Obama’s Failed Middle East Policies

Elliott R. Morss                              ©All Rights Reserved

 

Introduction

President Obama came into power with a platform to get the US out of the two Middle East wars. At the time, it sounded reasonable. I recently reviewed both the US role in both Afghanistan and Iraq: Taken together, it appears that 5,000+ Americans will die in the wars with an additional 250,000 civilians. The two conflicts will end up costing somewhere between $4 and $6 trillion. To put this in perspective, the US spends $72 billion annually on its food stamp program (SNAP).

And while Obama’s mandate sounded reasonable at the time, where did it lead, and why did he get off track? In the following paragraphs, I review what Obama has done in the Middle East and his failures.

The George W. Bush Legacy

There can be no question that by invading Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein, Bush effectively destabilized the entire Middle East. And getting into a land war in Afghanistan was also a Bush folly. Certainly, Obama cannot be blamed for what he inherited.

As an aside, it is notable that while Obama and Sanders voted against going into Iraq, Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton supported the invasion. Given what the public now knows, it is mind-boggling to me that Powell and Clinton, with access to classified material, supported the invasion.

Obama’s Failures Summarized

I believe that the following questions highlight Obama’s failed Middle East policies. I also concede that there are other views than mine worth considering. So in what follows, I have asked Richard Rust (RR), an informed American friend now living in Buenos Aires to offer his viewpoints along with mine (EM). Richard is a supporter of the Clinton/Obama policies.

EM: Why did Obama and his foreign policy experts not understand that getting out of Iraq would leave a dangerous political vacuum that extremists would fill? ISIS moved into the vacuum and is now seemingly threatening the world - should we ignore it on the grounds that solutions cannot be imposed by military force from the outside?

RR: The correct question is “Why did Bush and his foreign policy experts not understand that signing the formal Status of Forces Agreement with Maliki that mandated a full withdrawal of US troops from Iraq would leave a dangerous political vacuum that extremists would fill?” Maybe they did and were only too happy to leave that for Obama to grapple with. That's my bet. Once the Agreement was signed, Maliki had no intention to change it, nor would the Iraq legislature approve a change, which would have been required. He and almost every Iraqi wanted to see the final exhaust fumes as the US left. They engaged in some unserious talks with the Pentagon on leaving 5,000 troops in place, but the Iraqis would not give immunity to them on any incidents and that was the deal breaker. Both Iraq and the Administration were not unhappy to say good bye to each other. They were tired of each other. It is absolute BS to blame Obama for either the withdrawal or the subsequent vacuum.

RR: To blame Obama for either the withdrawal or the subsequent vacuum is misleading. In effect, the US military was thrown out of Iraq by the Iraqi government for having done more damage than good during the botched seven year occupation.

RR: Yes. ISIS moved into a vacuum, The Iraqis were too busy with their internal infighting to do anything about it. Obama had nothing that he could do about Iraq's internal problems that allowed ISIS to quietly grow before it introduced itself to the world. Today, ISIS poses NO existential threat to the world, any more than al Qaeda or any other global terrorist organization. They all could, can and will always be able to carry out singular or multiple - simple and spectacular - attacks anywhere. ISIS just had a more spectacular birth, is better at PR and more bloody thirsty than any of their predecessors.

RR: By capturing and occupying Syrian and Iraqi land and creating a quasi-sovereign state, ISIS appears to be a new kind of actor in global terrorism. They are both stronger and more vulnerable than their predecessors, as they can claim to have established a foothold for their “Caliphate” of the future. However they are also an open target.    

RR: The US is not ignoring ISIS, unless by ignoring it, you mean not sending 150,000 or more US ground forces back into the quagmire.  We are widely engaged in numerous ways, with varying allies, using all kinds of weapons, strategies and approaches and the efforts seem to be making limited progress, if latest press reports are to be believed. As you know all too well insurgencies are immune to rapid eradication and anyone who thinks otherwise ignores history.

EM: I would agree with you that the US media has blown the foreign terrorist threat all out of proportion. From media reports, one would think the foreign terrorist threat was greater than home-grown nut cakes. On the question of whether the US should pull back and let what will happen in the Middle East happen, I differ with you. The world still needs Middle East oil and for that reason, I think we have an interest in a stable Middle East. That underscores how crazy it was for us to facilitate getting rid of Hussein, Mubarak, Qaddafi, etc. It is not in our interest to destabilize the Middle East by going on a human rights crusade.   

RR: Neither Hussein or Mubarak or Qaddafi were removed as part of any misguided human rights campaign. The Obama Administration has not naively let human rights concerns trump pragmatic realities on the ground in the Middle-East or elsewhere. That claim, made by self-defined foreign policy realists, is not supported by the facts. The removal of Hussein and invasion of Iraq was about oil, as acknowledged by top US and UK officials, who were involved in the decision to go to war, as well as from other nations that provided military resources.

Mubarak was removed by the Egyptian people. The US had no leverage or practical means to intervene in the crisis. It had no way to nullify the will of the Egyptian populace and to try would have been counterproductive or worse.

RR: As for Libya, some vague adherence to human rights was not what sparked military action against Qaddafi. He was about to launch a genocide against his own people with the prospect on up to 100,000 casualties. NATO, at the behest of Italy and France, took the initiative to intervene. It pleaded with the US to become involved, which after a long and contentious debate, it did.

EM: And how about Afghanistan - do we really have a policy there? Or is it just “incrementalism” to be handed off to the next President?

RR: About Afghanistan and our “policy” there. You ask is it just incrementalism to be handed off to the next President? First, Afghanistan is not a country, as people usually define a country. Within some arbitrary boundaries, sections of the country are governed by tribes who are allies and enemies as exigent circumstances warrant and who pay attention to or ignore the national government as moods ebb and flow. A so-called “policy” given those realities would be an exercise in self-delusion. The “policy” is the same it's been since W abandoned the field in 2003 with elements of incrementalism, alliances with varying parties, and opportunistic actions when possible with the major objective to keep things from getting worse. No one has proposed anything better that I am aware of.

EM: If Obama wanted to get out of Middle East, why did he feel we had to support getting rid of Mubarak?

RR: Obama DID NOT feel we had to support getting rid of Mubarak. The street people in Egypt made that decision for him and the US had no leverage with them.

EM: If Obama wanted to get out of Middle East, why did he feel we should support getting rid of Qaddafi?

RR: Obama is very aware that we aren't out of Middle East, but without a couple of hundred thousand troops occupying anywhere we are more out than when he took office.

Obama also has rejected the never-ending assumption that the US has leverage where it doesn't. He believes that assumption is the main reason for so many US foreign policy failures of the past.

As noted above, Obama did NOT feel we had to “support getting rid of Mubarak”. The people of Egypt made that decision. Any objection or support for their choice would have been irrelevant.

In regard to Libya, as noted above, Obama's decision to provide limited and resource specific assistance came when France and Italy requested it, in the face of an immediate threat of a genocide which our allies saw as serious issue should millions of refugees head north after Qaddafi acted. We had alliance obligations, as well as a humanitarian rational to act. The objective was NOT specifically regime change, although the odds were Qaddafi would not survive. As Obama has admitted his most critical foreign policy regret was not the Libyan intervention, but the failure of the allied group, including the US, to follow up and provide follow-on assistance. To call that the whole exercise abject failure again is the kind of Monday morning sophistry I thought you reject. I am certain the 100,000+ Libyans that Gaddafi didn't massacre don't call it a failure.

EM: And Syria: the US appears to be following a dead-end policy of trying to get rid of both Assad and ISIS. Why did Obama not see that he had to choose? Why did he not see that Assad provides the best chance of getting ISIS out of Syria?

RR: The US options in the Syria conundrum have never been either clear, simple or likely to make much difference. Once the Assad opposition opened the can of worms, it quickly morphed into both a civil war and a proxy war by its neighbors including Iran and the Saudis, who are sending arms, indifferent to the deaths and the refugees, as long as they head north and west. Putin stuck his nose in as effectively as the US and seems to have scaled back learning the lesson we have learned. But do you seriously suggest the US hold its nose and embrace the war criminal Assad, who has carried out several genocides, because otherwise we can't get rid of ISIS? To me that is as dead-end an idea as any and one that would only do more damage to the US already damaged reputation across the globe.

RR: You ask “Is it unfair to blame Obama for all of this?” Absolutely! At this stage of our collective educations the “great man” theories of politics have been tempered by the reality of the time and circumstances when they ruled. I would be amazed to think that you actually believe any President is truly responsible for either their foreign policy successes or failures, using short-time frames in unresolved circumstances when a gazillion other factors ebb and flow outside their control that they try to navigate as best they can.

The Common Thread Running Through These Questions

EM: The US used to support dictators. No longer. We now believe that democracy is good and the US must promote it worldwide. This has been the belief for some time. When I was working for the US foreign aid program (USAID) in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties, this was a major US initiative. And quite apparently, this is behind Obama’s policy to justify the overthrowing of dictators.

But what is the reality? Democracy is a form of governance that works in very few countries, and certainly not in countries used to tribal governance or dictatorships. In these cases, efforts to institutionalize democracy results in chaos. China and Russia understand this – they do not mess in the internal affairs of a country – they deal with the leaders whatever they might think of the leaders’ policies.

Fair or not, I do blame Obama for the Middle East mess: he has been the US President. He, with his experts and information should have been able to steer to a better course than what we got. And I fear Hillary Clinton is “cut from the same cloth” and will do more of the same.

RR: The Obama Thread

Much of the criticisms of Obama’s foreign policies are based on a “straw man” which is not an accurate reflection of either his intentions or actions. For example, Obama clearly rejects the proposition that the US can spread democracy, especially at the end of a gun. He ignored the “Democracy Initiative” that George W. Bush embraced. Dictators who are US allies are not at risk of removal. He is no indiscriminate advocate of regime change. Like every other American, he would like to see democracy spread and flourish around the globe. But he is not a naive ideologue - far from it. In fact, as US democracy is under challenge from within with individual civil rights, voting rights and more being eroded in many states, Obama argues the US can hardly admonish other lands to embrace democracy, while taking steps backwards. What distinguishes Obama from all his predecessors is his understanding that the belief that the US, with its great military power, can bend the will of individual foreign nations or the world at large to US wishes is a fiction.

RR: Obama sees that in the Middle East, for the foreseeable future, some form of anarchy will rule. It will be largely beyond the control of outside actors, including the US. How and why people still cling to the fiction that the US can bring order there or can impose its will anywhere else in the world is a mystery. I fear Hillary Clinton may be one who has not absorbed Obama's well-informed skepticism.

RR: Tragically, there seems to be no concentrated effort by the nation's great thinkers, political and military leaders or the foreign policy cognoscenti to move out of the realm of fiction. Until new reality-based approaches to geopolitical issues are created that reflect a multi-polar world, where military power is secondary, a future-oriented framework is created that informs how the US can best serve its own interests and help create a safer, more stable, more equitable and better world, I sadly conclude the US will stumble from one disaster to another, as it has ever since the end of WWII.

Reflections

In my formative years, the early ‘sixties, we looked back with some pride on Roosevelt winning WWII, the US creating the UN, and John Kennedy’s pledge to help developing countries, and the US sending man to the moon. And for the rest of the world, the United States was highly respected, a beam of hope. That has all gone asunder. Since then, the US has used its military power to create havoc around the world. Rather than being respected, the US is now feared. People wonder who will be the next target in the long line foolish US wars.

The reality is that starting just before the Vietnam War, US foreign policy has been a complete disaster. It started with John Foster Dulles and has continued to this day. Dulles was the US Secretary of State during the Cold War. Diplomats are supposed to find ways to work deals when there are common interests. Not Dulles: he saw everything in black and white – you were either with us or a “commie”. So when Mao asked the US to recognize him as the leader of China because he did not want to be controlled by Russia, Dulles said no, you are a commie. So when Ho Chi Minh asked him to recognize him as the leader of China because he did not want to be invaded by China for the 12^th time, Dulles said no, you are a commie. 

I fear Eisenhower was right. He said beware the military-industrial complex. According to Open Secrets, the defense industry spent $127 million lobbying in 2015 and you know what it was for. To survive, the US military-industrial complex needs wars.

There is however, a partial antidote - bring the draft back. Right now, US wars are nothing more than TV shows for most Americans. Few have any skin in the game. Bringing the draft back would cause the high income parents with political clout to consider carefully whether wars being proposed made any sense.