Tag: Yemen
Stevenson’s army, January 12
SecState Pompeo seems determined to change many existing policies before January 20
in order to lock in Trump views and box in Biden. This week he did it with Taiwan and the Houthis. Yesterday he put Cuba on the terrorist supporter list. And today he going to link Iran to al Qaeda.
Meanwhile, Reuters says DOD is violating the new law blocking troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.
Dean Cohen calls for punishment of Capitol rioters.
Interesting case: MD Senators defend head of military medical school.
Politico warns of extremists in US military ranks.
As the son of a policeman, I’ve long been concerned about the militarization of local police. TNSR has good article.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 11
No 25th amendment removal: Pence doesn’t want it and those still in the cabinet are loyalists. Failed impeachment: House Democrats have the votes to impeach; I don’t see 17 GOP Senators voting to convict. Possible censure: toothless punishment, so most likely. Meanwhile, activists plan disruptions Jan 17 and 20.
Jim Fallows makes the case for punishment.
Meanwhile SecState Pompeo plants some landmines: designating Houthi as terrorists and dropping restrictions on dealing with Taiwan.
Biden will name Bill Burns as CIA Direector.
And don’t forget the 1997 law that lets Congress repeal late stage regulations.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Trouble in the Gulf will require more than arms
Here are the speaking notes I used yesterday at the Third Annual Conference of the Gulf International Forum:
- The Gulf today is engulfed with multiple dimensions of conflict and instability.
- Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are still at odds with Qatar as well as with Turkey and Iran about leadership in the region and the role of political Islam in the Muslim world.
- The US is pursuing a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran that has repercussions throughout the Gulf and the Levant, especially Iran and Iraq.
- Iran is responding with “maximum resistance,” which includes continued support for the wars on their own people by Bashar al Assad and the Houthis as well as shifting Iranian foreign policy in the direction of Beijing and Moscow.
- Global warming, declining oil prices, youth bulges, sectarian resentments, and COVID-19 are challenging the ability of Gulf states to maintain their social contract: authoritarian stability and material prosperity in exchange for political quiescence.
US Interests and Disinterest in the Region - US priorities in the Gulf have shifted. Oil is far less important economically and politically than it once was, and America’s main terrorism threat is domestic, not international.
- Higher priority in Washington now goes to countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction and limiting the influence of rival powers in the Middle East.
- The problem for the United States is that none of its interests in the Gulf are well-served by coercion, but neither are they well-served by withdrawal, which hurts partners and allies, even giving them incentives to develop nuclear weapons, while opening new opportunities for rivals.
- Whoever is elected President next month, the US interest in reducing its commitment to the Gulf will continue, but it needs to be done without endangering friends and encouraging adversaries or unleashing a regional arms race.
- Biden and Trump should be expected to behave differently in pursuing US goals.
- President Trump is impatient and transactional. He will likely pull the plug on US troops in places not prepared to protect or pay for them (Iraq and Syria). The “Abrahamic” agreements are transactional: Israel gets recognition in exchange for its help in sustaining Gulf autocracies.
- Biden did not invent this idea, but he isn’t opposed to it.
- Where the candidates differ is on Palestine and on governance in the Arab world. Biden continues to favor a two-state outcome for Israel and Palestine, whereas Trump and his Israeli partners seek to eliminate any possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state.
- While safeguarding Israel’s security, Biden would push for a better deal for the Palestinians than the one Trump has offered. He would also be less tolerant of Gulf human rights abuses.
- Biden and Trump also differ on the value of the Iran nuclear deal, but it is important to recognize that they share the same goal: to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
- Trump’s approach is “maximum pressure,” mainly through unilateral sanctions but also including the threat of kinetic action. He aims to force Iran back to the negotiating table to negotiate a “better deal” that would include regional issues, missiles, and extending and expanding the nuclear agreement.
- Biden wants to negotiate with Iran on the same issues but is prepared to lift some sanctions to incentivize a return to the status quo ante: Iranian and US compliance with the nuclear deal. Whichever candidate wins, Iran is unlikely to change course before its June election, if then.
A Much-Needed Regional Security Framework
- Neither Trump nor Biden rules out war with Iran, which would be catastrophic for the Gulf states. Doha has the most to lose.
- But war is not an attractive proposition for Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Manama either. Israel and the Gulf states don’t want Iran to get nuclear weapons and will cooperate to prevent it, but the Arabs will not want to risk joining Israel and the US in an overt conventional war with Iran whose winner may be predictable but whose consequences could be catastrophic for the Gulf.
- President Trump has been a welcome figure in the Arab Gulf, especially in Saudi Arabia. He has shielded the Kingdom and its Crown Prince from accountability for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and continued the Obama Administration’s support for the Yemen war, despite growing bipartisan discomfort in the US.
- Because of his human rights commitments, Biden will be less favored in the Gulf. He will not be sword dancing in Riyadh or cheering the war in Yemen.
- But the differences should not obscure the similarities. The two candidates share the desire to reduce US commitments in the Gulf and the interest in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Several of their predecessors also had these goals and failed to achieve them.
- The reason is all too clear: the Americans have relied too heavily on coercion and too little on diplomacy.
- The United States has enormous destructive military, political, and economic power. But that alone cannot build what is needed: a regional security network that will reduce threat perceptions in all the Gulf states, Iran included, decrease incentives to develop nuclear weapons, and prevent encroachments by rival powers.
- This framework will require a stronger diplomatic nexus of mutual understanding, restraint, and respect. Continued low-intensity and gray zone conflict, or a real war, will make that much more difficult to achieve. The Gulf is not a military challenge, but rather a diplomatic one.
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Any functioning adult would be better
We can never know exactly what Hillary Clinton would have done had she won 3.5 years ago, but let us count the ways the United States could have been better off if just about any normal functioning adult–Republican or Democratic–had become president:
- Well over 150,000 Americans would not have succumbed to Covid19, the epidemic would have receded faster, the economy would have reopened months faster and far safer, the US would be leading the world’s economic recovery instead of dragging it down, and the US debt would be trillions less.
- Millions of now unemployed people would have jobs, and no one would risk losing the health insurance and coverage for preexisting conditions available under Obamacare.
- The Paris Climate Accord would be more effective in limiting greenhouse gases that have contributed to this summer’s record number and intensity of storms in the Atlantic and the unprecedented wildfires in California, causing many billions of dollars of losses.
- The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership might have been concluded, with real advantages for US producers rather than the marginal replacement for NAFTA and the trade war with China that has damaged US agriculture, manufacturers, and consumers.
- Iran would still be a year from having enough fissile material to make a nuclear weapon and negotiation of the follow-on to the nuclear deal would be in progress, including on missiles and regional issues.
- The Voting Rights Act might have been revived in response to the Black Lives Matter protests, along with legislation curbing police abuse, and there would be no discussion of imaginary anarchy in American cities or use of the military against peaceful protests.
- The US would still have the confidence and support of its European allies and China would still be observing the agreement it reached with the Obama administration on commercial hacking.
- Russia would be showing some respect instead of owning the President of the United States, whom it only needs to quote to make its points.
- There would still be hope for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine and a possibility of curbing the North Korean nuclear program, which has instead inaugurated a missile possibly capable of hitting the US with multiple nuclear warheads.
Of course lots of things would not likely be different: we might still be outside the Trans Pacific Partnership looking in, Maduro might still be president of Argentina, Syria, Yemen, and Libya would still be catastrophic, and the Saudi Crown Prince might still have ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, though MbS would not have been shielded from accountability by the US President.
The United States would be in a far stronger position under any functioning adult, Democratic or Republican, than it is under the false flag of “Make America Great Again.” For anyone interested in foreign policy, that is all you really need to know while filling out your ballot at home and popping it into the mail, provided the US Postal Service doesn’t follow President Trump’s instructions to ensure it doesn’t arrive on time.
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Stevenson’s army, September 27
– Politico lists the obstructive tactics open to Senate Democrats fighting the Barrett nomination.
– Politico also details how the GOP has lawyered up for election fights.
– WaPo says administration is divided over how to deal with Houthis.
– NYT notes lots of talk, little action using the Defense Production Act.
A White House report released last month claimed that Mr. Trump has wielded the act nearly 80 times to alleviate shortages of masks and other medical supplies. Yet all but six of the examples cited in the report were either executive orders unrelated to the production of medical equipment or Defense Department expenditures that do not address the nation’s supply shortages. Article links to WH report and to CRS study.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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No Nobel Prize
Amy Hawthorne, who knows more about the Middle East than Jared Kushner will ever learn, tweeted yesterday:
Amy W. Hawthorne@awhawthTo state the obvious, the “peace in the Middle East” theme touted by Trump and Kushner re UAE-Israel agreement is disconnected from reality given that the 2 countries never fought a war and the agreement does nothing to end today’s actual Middle East wars
just details I guess
But maybe a bit more explication is required, especially in response to the right-wing hoopla about getting a Nobel Prize for their dear leader.
As Amy suggests, the agreement between Israel and the Emirates has nothing to do directly with any past or current conflict in the Middle East. There is no history between them of bombardment, invasion, expulsion, displacement, or occupation.* The UAE has participated directly or through proxies in wars in Yemen, Syria, and Libya, but those have little or nothing to do with Israel.
Kushner, who designed Trump’s still-born proposal for peace with the Palestinians, likes to pretend that the agreement with the UAE will advance that prospect. It is more likely to dim it. It weakens and divides Palestinian support in the Arab world at a time when Israel is already so strong it feels no real pressure to negotiate. While the UAE extracted suspension of Israel’s plans to annex Palestinian land, that provision is temporary. Kushner, a strong supporter of Israelis settlements in the West Bank intended to block formation of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state, is interested in Palestinian surrender to a one-state solution with unequal rights. That won’t do anything for Middle East peace.
Trump’s presidency has significantly worsened prospects not only for peace between Israelis and Palestinians but also between Arab states and Iran. His withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal allowed Iran to enrich much more uranium, putting it within far less than a year of having the fissile materials required to build a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia is likewise moving towards nuclear weapons, as is Turkey. We face the real prospect of a nuclear arms race among the three most powerful countries in the Middle East, unleashed by a President who thought he could bring the Iranians to heel with sanctions. That effort has failed.
We could review a few more non-contributions to peace in the Middle East:
- arms sold to both the Emirates and Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen,
- withdrawal of US troops from eastern Syria that undermined America’s Kurdish allies,
- greenlighting of Turkey’s expansion across its southern border to create a buffer zone in northern Syria,
- support for the most brutal military dictatorship Egypt has ever seen,
- flirting with would-be autocrat General Haftar in Libya and providing only erratic rhetorical support to the internationally recognized government.
President Trump’s best bid for contributing to peace is in Afghanistan, which I suppose is “greater” Middle East. Unable to defeat the Taliban, the Trump Administration gave Special Envoy Khalilzad the job of getting the US out. He reached an agreement with the Taliban for US withdrawal as well as a commitment to intra-Afghan talks between the Taliban and the Kabul government. Trump may well boast about the US withdrawal, but he has to be careful not to draw attention to the fact that it is only vaguely conditions-based and constitutes a retreat from America’s longest war without anything like victory. Zal has made lemonade from lemons, but there is not much sweetener available and the intra-Afghan talks, as well as the fighting, are likely to go on for a long time.
President Obama left the Middle East in bad shape. President Trump has managed to make things worse. As of a year ago, he had actually increased the number of US troops deployed in the region. It is certainly arguable that the former didn’t deserve the Nobel Prize he got. The latter would deserve it far less. Of course the Norwegian prize committee knows that and won’t be tempted. Trump’s egotistical neediness to match the achievements of the black president is pitiful, not praiseworthy.
*PS: the same goes for Bahrain.
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