Barack Obama’s deals with Iran and Syria may protect us for now, but US pragmatism does not bode well for tomorrow, argues Peter Foster
Geopolitics is an inexact science, but the off-the-scale responses to the events of the past few months in the Middle East should send any sensible analyst rushing to double check their data.
How is it that a putative nuclear deal with Iran can be welcomed as an “historic” opportunity in Washington and Tehran, but as an “historic mistake” in Jerusalem and “more dangerous than 9/11” in the Gulf countries.
At the very least, the breadth of variance in those responses points to the immense stresses being placed on an old geopolitical framework, while inviting the question: Is the world a safer place? And will it be safer tomorrow?
Listen to the American and British governments, and the answer to both questions is an emphatic “yes,” and there is indeed an impressive-sounding list of achievements to support that assertion.
Iran’s nuclear program is now frozen; Syria’s chemical weapons are being destroyed; Al-Qaeda leadership is decimated and on the run; Somalia and Mali are reclaimed from militants; piracy attacks have been stamped out; Europe is stable; relations with China are functional; and the US economy is in recovery.
It is true that China’s fraught relationship with Japan is a cause for concern, as is the threat of “lone wolf” terrorism and the risk of asymmetric cyber-attacks, but for the average US or European citizen, the balance of the security ledger appears to be in our favor.
“Certainly, compared with the days of the Cold War, we are safer than we have ever been,” says Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank and the author of books on US defense and security.
“Some people are nostalgic for the certainties of that era, but they forget that we faced the real threat of annihilation. There was the Cuban Missile Crisis, war in Vietnam and a far greater number of civil conflicts. Today, crime rates are at a decades-long low. Objectively, we are safer now than we’ve ever been.”
It is a message that, importantly for Obama, also resonates with the West’s war-weary publics, who have signaled clearly that they have no appetite for engagement.
Even when the evidence proved that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons — and polls showed that a hefty majority of Americans accepted this to be true — there was no stomach for a fight.
The fact that this “good news” about peace with Iran and Syria and the defeat of Al-Qaeda is what the public wants to hear, doesn’t necessarily make it true, says Mike Doran, a former Bush-administration official now at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
“People like peace talks, it warms their hearts and it makes them feel the world is a better place, but all we’re actually doing with these deals with Iran and Syria is strengthening our enemies,” he says. “That certainly does not make us safer.”
On this view, Obama’s new realpolitik in the region is not a brilliant, if brutal, re-ordering of US national interests, but a recipe for instability. It might make us in the West temporarily safer, but at what cost?
The deal with Syria might have avoided air strikes, but it also undermined Obama, strengthened the hand of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, and propped up the Assad regime.
As a result of the deal slaughter and starvation of civilians continues unremarked upon by the outside world. Similarly, the deal with Iran potentially clears a decade-long nuclear headache for the West and opens the doors to opportunities for European businesses, but it, too, will very likely intensify the Sunni-Shiite civil war that is already gripping the region.
“The fact that Iran doesn’t want to fight with us doesn’t mean they won’t continue fighting with our traditional allies,” adds Mr.Doran.
After a decade of apparently fruitless war, and budget crunches at home, opinion polls show most Americans agree with Obama: Upsetting old allies is a price worth paying for the chance to de-fang Iran and Syria.
The risks of blowback from a newly fractious Middle East are seen as containable. The civil war in Syria and a resurgent Iran might foment the kind of lone-wolf attacks seen in London and Boston this year, but these are not existential threats.
In Afghanistan, the threats to US security are also being contained, with drone strikes and the kind of money and expertise that was critically absent after the Soviet withdrawal. The political brouhaha with Karzai aside, the Afghan national army showed last fighting season that it could increasingly hold its own against the Taleban.
Obama is not always as determined to take a back seat as his detractors suggest. Supporters point to his sending a pair of B-52 bombers into China’s self-declared “air identification zone” last week as proof of a president that will be counted when it matters.
So, while the world focuses on the Middle East, it may turn out that the outbreak of an accidental shooting war between China and Japan is actually a far greater threat to world peace.
But the question remains whether a world where America sends out such mixed signals about its leadership will be safer in the longer term.
It is a commonplace of Washington conversation that George W. Bush was “all leadership and no analysis” and Obama “all analysis, and no leadership.” What US allies, including the British, have been advocating is something in between.
The US and Britain may be safer, but for citizens of Middle Eastern countries, the world is less safe.
- Sunday Telegraph, London