Mr. Mayhem on the Loose?

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.