that long ago the United States was the most important
external player in Middle East politics. Often American diplomacy
was sophisticated and skillful and sometimes it was naive and
bumbling, but in general, the United States was a force for
moderation and conflict avoidance and helped provide a certain amount
of stability in the region.
The Bush administration's
ill-fated adventure in regime change in Iraq marked a major change in
the American role. The military became the driver of U.S. policy in
place of diplomats and the aim of policy changed from balance and
stability to assertive intervention. The Obama administration
promised to pivot away from the Middle East to focus on Asia but
events on the ground including the rise of ISIS, the Arab Spring, and
the Syrian civil war, as well as a well intentioned but futile
attempt to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was probably
the dying gasp of a two state solution, drew it back. Obama
continued the Bush administration's reliance on the military to shape
policy. Now Trump has effectively removed the U.S. as a major
player.
At the risk of
over-simplification, American policy has been reduced to three simple
elements: unquestioned support for whatever Netanyahu and the
Israeli right wing want; support for Saudi Arabia as the leader of an
anti-Iran coalition; and maximum economic pressure on Iran that has
yet to produce any positive results. Missing is even lip service to
human rights or democratic values, missing is an active diplomacy
that identified and promoted common interests across a range of
issues and countries, missing is a sophisticated and
multi-dimensional response to Iranian influence.
I want to focus on three
countries where the apparent abdication of an active role for
American diplomacy and military strategy will have significant short
and long term effects.
Syria
The withdrawal of
the largely symbolic American military forces removed the only
obstacle to an invasion of Northern Syria by the Turkish armed
forces. It also removed the United States as a participant in
shaping the future of Syria.
In the short term,
Turkey will establish a so-called buffer zone in northern
Syria which will push Kurdish armed forces 20 miles further away
from Turkey. The 5 day truce announced with such great fanfare on
October 17 is not a triumph of American diplomacy getting Turkish
President Erdogan to do something he wasn't already inclined to do.
Since the agreement does not mention, let alone require, Turkish
withdrawal from the territory they have conquered, it is merely
American acquiescence in Turkey’s success. This will allow the
Turks to resettle many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently
living in Turkey and separate Turkey’s Kurdish population from
their Syrian compatriots, weakening their ability to resist attempts
to destroy their culture and identity.
As a reminder, the
Kurds are a distinct ethnic group spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq
and Iran. Kurds follow Sunni Islam but they are not Arabs and the
Kurdish language unique. Kurdish representatives went to the
Versailles Peace Conference at the end of World War I but their hopes
that the promise of self determination for nations would apply to
them were dashed. The Kurds in Northern Iraq have created a state
within a state, with almost complete autonomy from the Baghdad
government. The Syrian Kurds, operating as the Syrian Democratic
Forces (SDF), defeated ISIS and liberated the territory held by the
Caliphate. The United States supplied air power, weapons, and
advisors, while Kurdish soldiers fought and died on the ground.
The American
withdrawal has left the Kurds feeling abandoned and betrayed and
desperate in the face of the Turkish military. After years of
intense fighting against the Assad regime, the SDF has announced an
agreement to allow regime forces into the areas they controlled until
the Turks invaded.
In the short term,
the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian
backers are the big winners. The last area of resistance will
quickly be brought under control and the civil war will be over.
What began for many Syrians as a hopeful movement for democracy and
regime change will end in abject failure.
In the longer run,
Syria will become a grindingly poor country with huge swaths
of territory that are not controlled by anyone. The civil war has
been devastating to the Syrian economy and imposed immense suffering
on millions of people. Armed resistance will end but the divisions
and scars of the brutal war will remain. The international community
will not participate in the rebuilding of Syria. Neither Iran nor
Russia have the economic resources to rebuild the country. The
thousands of middle class professionals who have fled the civil war
and made it to Europe or Jordan are not likely to return to a
shattered and chaotic country.
Somewhere around
12,000 ISIS fighters were being held in camps guarded by
Kurdish troops, including many that the United States regarded as
“high value.”. Those guards will, if they have not left already,
be withdrawn to resist the Turkish invasion and there isn’t any
other force that can replace them. It is highly likely that the
surviving ISIS leadership and the newly freed fighters will manage
to establish control over a significant area and announce the
reemergence of the Caliphate. Not only will ISIS itself be
reinvigorated in its battle against the West, but the ISIS-inspired
groups throughout the Middle East and North Africa will resume their
assaults on local governments and western interests.
Israel
Syria is not the
only country in the Middle East in the midst of a major change that
will be complicated by America’s precipitous withdrawal from Middle
Eastern politics.. Benjamin Netanyahu has dominanted Israeli
politics for the last 25 years. He has succeeded in making his
staunchly nationalist and anti-Arab perspective, that stresses an
image of an embattled Israel surrounded by enemies in the Middle East
and anti-Semites in Europe, the dominant view, even among those who
are opposed to his conservative social views. Since neither the
right of center Likud party nor the slightly left of center Labor
party has been able to win a clear majority in Israel’s parliament
for the past few years, the choice in Israel has been between a
Netanyahu led coalition of Likud plus small ultra-right parties
representing the most militant settlers and extremely conservative
ultra-Orthodox religious groups or a Labor based coalition with small
liberal parties. Elections last Apricot revealed declining support
for Netanyahu but he managed to patch together yet another
ultra-right, ultra-orthodox coalition that lasted only a few months.
Another round of elections in September showed further erosion of
support for Netanyahu, despite his heavily promoted close ties to
President Trump. Netanyahu himself has become a major issue, as he
is likely facing prosecution on corruption and bribery charges. In
the short run, most observers think that the Netanyahiu era in Israel
is over. because any coalition he might cobble together will not be
stable, the government will fall quickly and he will end up in court.
In the longer run,
Israel will have to deal with the existential crisis of the
Palestinians. The threat to Israel’s existence is not from some
kind of invasion or even an armed insurrection in the West Bank. The
Israeli Defense Forces and security agencies can deal with any
violent external or internal assault. But the idea of creating a
separate, independent, state for the Palestinians is dead. The 1992
Oslo Accords that seemed to provide a path to a two state solution
now seem quaintly antique. Most of the West Bank is walled off from
Israel proper, and settlements continue to expand. Some settlements
are suburbs around Jerusalem that draw young Israelis seeking
affordable housing; some are deeper in Palestinian territory and draw
militant settlers (largely immigrants from Russia, the U.S. and
Europe) who believe themselves to be fulfilling a religious duty to
occupy all the territory God apparently granted to Abraham in the
Hebrew Scripture (the Old Testament).
There are two
fundamental sets of values that define Israelis’ national identity.
One is that Israel is a Jewish state, although there is disagreement
about the extent to which Jewishness is tied up with religious
practice. The other is that Israel is a democracy. If Israel is to
continue to control the West Bank and Gaza Strip, perhaps even
annexing large areas (as Netanyahu has promised during his latest
campaign) either Jewish identity or democracy will have to be
abandoned. There are approximately 7 million Jewish citizens of
Israel, and 1.7 million Arab citizens. There are roughly 4.7
million Palestinians in the West Bank. If Israel were to annex all
of the West Bank, on the grounds that it is historical Judea and
Samaria and properly part of Israel, Jews would become a minority
within a very few years. But if Israel does not annex the West Bank,
it will have to continue to treat the occupied territories (as the
rest of the world call the West Bank) as a de facto colony which
would threaten both core Jewish values and core democratic values.
Saudi
Arabia
In
the short run, the Saudis have been big winners under Trump’s
foreign policy. The
U.S.-Saudi alliance,
based on interlocking economic,
strategic, and personal ties, has been strengthened
by
the administration's
focus on Iran as the
enemy in the Middle East, the public relations campaign to sell Crown
Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) as a bold reformer, and the Crown
Prince’s ability to establish a close personal relationship
with Trump and Jared Kushner. Thus Trump and his administration
refused to
believe that MBS was responsible
for the murder
of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last year and the administration
has continued
to support the bloody Saudi led war in Yemen despite Congressional
disapproval. Even as Trump was ordering the withdrawal
of U.S. forces from Syria and acquiescing in Turkey’s invasion, the
administration
was sending
1,000 additional
troops to Saudi
Arabia.
In
the long run, Saudi Arabia faces some major
problems. One
is the fact that the Saudis
are punching above their weight when they try to lead the fight
against
Iran. They cannot match the size of the Iranian military, their
critical oil facilities
are
vulnerable to attack,
and the restive shi’a dominated
western provinces are potentially
vulnerable to Iranian
influence.
As long as the United States is a generous and reliable ally, the
Kingdom can lead the anti-Iran
coalition.
But the extent and consistency
of that support is increasingly
depended on President Trump and his inner
circle. The next American President will not offer
the same level of unquestioning support. Even
now the Saudis
may have
some doubts
about U.S. support
given our
inability to assemble an international naval force
to deter attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and our failure
to orchestrate a response to the September drone and missile attack
on Saudi
oil facilities.
(To be fair the Trump administration
has
leaked the
news that the U.S. did launch
a “secret” cyberattack on some Iranian computers.)
A
second long term problem is the stability
of the regime. It is as if the royal family has
made a bargain
with the citizens: we’ll provide you with a rich and
comfortable life if you forswear
politics
and accept conservative
religious control
over public life. “Reforms,” such as the recent granting of
driver license to women and some curtailing
of the more egregious actions
of the Committees for the Promotion
of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, suggest that the bargain may be
fraying at the edges. A growing population
and stable or even
declining
oil revenues threaten the Kingdom’s ability to support young Saudis
in the style
to which they have become
accustomed.
The
region may not feel the full effects
of Mr. Mayhem,
but it will certainly be less stable and governments
will
find it increasingly diffident
to provide the level of economic
and
social development and physical security that would allow people to
transcend ethnic and religious divisions.
