Day: October 20, 2016
US strategy in the Middle East
The Center for American Progress held a discussion earlier today about the challenges, trends and setbacks of US strategy in the Middle East. The event began with US army commander for CENTCOM, General Joseph Votel, and broke out into a panel featuring Derek Chollet, a Counselor and Senior Advisor for Security and Defense Policy for The German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Linda Robinson, a Senior International Policy Analyst at the RAND Corporation, and Michael Singh, the Lane-Swig Senior Fellow and Managing Director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
General Votel listed three major areas of focus for the US strategy in the Middle East:
- Listen to what our partners in the region have to say.
- Reinforce and cultivate relationships with our regional allies.
- Maintain excellent communication with our partners.
With Iranian behavior becoming increasingly aggressive and destabilizing, we must reassure our allies that we will not abandon them. This, however, does not mean that we should cut off communication with Iran. In fact, communication with Iran should be maintained so we can better control our interactions with them.
In terms of fighting ISIS, particularly in light of the ongoing operation in Mosul, General Votel recommends that we maintain momentum and pressure on the group on all fronts. Elimination of ISIS is the ultimate goal for the US military right now. Fortunately, our military coalition campaigns have largely been successful. However, these campaigns need to go hand-in-hand with humanitarian and political solutions. They will be difficult to achieve, but they are absolutely necessary for lasting stability.
The panelists were invited to provide their insight on US strategy in the Middle East. They focused primarily on a report recently published by the CAP Middle East team. Katulis said the Middle East is still incredibly vital to the US, but our goals there cannot be accomplished alone. The new administration needs to increase trust with our traditional partners such as Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others. However, this should not be an unquestioning embrace of friendship, but rather it should be a friendship of increased communication and goal-sharing.
Robinson echoed this sentiment, but she also brought up that the US needs to bring its attention to non-state partners as well, such as the Syrian Kurds. She emphasized the importance of not relying too heavily on military solutions, but also integrating political and social solutions into the larger operational framework. Most importantly, the US needs to devise a reliable system of local policing for recently liberated areas. A lack of reliable policing is an “Achilles heel.” Perhaps the US and its allies need to formulate an international police force to provide interim policing services.
Chollet noted the US is perpetually in crisis management mode in the Middle East, which might not be in our best interests. The US and its partners do not necessarily share the same goals, so our cooperation with these actors needs to be examined closely. The next president should to step away from defining her/himself by what he/she accomplishes in the Middle East and concentrate on other issues.
Singh highlighted that the US strategy in the Middle East has often been solution-oriented when perhaps it should not be. Our goals should not be focused on solving conflicts or creating governments, but rather providing support when needed. The US shouldn’t “fix” the Middle East, rather it should simply ensure that things don’t get worse and that our allies have back up if they need it. The region, he argued, has a lot of potential if provided with the right support. If we work carefully and patiently with our regional friends, the Middle East could begin to thrive.
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He’s finished
There were a lot of things Trump said in this third presidential debate that I disagreed with and lots more that undermined his claim to have the temperament and judgment to be president. But the coup de grâce for his campaign was his refusal say he would accept the outcome of the election. Here is the suicidal candidate, making a mockery of American democracy the day after the debate:
It has long been apparent that Trump lacks liberal democratic values. Witness his claim that an American-born judge is biased because of his Mexican heritage. Witness his pledge to put Clinton in jail if he wins. Witness his willingness to accept the support of white supremacists and anti-Semites. Trump’s world is one in which white and male privilege is a good thing, taxes are for others to pay, and illegal immigrants are manual labor to be exploited and deported. He is a self-declared law and order candidate with no respect for equal rights.
None of his anti-liberal stances have much affected Trump’s attractiveness to something close to 40% of the electorate. He will get most of those votes, apparently no matter what. The Republican party, sadly, will be reduced not to its core principles of less intrusive government and more private initiative, but rather to arbitrary government power and no respect for individual rights. How they are going to get out of that trap I don’t know.
To win Trump would need more. That’s where he failed last night. And that’s where his refusal to make it clear he will accept the election outcome hurts him the most. He has no chance of extending his reach to independents without respect for the electoral process he is participating in. Failing that respect, he will also lose a lot of Republican voters who know that the election is organized at the state level, where Republican governors and legislatures have if anything been over-vigilant in their effort to prevent almost non-existent voting fraud.
On foreign policy questions, especially Syria, Trump was mostly incoherent last night. He continues to wish for a good relationship with Vladimir Putin, which is ironically an attitude Hillary Clinton initially took as Secretary of State, only to find that her “reset” was unsuccessful. Trump also continues to refuse to acknowledge that Russia is responsible for hacking American emails, something he has urged Moscow to do. Neither candidate had much to say about China, though Trump emphasized its unfair trade practices (against which Obama has been retaliating) and seemed to think the US could somehow approach its claimed growth rate of 7% (actually 6.7%, and no one seems to believe that figure).
Trump even promised 5-6% growth in the US, achieved by lowering taxes on the rich and vastly expanding government spending for infrastructure.
Lots of foreign policy issues went unmentioned: vast areas like Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, current crisis areas like Ukraine and Libya (though Trump mentioned the latter in connection with ISIS, which has been largely defeated there), North Korea, the pending trade pacts in Pacific and with Europe (TTP and TTIP to the cognescenti), Egypt and Israel…. I hardly need to mention that my readers’ favorite part of the world, the Balkans, did not make the cut.
ISIS was a big deal in this debate. Trump blames its existence on Clinton, which is clearly nonsense. Even if you think the American withdrawal from Iraq opened space for it and choose to ignore Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s contribution and the impact of the war in Syria, the agreement to withdraw and the timing were decided in the George W. Bush administration, not by President Obama or Hillary Clinton. Neither Trump nor Clinton offered much idea what they would do about ISIS other than what is already being done. Clinton said she would not put US troops on the ground to stabilize Mosul. Trump did not make that commitment but instead insisted that the attack on Mosul should have been a sneak attack.
He hasn’t got a clue. You can’t move tens of thousands of troops into place, carpet the civilian population with leaflets urging them to shelter in place or rise against ISIS, begin to soften up the defenses with air attacks and artillery, and prepare for the inevitable displacement of people by constructing shelters for them to live in without alerting the enemy that something is up. Trump’s knowledge of how war is fought seems grounded in playing Risk with his kids.
I’m not willing to see him play Risk with the United States. Nor it seems are most of the American people. It’s a shame the election isn’t today, but millions have already voted early and many more will do so in coming days. The only good thing that can come of Trump’s candidacy is a resounding defeat.
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