[Texgreen] Good long analysis of US predicament in Mideast

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 22:29:11 -0600

<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HL15Ak01.html>

Middle East
Dec 15, 2006

REVAMPING US FOREIGN POLICY, Part 1
Full speed ahead, with menace
By W Joseph Stroupe

Both the US Republicans and the Democrats - virtually all of whom
voted for war in Iraq in 2003 - face the moment of truth in the form
of the awful, escalating consequences of a foolhardy and reckless
invasion of an oil-rich Islamic Middle East nation.

The Democrats' post-election euphoria will be short-lived indeed;
they've rejoiced at seeing President George W Bush get an Iraq-war-
inspired no-confidence "thumpin'" and at their winning the US
Congress, but they've thereby virtually inherited from the sovereign
US electorate the task of somehow getting the United States out of
its deepening Middle East quagmire - and, it is hoped, without it
suffering a concomitant geopolitical insolvency, at a critical
juncture in modern history when ever more potent and opportunistic
challengers to US global power and dominance are rising in the East
and when their proxies are (not coincidentally) rising across the
Middle East.

The majority of the US electorate think the Democrats lack a real
plan, and they do lack one. Their hope to formulate one that is
workable based on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) Report is
likely to turn out to be a vain expectation at best or the
realization of a cruel political betrayal at worst.

The Democrats need, at a minimum, a plan that simultaneously forces
Bush to change course, to bend to their will by getting the US out of
Iraq soon, insulates them from blame for whatever happens in Iraq
afterward while making that blame stick to Bush, and credits them
with any US "win" that may somehow result in Iraq and the region
after the withdrawal of forces. That is far more than a tall order,
and the ISG is not much political help in this regard to the Democrats.

After the November congressional elections, Bush initially appeared
to have finally come down off his single-minded, supercilious
fantasies and ideological denial to begin to face the harsh reality
of massive US over-reach in Iraq. His showing defense secretary
Donald Rumsfeld the door and nominating Robert Gates to take his
place as Pentagon chief fed the image of a president humbled and
willing to listen to new ideas.

However, that facade is slipping as Bush is still refusing to modify
the fundamentals of his long-standing "stay the course" policy by
taking the Democrats' suggestions seriously. He is still refusing to
engage in meaningful talks with Iran or Syria and seriously to
consider timetables, benchmarks and a phased withdrawal from Iraq.

Bush has stepped up the bellicose talk directed at Iran and is
massively reinforcing US military power in and near the Persian Gulf
and also doing likewise within operational range of North Korea.
Furthermore, he has reassured top Israeli leaders that they need not
fear that his resolve to deal forcibly with Iran has been weakened
one iota. Israeli leaders exited jubilant from their recent meeting
with Bush.

As Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asserted before the election,
they were not up for re-election and no matter what the voters said,
the two would continue to do what they believed were the right things
for the national security of the United States.

In fact, Seymour Hersh reports in the The New Yorker magazine that
one month before the election, Cheney asserted in a national-security
discussion at the Executive Office Building that the administration
would be undeterred from pursuing the military option against Iran by
any Democratic election victory. The report has credibility because
after the election, Bush reassured Israeli leaders of his resolve to
use military force to stop Iran, as noted above.

At every turn in foreign policy, the Bush administration will battle
and/or simply ignore the Democrats, seeking to discredit their
proposals and undermine their unity, wherever there is a clash with
what the administration believes is right. On foreign policy this
remains an entirely unrepentant administration, notwithstanding its
post-election pretenses of a switch to bipartisanship, the insistence
that it listens to new ideas, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's
calls for soft-power strategies and negotiations with Iran and Syria,
and the personnel change at the Pentagon, the meaning and importance
of which have been significantly overplayed by the media.

Now that the "dreaded" election losses for the Republicans have been
delivered, what further foreign-policy-based political loss is there
for the Bush administration to fear? Why should the administration
substantively give in to the Democrats on foreign-policy issues?
Short of taking the enormously difficult and risky step of pulling
the plug on funding, what can the Democrats actually do now to stop
the administration from largely continuing its foreign-policy line
for two more years?

The Democrats have their hands full trying to find a way actually to
constrain, change the course of, or otherwise humble and check the
power of the current administration. The conduct of foreign policy is
the prerogative of the executive branch, after all. Under mounting
pressure from the Democrats to begin pulling US troops out of Iraq -
something that would certainly plunge Iraq and likely the region
itself into the uncontrolled fires of sectarian chaos - Bush knows
his time to act is probably much shorter than the two years he has
left in office.

So, rather than to bridle and make compliant this administration, the
effect of the Democratic win has every appearance of emboldening and
rushing Bush on a dash toward furthering his own foreign-policy goals
while he is still in a position to do so.

Long-overdue success or hastened failure?

But even if Bush had finally come to the point where he was genuinely
getting in touch with the position of the electorate and with the
reality of the total incompetence and profound destructiveness of his
fundamentalist-evangelical, ideologically oriented, militaristic
foreign policy, and even if he genuinely wanted to find a
multilateral and peaceful solution to the Iraq and wider Middle East
crises that employed soft-power levers, is there any real basis for
concluding that the door of opportunity to such solutions has not
long since slammed irreversibly shut?

The mounting fear is that attempting now at this late date, in the
aftermath of strategic blunder piled on top of strategic blunder, to
"save" US fortunes in Iraq and the wider Middle East may be turning
out to be an exercise in futility. US regional/geopolitical fortunes
were massively imperiled, and likely squandered, nearly four years
ago when Washington shoved strategic alliances and multilateral
considerations aside to occupy Iraq.

When the US and Britain rushed to the military option first they
simultaneously scorned as contemptible the germ of traditional,
fruitful, multilateral soft-power strategies and they extraordinarily
sowed instead the seeds of widespread, thorny, noxious "weeds". How
will they now reap instead the tantalizing mangoes, grapes and
pomegranates of strategic victory and success?

They have little or no viable chance of doing so. By their distinctly
ham-handed militaristic approach they unleashed virulently anti-US
counter forces and strategies that have become deeply ingrained
across the region. They virtually locked themselves, the wider West
and the Middle East region itself into an impasse whose only
"solution" is yet additional military action.

Soft-power levers

In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, the Bush and Blair
administrations blatantly dismissed every semblance of genuine
multilateralism and diplomacy and the traditional, strategically
oriented soft-power levers in a consequences-be-damned dash to heave
themselves on the military levers alone.

For nearly four years since then they have conceitedly and
overconfidently continued to disregard both opening and opportunity
to extricate themselves from a mounting quagmire they blindly refused
to acknowledge, snubbing all along the way the repeated calls to
adopt a policy of genuine engagement of the region's players in a
comprehensive solution.

They have continued to pursue one-dimensional militarized "solutions"
at the near-total sacrifice of all their former soft-power standing
and leverage. They have thereby gravely undercut the meaningful
cooperation and confidence of their allies and deeply alienated their
rivals across the region and beyond.

The US and Britain now occupy a position of profound weakness as
respects any possession of genuine and compelling regional/global
leverage and they fully own a miserable negotiating position, and
their rivals (the "evildoers") fully understand how that provides
them the opportunity to capitalize on US/British misfortunes and
weaknesses that are largely self-inflicted.

In any negotiations for a grand (or any lesser) solution, the US and
Britain would either be mostly forced to accept the favorite terms of
Iran and Syria or be left largely unable to verify compliance with
and enforce the better terms of an agreement, even if they could get
a promise from the regional players to adhere to desirable terms.
This is an eventuality the US and Britain simply cannot accept
because it would further propel Iran toward its goal of regional
ascendancy over the oil-rich Arab regimes - that is the nightmare
scenario for the West.

Opportunistic and clever Iran now has the US and Britain pinned into
a position of strategic disadvantage, and it fully knows it. So do
the much larger sponsoring powers Russia and China. These two have
with adroit strategies employed Iran, Syria and other Middle East
entities as their proxies and willing adherents in an insidious game
to erode further, and even collapse, the Middle East and global
leverage and influence of the US.

Syria is offering to "help" the US in Iraq - but it has said the US
must first set a definite date for withdrawal of its forces from
Iraq. Additionally, ascendant Iran and Syria have massively upstaged
a weakened US and Britain by inviting the Iraqi leadership to a
closed three-way summit to discuss and plot Iraq's direction. The
Iraqi president has accepted the invitation. These are examples of
the kind of "help" the US can expect from its regional rivals now
that it owns the severely weakened position described above.

In the view of the Bush administration, Iran and Syria have already
acquired too much regional influence and leverage and they are
misusing those assets to cut directly across US interests and goals.
To sit down at this point with them to negotiate an Iraq or wider
Middle East solution would only further elevate their respectability,
position, influence and leverage and make the US appear as a weak
supplicant by comparison. This would boost Iran and Syria along the
path of achieving regional control and even dominance.

 From the Bush administration's perspective, the only conditions
under which the two can be brought into negotiations are that they
must first agree unconditionally to bow to the will of the US on a
number of key issues. These include Iran's nuclear program and on
Syria's exercising of undue influence within Lebanon.

In other words, the administration expects the two virtually to cave
in first before it will engage them in an Iraq or wider regional
solution. The same is true of Iran and Syria - they expect the US
virtually to cave in by "changing its attitude" of seeking to cut
them down to size in the region before they will agree to sit at the
same negotiating table with the US. Both sides have become more, not
less, intransigent as the Iraq situation nears crisis stage.
Therefore, any prospect of serious and fruitful negotiations between
the US and the two key players is extremely remote, at best.

Top US officials recently stated that they wished to engage Saudi
Arabia and other oil-rich regimes (rather than Iran and Syria) in an
intensified effort to end the mounting sectarian chaos in Iraq.
However, it is unclear along what lines such regimes would
specifically be asked to become engaged. These are Sunni regimes.
Would they be asked to assist in tangible ways to help stabilize and
strengthen the current Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government? It is not
likely they would be interested in helping to boost the already
worrying rise of Shi'ites in the region.

Many experts have recognized that Iraq's sectarian militias must be
disarmed if the violence is to be stemmed. Would the Sunni regimes be
asked to assist the US military in its efforts to disarm Iraq's Sunni
and Shi'ite militias? That would be a recipe for regionwide
conflagration because it would risk spreading rather than containing
Iraq's bloody sectarian rivalries.

Additionally, any move by the Sunni regimes to assist materially in
the disarming of Iraq's Shi'ite militias and the weakening of the
Shi'ite faction would risk an explosion of Shi'ite rage among their
own people, since every one of the Sunni regimes must deal with its
own large domestic Shi'ite population. If the US somehow succeeds in
getting the Sunni regimes more tangibly involved, it will be an
impending sign not of a solution to Middle East instability, but of a
loss of control over the situation, its spinning out of control.

Even if the US engages in real negotiations with Iran and Syria over
the Iraq crisis, the Sunni regimes are extremely unlikely to cast
their lot with a severely weakened United States in any negotiations
over a regional solution that would end up codifying de facto Persian
dominance of the Gulf.

Yet those very regimes have no viable solution among themselves -
they cannot stem Iran's regional rise. With the US increasingly in
impending forfeiture in Iraq, they may wish to play Israel secretly
as counterweight to Iran, but even the hint of such a policy shift
risks the total alienation of their vehemently anti-Israel populace
and the prospect of sharply increased domestic unrest and an
overthrow of the current Sunni regimes. That would play directly into
Iran's hands: the oil-rich Arab regimes are strategically stuck, and
they know it.

Military, military and more military

Against this backdrop, ongoing Iranian efforts to "bear-hug" Iraq and
intimidate other Gulf Arab states into a Tehran-led alliance are
intensifying. Iran is suspected in the November 4 explosion and fire
in one of Kuwait's refineries, and Shi'ite unrest and ever more
serious threats against the Sunni regimes in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia
and elsewhere in the region. These are only some of the more easily
recognizable tactics employed by Tehran to herd the Gulf Arab states
into an alliance.

According to recent reports from the Middle East Newsline, for
agreeing to ally with Tehran it will "reward" regimes by ceasing its
provocative destabilization tactics. The growing Arab openness to
such a regional "solution" deeply concerns Washington, which is now
pointedly increasing its naval military presence inside and within
striking distance of the Persian Gulf.

Additionally, Iran's recent 10-day Great Prophet II war games shocked
the West with respect to Iran's ability to launch many dozens of
assorted ballistic missiles in perfect coordination in mock
retaliation against an Israeli/US/European attack. This demonstrated
that all US bases in the Middle East and even Europe are in Iran's
retaliatory striking range.

Only days after Iran's coordinated ballistic-missile launches, France
successfully test-launched its newest nuclear-tipped ballistic
missile, obviously pleased to let that test launch serve as a non-
verbal warning to Iran that it faces a potent European retaliation if
it targets Europe with its own missiles. Taking the measure of the
powerful and growing US naval armada now in and near the Persian Gulf
along with European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces,
it is no stretch to surmise that something much more than a mere
passive containment of Iran may be in the offing much sooner rather
than later.

What is the likely purpose behind the mounting US and European NATO
naval forces in and near the Persian Gulf, if not merely for an
ongoing and passive attempt at containment of Iran? Diplomatic
attempts at the United Nations aimed at strapping Iran with punishing
sanctions over its nuclear pursuits have miserably failed, and they
are most likely to continue to fail. Russia and China will see to
that. Iran has shown a stubborn determination to continue its
nuclearization at almost any cost. If the West absolutely cannot get
what it wants solely within the confines of conventional
interpretation of UN measures, then it is preparing to accomplish the
stalwart isolation of Iran by hyper-extending those measures to a
significant degree.

The strategy of the West that is building here against Iran is
illuminated by an examination of what has transpired in the North
Korea crisis. Pyongyang played into the West's hands by forging ahead
with its October nuclear test and thereby galvanizing the UN Security
Council, which subsequently voted to place sanctions on the regime.

The measures were not nearly everything the US wanted, and left much
to be desired in the way of stringency and comprehensiveness, but
they provided a diplomatic rallying point. Under this, US allies
could gather to construct what is for all practical purposes a
supplementary coalition ostensibly equipped and designed to enforce
UN measures, but which actually seeks to go significantly beyond the
conventional interpretation and intent of the provisions of the
Security Council. This means naval and other sanctions and a virtual
embargo/blockade targeting North Korea.

South Korea has steadfastly refused to join the de facto
supplementary coalition. But key European naval powers are actively
participating with the United States, as is Australia. The US is
rapidly building its military forces in the region to prepare for the
ever more likely eventuality of a military strike on North Korea.
Thus it has the muscle to back up its efforts at getting a cave-in of
the regime at the negotiating table. While such a cave-in is still
not very likely, the US and its allies pursue the possibility anyway.
But they keep the full-blown military option at the ready to be
exercised when it is deemed that time has run out on "diplomacy".

This is the "diplomacy" of the gun barrel - "measured" options along
the military line, namely embargo and blockade designed to weaken and
collapse the regime, with a crushing air campaign held at the
immediate ready.

Apparently, Russia and China were caught significantly off guard by
the US strategy - they assumed that by ensuring inherent weaknesses
and limitations in the Security Council measure against North Korea,
the US would in effect be stifled.

They miscalculated. If Iraq represented the numbskulled and
disastrous US/British unilateralist strategy of UN circumvention,
North Korea and Iran represent their newest (though not entirely
surprising), West-slanting multilateralist strategy of UN hyper-
extension. This is the strategy of getting even a weakened measure at
the Security Council that can subsequently be interpreted (hyper-
extended) to serve as a rallying point for "measured" multilateral
military action.

The US hopes that by pursuing its military options in a measured
sequence and in parallel with diplomatic efforts at the United
Nations, rather than by shoving aside the UN to rush to the all-out
military option first, then it can garner enough support among its
allies to place strapping sanctions on rogue regimes and then either
bend them or instigate actual regime changes.

There is also the distinct possibility that the regimes targeted with
the embargo/blockade will strike out at the naval assets and provide
the US with the "justification" to unleash a full-blown air campaign.
Fully realizing and appreciating that strategy, Russia has begun to
push to get Iran's case taken out of the Security Council and
returned to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, and both
Russia and China have issued warnings about the dangers of backing
North Korea and Iran into a corner.

The flood of military assets into and around the Persian Gulf
signifies an impending naval embargo or blockade of Iran designed to
attempt to weaken and collapse the regime over several months, with a
crushing air campaign held at the immediate ready.

Simultaneously, according to recent reports by intelligence expert
Bill Gertz, Arab intelligence sources say the US and Britain have
given Western-supported Iranian opposition groups the go-ahead to
sabotage energy and other assets and otherwise destabilize the
Iranian regime from the inside.

On November 10, a bomb exploded in Ahwaz, the most active oil
production center in Iran's Khuzestan.

Stricter financial and banking sanctions have been put into place by
the US and its allies. The Iranian regime acknowledged that fact when
it recently stated it was decreasing its dollar-based transactions to
an absolute minimum because of added US financial measures against
it. US strategy is recently showing more finesse and has a more
potent covert component, as compared with the much more ham-handed
strategies of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It may be
that we are witnessing the beginnings of the influence of new
Pentagon head Robert Gates and the former team of president George H
W Bush.

Why would Europe possibly be interested in participating with the US
in an impending naval embargo of Iran and perhaps a massive military
strike on the radical Iranian regime? The achievement of Iran's goals
of regional hegemony would place Europe in grave energy-based
jeopardy, because of its heavy reliance on Middle East oil. Iran's
notable advancement toward achieving that goal on the ground since
the 2003 US-British invasion of Iraq is not letting European leaders
sleep well at night.

Despite the Europeans' apparent single focus on diplomatic solutions,
they fully realize that if diplomacy fails (and it surely is
miserably failing to put Iran back into Pandora's box), then the
radical regime and its destabilizing agenda must be halted - period.
The Europeans dislike military options, but they dislike being
virtual energy-based hostages even more.

What if Russia and China see to it that no Security Council measure
against Iran is adopted or, if one is adopted, that it specifically
rules out the kind of hyper-extension the US seeks to employ? The US
can be expected to move forward with its plans to implement stalwart
sanctions and an embargo or blockade anyway, and it will likely get
key European support in tangible ways, but with the usual public
condemnations. If anyone thinks the US is going to be thwarted in its
plans to attempt to cut Iran down to size sooner rather than later,
then they haven't been paying sufficient attention.

Iran is rapidly progressing and is now dangerously close to achieving
its regional aim of dominating the oil-rich Persian Gulf, all without
the possession of any nuclear weapons. Employing its multiple and
potent regional tentacle-like proxies and its mounting energy-based
leverage, Iran is advancing on the position that will enable it to
herd the oil-rich Arab regimes largely along the lines it wishes. It
has far more influence in Iraq and across the region than does the
US, whose leverage has collapsed. It is almost single-handedly
guiding Iraq's direction and is fully able to hand a complete
forfeiture to the US in Iraq, and in the wider Middle East region as
a direct result.

The recommendations of the ISG, of Tony Blair, of Henry Kissinger and
of many others for direct US-Iran negotiations on the mounting Iraq
crisis are a full-blown acknowledgement that Iran (and to a lesser
degree its ally Syria) holds the trump card. In the event of the US
being made to suffer a forfeiture in Iraq, in the aftermath of the
catastrophic collapse of US influence, Iran is firmly positioned to
pick up all the geopolitical pieces with which to finish construction
of the radical Islamic regional hegemony it seeks. The Bush
administration is absolutely right about one thing - if the United
States fails in Iraq, the "evildoers" will achieve a triumph of
incalculable expense for the US and the West.

Again, it must be powerfully emphasized that Iran is well along the
path to achieving such goals without the possession of even one
nuclear weapon. Therefore the nuclear issue, though certainly
incorporating a significant degree of validity, is mostly being
cynically used by the US and Europe to "sex up" the Iran issue, as it
were, to get notoriety for the problem of what to do about Iran's
regional ambitions and conveniently to justify early and collective
action - even massive military action - if diplomacy fails, as it
surely appears to be failing.

Yet though the issue has been sexed up by the West, Iran's push to
continue with its nuclear program is fueling a strident Sunni Arab
quest for nuclearization, with the region's states looking to the
East - to Russia and China - for the incubation required to bring
them up to Iran's nuclear speed.

That has concomitant and extremely toxic repercussions for the West
as the oil-rich Arab regimes align ever more closely with the East in
a growing array of spheres, further placing the West's strategic
energy security in doubt. The crucial Middle East region is quickly
slipping away from the West, and Western leaders know it fully. As
the tipping point nears and the West stares into the abyss of a
Middle East clearly dominated by Iran and its proxies and leaning
heavily toward the East, actions that only recently were viewed as
"crazy" and unjustified come to be viewed in a more justifiable light
as all else fails, and the full range of military options against
Iran has risen to become the foremost.

The consequences of recklessness

The Pandora's box of regionwide radical Shi'ite-Iranian ascension,
thrust open in 2003 by Bush and foolishly backed by virtually all of
Washington, is widely and rapidly spreading all manner of "evils" and
"curses" on the world, from the US perspective. The oil-rich Middle
East is being plunged into ever deeper radicalism and instability.
Radical political-militarist Iranian tentacles such as Hamas and
Hezbollah are making regional advances, while anti-Americanism
thrives and US leverage collapses.

The fervent Iranian agenda - a Middle East dominated by a de facto
Shi'ite caliphate anchored in Tehran - is much closer now than before
the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-Blair "axis vs evil" pushed its way
into Baghdad to take out the only viable restraint on Iranian
regional ascendancy. In its supposed zeal to battle "evil", that axis
has only more firmly established "evil".

The highly militaristic strategies the US is largely left with in its
mission to try to put those "evils" back into the box are ones that
carry enormous risk. At the same time, the range of soft-power
options and strategies carries greatly diminished potency, along with
the very real risk of bolstering the status and leverage of the very
regimes the US is trying to put back into Pandora's box.

Not only is there deep anxiety about the potential for strong Iranian-
Shi'ite retaliation throughout the region in the event that the West
begins to take "measured" military action against the regime in
Tehran, there is another far more serious risk, especially for the
West - the prospect of a serious deterioration in its relations with
Russia, China and their energy-exporting global partners. The latter
have collectively acquired potent energy-based economic and
geopolitical leverage over the West and have acutely tired of
continued US global dominance and the current unipolar order.

With tensions running ever higher between the West and the rising
East, a spark like that of military action against Iran or North
Korea could re-ignite a neo-Cold War, the consequences of which would
be much worse for the West than for the East this time around.

Many observers saw the recent Democrat election victory as signaling
the arrival of the long-awaited change in the direction of US foreign
policy, a turn back toward multilateral soft-power strategies and
away from the destructiveness of the neo-con line of the past six
years. However, those six years of destructive policies and their
deeply entrenched and mounting deleterious effects cannot be erased
merely by the "magic wand" of an election win.

The US has tied itself into a knot of unprecedented complexity and
tensile strength. Cutting across that knot by further militaristic
strategies will unleash an array of pent-up regional and global
forces the US isn't remotely prepared to deal with successfully.

It hasn't begun to position itself in a place of independent economic
strength, energy independence and geopolitical strength - quite the
opposite is true as the knot tightens around the US. The current US
administration will cut across that knot very soon because the
mounting crises in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and North
Korea are all reaching their "moments of truth" virtually
simultaneously and are therefore pushing it to do the "cutting"
before all is lost.

***************************************

Next: Why multipolarity is a misnomer

W Joseph Stroupe is author of the new book Russian Rubicon: Impending
Checkmate of the West and editor of Global Events Magazine, online at
www.GeoStrategyMap.com.