Yesterday’s enemies, today’s allies … and tomorrow ?

“Obama could do a great service by honestly admitting that the United States has no capacity to promote a negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestine.”

I think this would be a false “admission” – it would be true for him to say that there’s not much that he, and perhaps any president, can do, given the realities of congressional support for Israel, but “the United States” could do plenty.

Brett Bellmore,

“For better or worse, (And I’m convinced it is for the worse.) the civilized world is dependent on Middle Eastern oil. It would be much better if we weren’t, for a long list of reasons. But we are.”

This is a good reason for you to support better government transport and energy policies – with less car driving and more public transport (electrified using renewable energy), more bike riding, and more walking. As well as helping climate change and sustainability you have shown it would also contribute to having better international relations with the middle east (except for they would need some help so they did not have a depression and people starve or have more social turmoil)

As far as plastics from middle east oil – I have wondered whether as plastics break down over their very long life cycle they will emit ghg since they are carbon based. I have not been able to find detailed studies on how plastics breakdown and if they release ghg emissions in breaking down since they are made from carbon. I think this had better be investigated before we use up all the oil in the middle east in plastics – since if plastics breaking down emits ghg people would have a very great climate change problem in the hundreds of years time or whenever it is when they finally break down.

Actually, the post both overstates and understates the muddle that is US policy. It does not so much switch sides as either try to push forward with bit players (Chalabi, FSA), or play all sides at once (the CIA has been encouraging Baluchi insurgents in south-east Iran while State has been trying to find a way out of the sanctions mess, and Defence muttering to Iran about being helpful in Afghanistan). And then when things don’t go the way the US wants, the response has as often been dictated by spite as by interest. It’s an old story – see Cuba, or Vietnam and Cambodia, or China. The last rational, coherent US foreign policy actor seems to have died around 1948.

I agree with ajay. The move against Maliki was to try to get Sunni tribes on board to move against ISIS (and potentially buy into any future Iraqi government) The US is still supporting the rebels against Assad , just also against ISIS and other Jihadi elements. And the rapprochement with Iran is overstated (but, imo,not really a bad thing)

Anything we do to attack ISIS supports Assad. It might also support some bit players that we like better, but they are bit players who mostly play because they’ve been promised our support.

Like it or not, the Iraqi government is essentially a Shia government, and there was never much chance it would be anything else from the days that we decided to exclude former Ba’ath members from government. Sunnis are not going to support it much. So they can support ISIS or they can stand aside in disgust at both sides. And the Shia army is not going to accomplish much in areas that are mostly Sunni. The US Marines never accomplished a whole lot there, given their ROE. We had the firepower to destroy every building in Anbar, but what good would it do us?

Iran is a regional power poised to get stronger. US Zionists are implacably opposed to Iran’s continued existence. US geopolitical strategy involves trying to stop Iran from being a regional power while using Iran’s status as a regional power whenever it’s useful.

The USA cares about Egypt because they have a large population and if they could get decent weapons they would be a threat to Israel. Also they have the Suez canal. That’s pretty much it. We give them enough economic aid to mostly prevent food riots and enough military aid to suppress revolt among their own people. We find military governments in Egypt easier to deal with — less hypocrisy needed on their part. Though of course not on ours.

I don’t see that US foreign policy in the middle east is at all incoherent. It just cannot be spoken aloud by government representatives because it sounds so bad.

“Anything we do to attack ISIS supports Assad.”

Not really. ISIS spend more of their time attacking other rebels than attacking the regime.

“The friend of my enemy is my enemy.” Assad is their only credible opposition, so hurting them helps him.

The *recent* events that have led to the reemergence of ISIS in Iraq (primarily the strenghtening of sectarian control in Baghdad and more specifically the Hawija clashes) are a better example of what you get when you ‘leave them sort it out’, perhaps this a ‘better’ outcome for some caveated definition of better, but still not exactly wonderful.

“If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.”

The USA is unwilling to keep an occupation army there in strong enough numbers to maintain order. The USA is unwilling to run the Iraqi government all by ourselves. It follows that we can’t expect the results to be exactly wonderful.

We showed in Iraq that we were not willing to do what was necessary for acceptable results. We were willing to kill only about a million of them, and they saw how squeamish we were and then they took initiative to get what they wanted.

If we had been willing to kill say 25 million Iraqis we could have gotten a much better result “for the people who are still alive”.

But we just did not have that resolve. We stopped even before we ran out of cake.

The post does overstate everything except the incoherence of US foreign policy.
Some of the incoherence is due to political realities in the US. These include: overwhelming support for whatever Israel’s current policy is, reflexive Republican/conservative opposition to whatever policy a Democratic president promotes, the reactive (rather than proactive) policy of the Obama administration. (not that I oppose that philosophically)

The US needs to be independent of fossil fuels as a energy source. Normally, I would say we need to become independent of Middle Eastern oil first, but I don’t know that we have enough time to accomplish that before solving fossil fuels.

I am not sure better or worse are proper terms, but the Middle East will have to sort it out for themselves or we will continue to see the current chaos for any foreseeable future. Of course, sorting it out will likely be a long and bloody process (see the religious wars in Europe). But, I am convinced that it would likely be even longer and bloodier if the West continues to meddle.

“Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare;
To-morrow’s Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”

(Quatrain LXXIV, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; tr Edward Fitzgerald, 3rd edition.)

All my life, and for the previous century, Britain, and then the US have been trying to create a chain of friendly regimes from the Nile to the Indus. We haven’t made a very good job of it, degenerating from nation building to perpetual crisis management. The cost, in all senses, continues to be huge. “We” are in a hole – perhaps it’s time to stop digging?

I don’t know to what extent the US in particular needs Mid-East oil. Perhaps JQ does? But without these apparently self-defeating military programmes, perhaps the US really wouldn’t need any oil but its own?

We have been bombing the Middle East off and on for almost 25 years and what has it gotten us? Nothing but hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, trillions of dollars wasted and chaos across the region.

Do we really have any idea what those trillions of dollars could have accomplished if they had been used to build up rather than tear down? High speed internet, quality infrastructure, access to health care and education for people across the region. Perhaps we could have bribed the Israelis and the Palestinians to make peace with that much money!

Instead we have the same people calling for bombs yesterday, bombs today and bombs tomorrow. It is absolutely bat shit insane. Yet here we are again. Why are our leaders so willing to make the same mistakes over and over and over again?

/This is all just so depressing.

I don’t know to what extent the US in particular needs Mid-East oil. Perhaps JQ does? But without these apparently self-defeating military programmes, perhaps the US really wouldn’t need any oil but its own?

This is a cue for 15 people to say at once “oil is fungible. Even if the US does not burn any oil that actually comes from the Middle East, an interruption to ME oil supply would drive the world oil price up and cause harm to the US economy, and indeed to most other countries’ economies”.

The US imports about 733 million barrels of crude oil a year from the Gulf region, out of 3.6 billion barrels total imports, which, added to 2.7 billion in domestic production, gives 6.3 billion barrels total consumption. The Gulf, then, supplies roughly 11% of total US oil needs. (The US Department of Energy has an Energy Information Administration which has a very helpful website.)
The US military uses a hell of a lot of oil – it’s the single largest consumer of oil in the US (as you might expect given that it is essentially a huge organisation for moving stuff and people around). It uses 4.6 billion gallons of fuels and oils per year – about 83 million barrels. That’s still far less than the US imports from the Gulf, though.

“However, that option was not open to us. To support Israel we must keep arab economies crippled”

The roots of the political and economic failure of Arab countries is (IMO) primarily domestic. US policy has rarely been particularly intelligent, but it has also mainly been reactive. The fault for underdevelopment lies mainly with Arab elites, not a Jewish conspiracy.

It’s not really true that the USA has switched sides in the Middle East. Despite the fact that the Gulf States and Turkey have brought into being a terrorist group that controls significant territory in Iraq and Syria, the US is still treating these states with kid gloves. And even though there is significant overlap of interests with Syria and Iraq, relations with these states are still icy. A couple of weeks ago at the UN, the UK prime minister said that Iran is a part if the problem in the Middle East: that’s a daft thing to say about a country whose help you want to deal with a common threat. (Iran may be part of the problem, but every other state in the region is part of the problem.) The incoherence is not that the USA has changed sides but that it apparently allows Turkey and the Gulf States to set conditions for fighting the monster that they have created, so the USA is committed to creating from scratch a moderate opposition force in Syria.

Tony Blair pops up every so often to say that The West has to be engaged in the Middle East. What he fails to mention is that The West is engaged deeply in the Middle East but in an unhelpful way: it is tied up with certain states and thus is involved in their conflicts and squabbles. If it is going to engage in a helpful way it needs to disengage a bit first.

However it is probably 40 years too late for that. As some of us said back then, the response to the 1973 oil embargo should have been to seriously explore alternative energy sources and find ways of reducing oil use. That was a road not taken.

“If middle east nations were prosperous it would give them more ability to attack Israel. So we can’t have that.”. There are dozens of things wrong with US policy in the Middle East, but you’ve somehow stumbled onto an explanation that is wrong both in premise and conclusion. US policy was most certainly not to keep Egypt or Jordan weak for example. And if Israel didn’t exist we’d still be concerned about a nuclear Iran.

Ronan(rf): “For my part, I couldn’t care less if the US chooses to use airstrikes and special forces and proxy groups to degrade ISIS. This seems like a sensible use of military power. Whether that can be done over the short run is another question, but hopefully it’s the beginning of a serious process to weed them out by regional actors.”

Quoted for purposes of marking out to future generations why war crimes are so popular.

I wonder if I should send it to the woman I know whose child was killed in El Salvador by U.S.-supported forces there.

Rich, please spare me the self righteousness. I know and respect your opposition to military action as (afaict) a general rule. Good on you. My position doesnt mean that I retrospectively support war crimes in El Salvador, it means that I think ISIS are a threat worth dealing with.

12 “The problem seems to be primarily one of economic and political failure in the Middle East. If there had been a a decade or two of genuine, inclusive economic growth and political reform then this situation would probably not be occuring.”

This is a highly eurocentric judgement. Their society may or may not prioritize economic growth (and other western things: democracy, human rights, open society, etc.) as high as westerners do. I get a feeling that every time western ideas are being propagated and implemented, it’s a disaster. The revolution of purple fingers…

@31 – It’s not really. It’s prioritising having a job and the ability to buy food, and is quoted across classes as one of the main issues breeding resentment.
Political dysfunction as a generality means not having to deal with intrusive security appartuses and pay off govt officials. It also means political systems that dont privilege specific ethnic or sectarian groups and thus breed inter enthic tension. It is also something that’s polled as breeding resentment regionally (although with grievances more often held by the more well off afaicr)
Whether it’s ‘eurocentric’, I dont know. This isn’t outer mongolia circa 14th century we’re talking about. There is some space for a crossover of generally held human concerns.

“Do you mean, for instance, the reign of terror unleashed on the world by Western powers with their colonial expansion, slavery, forced conversions to Christianity?”

“Still” largely uncivilized, as in present tense. I’m not talking about centuries past.

Or maybe your definition of civilization includes executing people for converting to a different religion, prosecuting rape victims for being raped, just generally treating women as chattel, destroying historical monuments, and so forth.

The Middle East is, to this day, still an uncivilized part of the planet. That’s their fundamental problem. Oil wealth just lets them spread it.

My belief is that with US intervention whether bombs or soldiers there will be more dead women and children than without it. As evidence I offer Iraq and Afghanistan.

The counter-evidence would be Syria, which, without any meaningful US intervention, has a death total[1] higher than Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Mali, Palestine, Sierra Leone and Bosnia put together. It is rivalled only by the last time the US ‘left the middle east to sort itself out’ (i.e. sit back and sell arms to both sides): the Iran Iraq war

[1] the commonly quoted figure for the total of a few hundred thousand, based on confirmed reports, is obvious nonsense; the country is simply too dangerous for journalists, let alone researchers, to visit. So heavy artillery fires for weeks on end, cities change hands by street battles, and that number stays the same.

Best estimate is that the population has dropped from over 23 million to under 17 million over the course of the war, with 5 million documented refugees, plus 6 million internally displaced.

No way there are less than 2 million bodies by now…

That Saudi Arabia is civilized on the same scale the US is isn’t the hill *I’d* chose do die on, but go ahead and defend that proposition.

The proximate to distant causes of the current situation in the Levant and Iraq are :

1. Obama’s last-minute decision not to intervene in Syria in the summer of 2013 (leaving the French high and dry) (2013)

2. Obama’s signaling that the U.S. would withdraw ASAP from Iraq (thereby diminishing his own influence over the creation of a stable unity system in Iraq) . Until that point and after the initial disastrous invasion the U.S. had been steadfast in its commitment to back the national unity of Iraq through a process that includes all its communities ( so no, the U.S. didn’t “change sides” , its commitment was to the process , and the real switch was signaling it was no longer fully committed to it) (2012)

3. The invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush (2003)

4. The Sykes-Picot agreement (1916)

5. The schism (632)

I wonder if John Quiggin believes the American retreat in the Summer of 2013 was a good decision .

Actually, it is not just Israel that acts as a driver of US policy – although in actuality I think this is a two way driver, and that Israel does a lot of things that the US government wants them to do while pretending to condemn them or hold them at a distance – but Saudi Arabia. Why should the US, which is buddies with all the authoritarian Gulf states and calmly watched as the Saudis invaded bahrain and suppressed a democratic revolt, care about Assad? I mean, we have no real reason to overthrow Assad. It will actually make US policy much more difficult if Syria fragments. But the Saudis fear Iran, and thus want to damage their ally. That’s it. Similarly, when Pakistan illegally steals the technology and designs to build nuclear weapons, and are financed in this endeavor by the Saudis, we do… nothing. When Iran openly pursues nuclear power and, we presume, a nuclear weapon, we go apeshit.
If the US had taken a far sterner stance towards Saudi Arabia and had established a relationship with Iran in 1989, like Israel, at that time, was advocating, we would surely not have had 9/11, and there would surely be no ISIS.
I would define the US problem in the Middle East differently. Our patchwork of short term policy decisions reflect an unthought out long term framework that has long been broken. It isn’t just the Israel connection that is responsible for this. Rather, it is literally the politics of the oil companies which has brought us to this point.

“2. Obama’s signaling that the U.S. would withdraw ASAP from Iraq (thereby diminishing his own influence over the creation of a stable unity system in Iraq) . Until that point and after the initial disastrous invasion the U.S. had been steadfast in its commitment to back the national unity of Iraq through a process that includes all its communities ( so no, the U.S. didn’t “change sides” , its commitment was to the process , and the real switch was signaling it was no longer fully committed to it) (2012)”

10 years apparently not enough I guess.

This might be of interest. The original plan was for ~135,000 occupation troops over and above combat forces and combat MPs that would be retained in the zone. The actual implementation didn’t get that high – in part because there was no insurgency and the occupation troops found themselves culturally compatible with the defeated (not to mention that a high percentage could speak each others’ languages).

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/Occ-GY/

It should also be noted that at that time the top marginal tax rate was 97% and the draft was still in full effect, neither of which were ever approached during Iraq Adventure 2. Somehow the warhawks never want to talk about the credit card bill.

45 Makes good points about Saudi Arabia – also (like Afghanistan) not mentioned in JQ’s piece.

This post is exactly right.

The only thing I would add is that, as an American, I strongly hope that Iran test a nuclear weapon at some point. Without a credible deterrent, it’s hard to imagine something like JQ’s final paragraph happening. American governments, to coin a phrase, only understand force.

It’s not easy to map the evolution of US policy towards Saudi Arabia into a specific foreign policy stance. Was it better policy in the 1950s when the Arab American Oil Company (HQ in Delaware) was literally bankrolling the Saudi government or the 1980s when Aramco (HQ: Dhahran) was ultimately footing the bills for Afghanistan and Saddam (back when he was the good Baathist dictator)? More US control in the 1950s. Much worse outcomes in the 1980s.

Brett,

On any sane scale if that is determined by conservative Americans. Yes. Very true. It’s what you guys are fighting for in Colorado right now. You know? The right to ram “American exceptionalism” down the throats of students who would rather learn the truth instead.

It’s funny, because Iran ought to be the ideal society for conservatives. Safe, polite to a slightly comical fault, scrupulous, and run according to religious values.

Oil* is a fungible commodity, sure, so what happens with oil in the Middle East affects global prices. But exporters are even more dependent on the oil trade than importers. If Iraq stopped exporting oil that would be more than 80% of its foreign exchange earnings gone. The same goes for Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. Whoever is in charge, if they care about being able to import foreign goods, they’ll continue to export oil. None of these countries is currently in a position to replace foreign imports with domestic manufactures either. I think that JQ’s suggestion that the USA stop treating the domestic politics of the Middle East as a strategic concern is closer to correct than rebuttals citing the global nature of oil markets.

If ascetic religious fanatics who don’t want foreign goods started ruling major oil exporters, they could shut down exports and leave the rest of the world to cope with the energy shock. Still, preparing to cope with an energy shock would be cheaper in the long term than decades of military intervention. Eventually the exports will decline no matter what the military does. It’s not like we haven’t seen the writing on the wall for decades, or survived the effects before. The 1973 oil crisis nearly quadrupled oil prices in less than a year. 30 years later, the price of oil went from $25 a barrel in early 2003 to over $100 a barrel by 2008. I doubt that oil is ever going to be as cheap again as it was in 1998. So let’s adapt and move on, rather than futilely hoping oil prices can be bombed lower.

The humanitarian angle for military intervention doesn’t work either. If you are concerned about foreign civilians dying, there are dozens of more cost effective interventions per life-year saved before you reach “bomb ISIS.”

*I’m actually thinking of natural gas also, but oil and natural gas shortened to ‘oil’ for readability.

The article is excellent, its amazing how such a logical and simple proposal can seem so radical in the context of the muddled thinking which characterises western policy and commentary about the Middle East.

I think another issue needs to be emphasised, is that there is not an iota of evidence that a ‘hands off’ policy would alter the flow of oil. Every group in the Middle East wants to export oil at a market price – even Isis are producing oil for sale. Whoever owns the sands will produce oil for sale, and there is no possibility of there being enough unity between the Shiite and Sunni regions to assume they could use it to blackmail the wider world for whatever reason. Whoever is in control, needs to sell oil. Even in Libya, where there has been a virtual collapse of central authority, they have managed to increase output – why wouldn’t they? Everyone needs the money.

The only rational argument against a presence is that someone else (presumably Russia or China) will try to muscle in. But apart from that being unlikely, it can be countered by other means, not by interfering constantly in domestic Middle Eastern politics.

If middle east nations were prosperous it would give them more ability to attack Israel. So we can’t have that.

If middle east nations were prosperous, they would have less incentive to attack Israel.
Or, at least. less incentive to keep the masses distracted by anti-Israel rhetoric. As far as Iran wishing to destroy Israel, I suspect that Israel’s presence as a bete noir is more valuable to Iranian leadership than any advantage they would gain by its absence.

@ JimV #62
This. If we had stayed on the alternative energy road that Carter started, we would be in much better shape on AGW, foreign intanglements in the ME, and very likely in better shape in the overall economy.

Just another one of St. Ronnie’s FUs.

I think another issue needs to be emphasised, is that there is not an iota of evidence that a ‘hands off’ policy would alter the flow of oil. Every group in the Middle East wants to export oil at a market price – even Isis are producing oil for sale.

While I think you’re mostly right, still consider how it worked during the Iran/Iraq war.

The USA provided lots of support for Iraq, and it’s possible that Iraq invaded Iran in the first place at US request. We were happy for them to continue fighting indefinitely with no winner. Kissinger famously quipped “Too bad they can’t both lose”. But they both lost a lot of money and had to pump lots of oil to pay for it. Both cheated extensively on their OPEC oil quotas. For some unknown reason the price of oil was low then, so they had to pump lots and lots of oil to get the money they needed for the war.

Then the USA announced there was a threat that Iran would attack international oil shipping. Their goal would be to damage the Iraqi war effort by interfering with their exports. (Iraq and Iran had been attacking each other’s oil shipping for some time, with minor results.) The US Navy moved in aggressively, and Iran attacked oil shipping more while the US Navy was trying to stop them than they ever had before.

A US cruiser shot down an Iranian passenger liner that they thought might have been a threat, and an Iraqi warplane attacked the USS Stark. We forgave the Iraqis, though.

Here is a source about this stuff. Don’t trust it anything it says until you get confirmation from the unbiased, trustworthy US government.
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/united_states_iran_iraq_war2.php

So while everybody in the middle east who has oil has an incentive to sell it, it’s also true that various people in the middle east who have oil also have enemies, and their enemies may consider it more important to stop them from selling it than to keep the world economy on an even keel.

However, it’s far easier for the US military to bomb people than to keep people from bombing oil facilities.

Chaos is also the enemy of oil exports. So if we let them battle it out, even if either side would happily pump oil, it could be that a lot of export capacity would be destroyed anyway. War/instability doesn’t usually resolve as a zero-sum game, usually there is a net loss. Also we have seen that the US isn’t strictly concerned with the level of oil exports, we happily embargo or bomb (in the case of IS controlled oil facilities) those exporters whom we consider to be the current bad guys. Clearly the global price of oil has been higher partly because we’ve embargoed Iranian oil.

There is also the fact, that humanitarian concerns aside, instability is bad for the rest of the world. Large refugee flows are tough on those nations who agree to take them in. That includes Europe, and even to a small extent the US.

So we try to muddle from crisis to crisis, but seem to be about as effective as a bull in a China shop.

“I don’t see how it’s really all that different from what’s happening now. “Stabilise the front lines in Iraq” would read to me as support Baghdad and the Kurds ”

I think it’s different in that it means less bombing, and presumably no bombing in Syria and maybe restricting our bombing to cases where there are clear military assets being blown up, and not civilians. I read somewhere recently that the Administration lifted restrictions on civilian casualties. (I doubt the restrictions were all that strict in the first place, but an open admission that they’ve been lifted doesn’t sound good.)

And there’s the bigger picture to think about. If we get bogged down in a long-term large-scale occupation in the middle east, what are we going to do when it’s time to invade and occupy China?

Is this a meta-joke going over my head? No foreign military could successfully invade and occupy modern China, or any nuclear power for that matter. The future might bring peace, or mutual destruction, but it’s not going to bring a repeat of Chinese territory being carved up by stronger foreign powers.

I would think the big difference in JQ’s suggestion is that it provides an endgame – peace talks. Peace talks are ruled out by a policy that calls for the extermination of the enemy, which is what Obama and the D.C. crowd have called for vis a vis ISIS. ISIS may be “terrorists” (rather than what they look like, rebels who want to take and hold territory), but as far as I know, they haven’t called for the extermination of the United States.
Perhaps peace talks can start with canning the extermination talk on both sides.

JWM @51:

That comment was especially silly-stupid. Not only don’t “we” want to encourage proliferation of nuclear weapons, (or even nuclear power, according to me), but a fatwa from Khomeini, re-affirmed by Khatemei, specifically prohibits the possession of nuclear weapons. At most, what the Iranian regime is trying to accomplish, is the development of a “break-out” capacity, as a deterrent, in their very dangerous, nuke-armed region. A version, though likely less advanced toward the threshold, of the Israelis’ “strategic ambiguity”, which itself is a hypocritically thin pretense.

Nobody is going to legitimise ‘the Caliphate’ or redraw the borders of Iraq and Syria for them, and they have no reason to negotiate now because they are on the front foot and have no incentive to compromise.
I dont know enough about The Vietnam/Camodian wars, but it seems you are talking about decades down the line reintegrating ex Khmer into the Cambodian political system? Not meeting their ideolgical demands ? This is the distinction I drew.

The most pernicious argument is the “we broke it so we’re morally obliged to fix it” line trotted out even by many people who say they opposed the original invasion of Iraq. Firstly it perpetuates the paternalistic ideology that the Arab world is culturally inferior to America and requires endless guidance via rewards and punishment. Secondly it is on a par with allowing a doctor who’s practically killed a patient through incompetent surgery to open them up again, because they mean well and maybe they can do better this time. There are absolutely no grounds for believing the USA can do anything significant in the Middle East without triggering another cascade of unanticipated consequences, many of which will probably be harmful.

John is right. From a moral perspective, America should withdraw from the region. If it insists on staying on the grounds of self-interest, at least let its leaders acknowledge the reasons and drop their lies about terrorist threats to The Homeland and their insufferable pretence of moral superiority.

And here I thought the divine right of kings, censorship, public executions for witchcraft, stoning rape victims, judicial torture, were bad, and democracy, human rights, an independent judiciary, freedom of speech were good. Saudi Arabia is not a good place, and the king should be killed if for no other reason than being an absolute monarch.

The Arab world had secular nationalists and pro-democracy and socialist movements. The largest strikes in history were in Karachi: yes, no longer Arab, but still muslim, and today the home of the Red Mosque and the Taliban. The tragedy is that American intervention is not modernizing the Arab world more thoroughly.

Whoops, screwed up the HTML code. Should say “as summarized here,” and only “here” should be hyperlinked.

Why not just take a mulligan on this whole Iraq thing? Say, conquer Iraq again, spend a decade rebuilding their state and training their army, and give this all another go in 10 years.

Honestly though – isn’t that the logical end of many of the recent calls for US intervention? Basically I see there being 3 axis here: whether the US has an obligation to intervene; whether the US has the material means to intervene; and whether the US is capable, strategically or whatever, of succeeding in its goals in the region.

Most people are in agreement on the first (as the US in a way ‘started it all’), and given that current policy is an open ended commitment to the region (as well as plenty of troops *still* in Afghanistan), it seems that we have the finances and political will to keep sending blank checks to the Pentagon.

As for the last question, well, I see no reason to have faith that the US military can achieve any but the most modest of aims. Provide close air support for Kurdish troops defending their territory? Sure. It hardly makes up for our past with the Kurds. But when the goal of the intervention becomes something fuzzy, like ‘degrading the enemy’ or ‘restoring stability in the region’, we face the obvious question – wouldn’t boots on the ground in combination with air power be superior to just the latter? The historical and academic evidence on this is mixed, but there are strong arguments made against the efficacy of air power alone. The military establishment is starting to come out with the hard truth – but I don’t hear the politicians or the chattering classes willing to endorse Iraq War 2.5.

Unless there is a specific argument out there against using ground troops, saying that they specifically will hinder our ability to achieve objectives, it all reeks of political expedience. I don’t hear such an argument being made now, and certainly do not recall it being made in Iraq’03. An honest debate over bringing peace to the region and expelling ISIS has to consider putting boots on the ground. If you accept the proposition that a US military intervention will be effective (I don’t at all), you have to seriously consider the maximum option.

But if we are in for the long haul, then what make it more likely that we will do a better job rebuilding Iraq this time around? Given the widespread institutional failure plaguing the US at home, I don’t see many reasons to be optimistic about our ability to nation build overseas.

Personally, I find this whole display shameful. ISIS provokes the (notoriously) bloodthirsty US news audience, who become outraged, and demand action from their government (who are more than happy to oblige). Now, we have the clowns coming out, invoking the ISIS boogeyman as a bludgeon for their personal ideological objectives. The people prejudiced against Muslims get all outraged and accusatory, the politician war hawks say that Obama is feckless, CNN gets to tell you the terrorists are coming again. Etc etc, you all know the drill, it is the same disgusting theatrics every time. Everyone loves a good war, everyone loves to point a finger at the enemy and shout ‘look at that monster!’. Saying that we should just ‘get the *%*# out of there’ (shorter version of JQ above) is a commitment to stop getting caught up in these cycles.

At the end of the day, it isn’t about strategy, it is about psychology. Would be great if it were the other way around… but then we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

Perhaps if we reconquer Fallujah again, we’ll do it *right* this time.

Perhaps the death squads that we train will shoot executioner-seeking bullets that will only kill the guys in the video, rather than raping and killing family members of people suspected to be in ISIS.

Perhaps the bombs will be “surgical strikes” that will only kill the chief ISIS ideologues.

Normally there’s a tension that people like to draw in between idealism and realism. You can see it in Ronan(rf)’s comment above, where he admires the pacifists, but that very admiration means that of course he doesn’t have to listen to them because he’s admiring an ideal that can never exist in this tough-guy world. Well, if I’m going to be called self-righteous anyways, I’ll say that there are *no* virtues in the calling-for-war side here. It’s not geopolitical realism or any other kind of realism. It’s people who are easily fooled and who can not learn from history, who also want to go to war — couch bound killer suckers.

“I’ll say that there are *no* virtues in the calling-for-war side here. It’s not geopolitical realism or any other kind of realism”

Who is speaking of virtue ? I think there are a lot of good reasons to oppose US intervention. I don’t think it’s a morally superiour position, but pragmatically it makes sense.

This has become a truly weird situation with ISIS. It comes on top of the fact that our friend and allies have been trying to get the US to attack Iran for the last 20 to 30 years. And then the same friends and allies try to get the US to attack Syria for them. I guess they know that Americans are just suckers and seem to be willing to waste lives and money to fight wars for no good reason.

Then along comes ISIS. And Turkey just sits there and looks at it, and probably calls Joe Biden and says that if we don’t do something it will all go BAD. And the Saudi Arabians keep sending money to them. And the Israelis, they seem to feel that chaos in the area is good for them, because it makes them look good or something, and that no one will notice that they just stole a few more acres of the land from the Palestinians on Tuesday.

It was guaranteed that the Iraq would crumble after we left, it was just a matter of time. I don’t think any of this is Obama’s fault and in fact he’s played it pretty well, considering the deplorable conditions and the truly awful nature of the various governments that are involved. His position has basically been that he’s not going to fight other country’s wars for them. Maybe once the Saudis or the Turks feel really threatened they’ll do something positive, like maybe stop trying to destabilize Syria and Syria, and stop using the Iraq as a war-proxy.

It’s a true mess, and the less America does the better. I hope Obama can keep a lid on it – I just read an editorial in the Los Angeles Time this Morning from the Kagans proposing that it is time for American boots on the ground and now Lindsay Graham wants to run for president because we’re looking weak again. Look out people.

“I’d say in a strictly moral sense that would be true. Whether it is advisable given our
record of making things worse is another question.”

In a strictly moral sense? Do you also believe that in a strictly moral sense a rapist should marry the woman he rapes, because he has to repair the damage he’s done? The two situations appear to me to be highly analogous. Whether he’s a good provider as well as a rapist is beside the point: he should be in prison, not in charge of the life of the person he’s victimized. If his victim is desperate and needs resources, it’s not a moral duty for him to provide them, it’s a matter of criminal penalties. Only the fact that there is no criminal law enforcement between states lets us cast this as “moral obligation”, which not coincidentally goes along with continued control.

Foreign policy threads remind me about how stupid, how ignorant and how . . . immoral (American) foreign policy is, and how the popular discussion of it is no better.

The people, who are in charge of (America &) American foreign policy, shouldn’t be.

Everything else said is usually just irrelevant b.s.

Yes it is, but politicians who are tempted to do that will have to pay a price for it. The will to be stupid is strong among US (and Australian) voters.

I do not think it is all down to the poor taste of the common man in America. The poor taste of the common man in America is a commodity carefully cultivated by PR professionals, and that cultivation is not effectively opposed.

This is such a weird discussion.

I think it’s a pretty simple explanation for incoherent policy. There’s a lot of factional infighting between various arms of the deep states and between the daylit Administration and said deep state. People from State go haring off on their own initiative, while Defense plots behind their backs with power-brokers, while Obama surveys the field, trying to figure out how to best herd a pride full of cats. It’s not as bad as, say, when the ’30s japanese had various external companies and state organs involved in all sorts of shenanigans and refusing to listen to Tokyo, but it’s still pretty bad.

As far as what’s happening? We’re in the process of dumping KSA and Israel. Particularly the latter, as they belatedly figure out that it’s not actually all that wise to make the Emperor lose face, just because they’re chums with a few Senators.

JQ @ 97:: “Some of the war advocates wanted to go in, smash the place up, kill Saddam and leave. It was pretty obvious that this course of action would have produced something like ISIS in short order, hence the “you broke it, you own it” argument.”

Yes, I remember the original context. But I think that both then and now, however well meaning the “you broke it, you own it” reasoning is, it’s immoral. We don’t own someone else’s society or state because we invaded it and destroyed their government. If war advocates manage to get our country to commit a war crime — such as the aggressive war that we waged on Iraq — then the crime never can justify our continued control. It’s our moral duty to leave and set in place domestic political structures that will keep us from doing it again.

#105

It’s our moral duty to leave and set in place domestic political structures that will keep us from doing it again.

That sounds good. As it is now, we can’t depend on politicians to keep us from doing it again because they think too many voters will never forgive them for stopping us.

Could we create a tradition that the US Supreme Court has to rule on the legality before we invade a foreign country? The World Court might be better, but the same voters who won’t put up with a wuss President would never put up with letting a foreign court decide who we can fight.

Wait! Has anyone tried bombing them? Or maybe we should try training and arming local “good guys”?

Or just paying whoever trained the local bad guys to train the local good guys?

John Q -no problem. My point (as much as I had one) was more that the intent they show in the region and their adherence to a maximilist religous/political ideology makes them more comparable to Pol Pots Khmer Rouge and the SS than Hamas and Hezbollah. I would think the Islamic State is probably the moral equivalent of occupied Eastern Europe or late 70s Democratic Kampuchea at this stage.
That might be overwrought on my part, and it’s not an argument for intervention in an off itself, (and I dont think they pose a similar – or really meangful – threat to the west) but I was more trying to make the point of why I think looking for peace talks with them in the forseeable future is a fools errand.

“There is not a chance that the US is going to commit the resources, or have a draft, or do any of the things that back up an exterminationist agenda. ”

But I don’t think it’s neccesary to reinstate the draft (or even commit ground troops) The US could be an added benefit just through providing logistics, air support, and organisational encouragment. I don’t think the US agenda is ‘exterminationist’, I would say more plausibly they want to degrade ISIS capabilities, stem their advances and provide support for other groups on the ground. Eventually , hopefully, split local tribes, Baathists and the less ideologically commited from them, and deal with whatever rump of the organisation remains when groups in the region do sue for peace.

“I think there is every chance, contrary to you, that the Sunni territory held, at least in Iraq, by ISIS is not coming back to Iraq.”

Let me be clearer because that’s not what I meant. My guess would be that when this fizzles out Iraq and Syria will remain geographically intact, but I wouldnt be very confident on that. They might be politically divided, with regional elites/rebels holding authority in specific areas, and to all intents and purposes quasi states, but the political entities known as Iraq and Syria will still exist would be my guarded guess (perhaps with Kurdistan cut off)
What I was saying was that I find it extremly unlikely that the Islamic state, as it now exists, will survive over the next decade. And I would guess the core of the Islamic States leadership won’t either.
I think Western policy as it is now exists only hastens their demise rather than prolongs their rule, and I dont see any plausible alternative where a response without Western help is either any less bloody or any more efficient.
I understand Americans not wanting to commit resources or lifes to this, which is of course entirely reasonable. I’m not American, so Im not really looking at it from that perspective. I think someone will eventually have to deal with the ISIS, and it’s better to have Western involvement, for practical reasons.

I think CK MacLeod makes a lot of good points, but just to add to:

“but there is violent disagreement, not least among the Middle Easterners themselves, about the shape and content of progress or potential progress”

while this is of course true, I don’t think ISIS represents any large body of ideological opinion in the region. They might have latched on to Sunni discontent, but the specific political program they push and the desire to remake regional borders is something of a niche concern.(afaik)
I don’t think ‘the west’ should involve itself militarily over the more general questions of governance in the Middle East (diplomatically, or through aid etc I don’t see a problem) , but trying to tilt the balance against ISIS is, I think, more defensible.

CK Macleod, I think this is, if not wrong, a misstatement of the case: “The US has predictably – or consistently – acted when Americans have perceived their core interests endangered by events in the region.”

I don’t believe ” Americans” are the people who develop their idea of their interests in the region. When the Bush people referred to the rush to the occupation in advertising terms, I think they were more on the right track. The D.C. establishment for reasons that have to do with economics, ancient behaviors that haven’t been revisited, etc., makes up its mind – like a corporation deciding on a product – and then sells it to the American people. The sales pitch, the sale, and the remorse are pretty easy to pick out from the polling data over time. What happens very very rarely is that Americans think of their core interest and act on it. Did Americans, for instance, think it would be a neat idea to get high placed Saudis out of the U.S, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11? No. In fact, I think that was the last thing they were thinking should be done.

In foreign affairs, even more than in economic policy, the US is hardly a democracy in the sense that ideas begin at the grassroots and flow upward. The attitude among foreign policy elites, from what I’ve read, certainly reflects this. Those elites think that the American vulgaris needs to be led to do what the foreign policy elite thinks is best.

This pattern is known to the elites themselves, which is why they do many things to distance the disillusionment. Occasionally, a loud minority can ball up things – for instance, the minority that demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. One of those distancing tricks is to make foreign policy undiscussable – if you weren’t for the invasion of Iraq, you must be an ardent supporter of Saddam Hussein, and if you aren’t for bombing ISIS, you must be eager to chop off heads. Eventually, long after the discussion that should have happened, public opinion will break through the taboos and refuse the terms. I am rather surprised that the anti-war side – which was a decisive factor in Obama winning over Clinton in the primaries – has suddenly shut up about, well, everything, including Obama casually using Bushite logic to declare war when he wants to and where. Our present pseudo-war, based as it is on such contradictory premises as that we are going to exterminate ISIS and help overthrow Assad, calls out for discussion, but I see very little of that in D.C., where the discussion is confined to McCain-heavy or McCain-lite positions.

from the linked CBS report:

Castro’s scathing assessment of Stoltenberg’s comments is the latest in a string of critiques by the former Cuban leader. He has also recently weighed in on the evolution of man, the latest discoveries about black holes by University of North Carolina professor Laura Mersini-Houghton[,] and the work of British scientist Stephen Hawking.

Castro is old, probably in somewhat fragile health, and having retired from running Cuba is reduced to spewing rubbish; well, I assume it’s rubbish — the stuff about NATO and ISIS definitely is.

The simplest explanation is also the historical (colonial) one. Our foreign policy is “incoherent” precisely because we don’t want any side to win. We enforce divisions, propping up failing actors, to ensure and perpetuate internal schism and violence. The region is then populated by a handful of minor powers rather than any single major one, one which could challenge US hegemony.

I’m not arguing that the US acts as a perfect puppet master, it cannot perfectly predict nor control events. But to say that our incoherent foreign policy stems from stupidity is missing the point that incoherence may very well be the policy goal.

#122 areanimator “It seems to me a comforting fantasy, attempting to deny the fact that a singular nation-state, even a supposed superpower like the US, really has no power over geopolitical events by itself.”

In part the USA invaded Iraq in order to try to demonstrate that the US did have power over geopolitical events by itself. Bush and those around him wanted to put the USA at the centre of the Middle East and show that it could control events. That was the background to PNAC and the neo-conservative world-view.

The results of the invasion of Iraq demonstrate that even a super-power did not have this power (and Vietnam should have made that clear 40 years previously). Unfortunately this is rarely acknowledged. Perhaps we are doomed to see the USA vainly trying to shake off the Vietnam Syndrome and Iraq Syndrome over and over again, and failing to admit that regime change is difficult and dangerous, and is beyond the capacity of even a super=power.

#124 John Quiggin “As argued in the OP, the US has no genuine friends in the region.”

Yes, but this is not recognised even when our “friends” have helped to create a threat such as ISIS. Thus the incoherence is not that the USA is now allied with countries that were its enemies; the incoherence is that the USA continues to consider as allies countries such as Turkey whose objectives are different from those of the USA and which is still trying to manipulate the USA to overthrow Assad.

The most dangerous countries in the region can be our “friends” because it can be difficult to admit that they have different objectives and are up to tricks behind our backs.

Who was it who said (loosely) “Never attribute to malevolence that which can be explained by incompetence”.

Just can’t get into this one personally. The Cheney gang was supremely competent (the agenda of PNAC was mentioned upthread). Their goals were evil and in my opinion counterproductive for the long-term survival of the United States, and Murphy’s Law worked its will as it does, but the neoconservatives had and have those goals and they executed them with great competence. Not least of which was hiding what they were doing for six years and then destroying most of the evidence on their way out the door.

But hey, Clinton staffers vandalized W keys on computers and Occupy Wall Street didn’t order enough portapotties, so it is all evensies.

fixed this for you JT:

“They have been invaded by every close neighbor — Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt. They have suffered minor attacks (air force, proxy militants) by some of their neighbors-once-removed — Libya, Sudan, Iraq (but not the other two, Saudi arabia and Turkey). They are openly discussed as being eliminated by a tertiary neighbor, Iran, who has also attacked their overseas citizens in places as far away as Argentina and India.”

Now reads better!

JT – your point about ‘neutrality being arranged and enforced by the US’ is largely wrong, and a mirror image of the pro Israel fanatics who imagine a peaceful relationship between Israel and its Arab neighbours is impossible. Peace deals might have been negotiated through and copperfastened (through aid) by the US, but most of the impetus for peace deals or an easing of relations have come from within the region (primarily from within Arab states)
Your point about the purposeful underdevelopment of Arab countries by the US to appease Israel is idiotic in the extreme (I say that with love and respect) More plausibly, I guess, you could say the Soviet/US rivalry during the Cold War led to the underdevelopment of the Arab Middle East (through supporting authoritarian regimes etc) I think that’s alittle simplistic perhaps, but more plausible than this conspiracising Israel as the font of all evil.

I would like to ask the commenters in 124, 125 and 126 what exactly is meant by the expression “genuine friend” of a country. What kind of relationship do two countries need to be in so as to be considered “genuine friends”? On the face of it, it seems that a “genuine friend” (if it’s at all similar to the way one might use this expression to describe relationships between two individual persons) would never act against their friend’s best interests and support them “come hell or high water”, which is an impossible standard in international relationships. Countries form alliances of convenience, various institutions and entities within different countries collaborate on issues in ways that can act against stated policy, and in the end, the government of every country acts (or at least makes an effort to appear to act) in its own best interest (however construed). What possible “friends” can a nation have besides itself? And why do we need to have “friends” in order to form a coherent foreign policy?

Guano @125:

“the incoherence is that the USA continues to consider as allies countries such as Turkey whose objectives are different from those of the USA”

I don’t really see the incoherence. As a nation independent from the USA, Turkey should have, and will always have, foreign policy objectives that will differ from those of the USA. Much like you go to war with the army you have, you wage said war along with whatever allies you can muster, judging that the differences in objectives is small enough compared to whatever primary goal the war is meant to achieve. See also: Soviet-US relations during WWII. Again, isn’t this just a self-evident fact of international relations that’s taken into account when making foreign policy?

JQ @124:

A more plausible version of the deliberate incoherence story is as follows. As argued in the OP, the US has no genuine friends in the region. So, any nation or sect that gains ascendancy is bound to be seen as a dangerous enemy, and the obvious policy solution is to ally with the enemy’s enemy.

There’s probably some truth in the notion that the US would be uncomfortable with a clear regional hegemon in the M.East, with the possible exception of a perceived ‘moderate’ regime such as that in Jordan, which of course is not in a position to become a regional hegemon. That said, I think JQ’s formulation here is way too broad and sweeping, suggesting as it does that US policymakers have a mechanical approach that simply scans for any “nation or sect” that may be gaining ascendancy and then opposes it. The US is not opposing ISIS simply because it is gaining ascendancy but rather b/c it perceives ISIS to be threat based in substantial part on ISIS’s ideology coupled w its actions (and specifically the joining of jidahism w effective territorial aggrandizement). At some level ISIS is seen as a threat not simply to US or Western interests but to the entire state system and the notions of state sovereignty and ‘sovereign equality’ (i.e. sovereign states have the same rights under intl law), all of which it obvs. rejects.

More pertinently, the idea, implied by JQ, that countries (the US in this case) simply look at the ‘balance of power’ without any regard to the ideology or aims of the forces in question is, frankly, absurd. I doubt even the most austere structural realist would sign on to this proposition. As Walt argued long ago (The Origin of Alliances), states don’t balance against ‘power’, they balance against (perceived) threat.

roger gatham @ https://crookedtimber.org/2014/10/07/yesterdays-enemies-todays-allies-and-tomorrow/#comment-573552

Even by your own account, the statement of mine that you call a misstatement qualifies as at least literally true in two ways: Those “elites” whom you hold entirely responsible for Operation Iraqi Freedom are Americans, and in your depiction of the American system, make American policy. You also indicate that the American citizenry in general succumbed to the sales pitch. So, from the other point of view, in which American policy represents what Americans in general want, or recognize as affecting their core interests, they were finally on board with OIF.

More to the point, the notion of enduring American interests embedded within an American grand strategy or “clear and consistent rationale” somewhat bypasses the question of how a political system produces decisions or what people tell themselves about how decisions are made and what they mean. A core interest is not an interest that changes according to fluctuations in popular opinion or movement from one political administration to another. That a substantial number of Americans who were convinced about the justification for OIF in 2003 were unconvinced by 2013, or whether OIF was well-implemented and conducted, has no bearing on whether OIF emerged in relation to American core interests and a clear and predictable or consistent rationale derived from them. To use your metaphor, those interests are deeper than “the grass roots.” They are the ground in which the roots are rooted. From this perspective also, the 2002-3 decision on Iraq did not occur in isolation, in some fit of elite pique, but was a continuation or sequel to the Gulf War, whose prologue in turn was the determination, already re-affirmed through military action (the Tanker War), that free flow of oil through the Persian Gulf and, relatedly, non-domination of the region by any competitor were “vital” American interests, the term that used to be more in fashion before today’s “existential.”

On this latest chapter, you misstate the policy as it has been repeatedly articulated, though the difference may initially appear trivial to you. The policy is “to degrade and ultimately destroy,” not simply to “exterminate” IS. The difference is the difference between a long term strategy involving indirect action, and something simple and immediate. At the same time, to the consternation of war hawks and of some regional allies, the policy is not really to overthrow the Assad regime, but to bring about a settlement in Syria viewed as impossible without his departure, yet likely including elements of the regime itself. Supporting a small, disciplined and CIA-certified Jihadist-free force that in some future process might represent our position – i.e., for an inclusive government that can preserve Syria’s territorial integrity and protect civil piece – is a far cry from actively seeking to “overthrow” Assad.

Part of the difficulty in finding rebel forces in any large number to support is how constricted American policy is in this regard – including by congressional design, which reflects a strong sense of wariness on the part of your public customer. On this note, whether actions to contain and “degrade” IS, mainly focused in Iraq, including for legal reasons, happen to benefit or to be seen to benefit the Syrian regime in the short-term is quite secondary. We know it is secondary because we decided last year in a very public and democratic, if never fully formalized process, that we would not engage in acts of war against the Syrian regime. The appearance of policy contradiction originates on the ground or perhaps at the grassroots both over there and over here. We are prepared to kill and take casualties of our own in fights with IS and AQ. We have not reached that determination in relation to Assad, whether or not we should have or whether or not some of us think we should have.

I’m not sure whether my disagreement is driven by a different understanding of US policy, or a different understanding of the word “incoherent.”

But on the policy front, a few things.

First, policies can change. There’s nothing wrong with that. No one in the US Government (in a position of influence) has the view that the necons of 2003 had. So changes in perspective matter. There is no more Cold War, and that has altered US policy as well. So changes in circumstances matter. What appears to be policy incoherence over time may actually be reflective of changes in perspective or changes in circumstance.

Second, notwithstanding those changes, US policy has been roughly consistent if you look at the bigger picture.

As objectives, the US seeks regional stability, the unhampered production and delivery of petroleum products from the region, and, increasingly, support for efforts to restrict extremist groups, particularly in ungoverned areas. It views the development of more diversified economies, better anti-corruption, and the progressive embrace of human rights and tolerance by Middle East populations and governments as important to all goals, though obviously stability is a prerequisite.

To achieve those objectives, the US has sought to enforce the status quo of states and borders (leaving aside, obviously, the Israeli-Palestinian problem) by basing large forces in the region and working closely with various foreign forces and governments across the region. It has also applied pressure for other forms of reform, some more strongly than others. It has acted in concert with many other nations to dissuade Iran from acquiring nuclear capability. Finally, where necessary, it has undertaken military action against violent groups which it has judged to be threats to its security.

The great aberration from that was of course the Iraq War (though, even there, the US plan was to topple Saddam, provide some aid and advice in the building of political institutions, and quickly exit most forces – obviously, disastrously wrong). A number of key drivers were behind the US decision to go to war, but crucial was the influence and perspective of the neoconservatives, which having flamed brightly in ascendance like an unexpected belch of natural gas from a flare stack in the night, has now mercifully been contained again.

Third, ISIL. Lost in the thread is any conception of what the US is attempting to do. In brief, the US is integrating and subordinating its approach to ISIL into a broader set of strategic goals.

One important piece of the Obama Administration’s national security strategy is that of enabling and encouraging regional governments to take greater responsibility for the maintenance of order. Part that objective is served by allowing them to become sufficiently worried about ISIL and US delay in becoming more involved that they are driven to put more of their own skin into the game. This also includes using ISIL as leverage to push the Iraqi Government into making political and policy changes that will, in the future, prevent the Sunni provinces from becoming petri dishes for insurgency and terrorism. ISIL no doubt has also served as a useful spur to governments to crack down harder on extremist financing flowing from their countries, and as a cautionary tale for those governments which seek to leverage extremist groups to their own gain.

As to air strikes, the President must put forth a military policy that is acceptable to the American public. It would be perilous to commit conventional ground forces to long-term combat operations in Syria without a clear objective which the public strongly supported.

Finally, as all of the above (with the exception of the Iraq War) should show, US policy in the Middle East is not revolutionary – it does not seek to overthrow an existing order. It works with existing power structures whenever possible to achieve its objectives. Many of the supposed inconsistencies in the article merely illustrate that fact. The US did not bring Maliki to power, but once he was in, sought to work with him so far as possible; and US leverage to have him removed when he had clearly become an impediment to the recovery of order consisted, ironically, of US refusal to become further involved until he was gone. The US did not cause the Arab Spring, or the fall of Mubarak, or the rise of Morsi or the fall of Morsi, or the rise of Sisi. But it has worked with those forces and developments to continue to achieve its objectives. And the US would prefer to see a better governed, orderly Syria, but proposed strategies to bring that about are fraught with uncertainty and contain possible branches that are highly costly. So the US explores and investigates different avenues, but tentatively and leaving room to reverse course if it discovers the avenue to be less promising than hoped.

I don’t mean any of the above by way of defense – I can find much to criticize in US policy in the Middle East, especially in the last year – but by way of explanation. There’s nothing “incoherent” about US policy.

I agree with some (not all) of Andrew F’s 138, though I wd not use quite the same phrases he does. And the US did more than “work with” Maliki; it actively supported him much longer than it shd have.

I would also pt out that some of Obama’s rhetoric in his Sept 10 televised speech on ISIS (link) (there was also a subsequent UN speech that I haven’t looked at) was unhelpful. The reference to “destroy” (as in “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS) was unfortunate; “neutralize” wd have been a better word choice, implying a more realistic (and less apocalyptic) objective. The reference to “eradicating a cancer” was also unnecessary; this just inflames things and serves no real purpose, even if one agrees w Obama’s (debatable) statement in the same speech that ISIS is “unique in its brutality.” The stuff about “America’s blessings imposing enduring burdens” (close paraphrase, not verbatim) was just boilerplate ‘exceptionalist’ rhetoric, which for some reason his speechwriters thought necessary, but it wasn’t. It comes across as hubristic chest-thumping. He should have explained the threat and laid out the strategy without the added rhetorical crap.

I’d say US policy in the Gulf (particularly since the withdrawal of the British and Nixons twin pillar policy) has been to maintain stability. US policy in the Levant I think less so (where the US has taken a more blase position on ‘stability’) Also to combat communism, in those early post war decades, which at times took precedent over ‘stability’. (Important also, I guess, to define what we mean by stability, which is a depoliticised way of framing it – stability in this case meaning primarily regime stability in those countries aligned with US interests.)

“Do you have some sort of reasoning to support that?”

I dont think burden of proof is on me here.

#143 Ronan

Your point about the purposeful underdevelopment of Arab countries by the US to appease Israel is idiotic in the extreme

“Do you have some sort of reasoning to support that?”

I dont think burden of proof is on me here.

Ronan, in all cases the burden of proof is on people who make claims.

You have made a strong claim and the burden of proof is on you for your own claim.

Ok, let’s agree to disagree. I’ll step back from ‘idiotic in the extreme’ and instead say, I disagree.

OK, agreed.

When we talk about things like reasons that committees do things, it’s hard to prove any single reason. I say that US behavior in the middle east is compatible with a strong Israeli (or stupider US Zionist) influence, but if the conspirators (lobbyists, ringers, whatever) were at all competent it would be at best difficult to prove, and — given the actual results — impossible to disprove.

It’s a topic where we can certainly justify having different opinions.

Or to put it one more way, then Ill leave it .. there’s no real divide (afaict) between Andrew F’s comment and John Q’s claim of incoherence. US policy has stressed ‘stability’, specifically in oil producing countries and particularly in relation to oil prices, which is a very specific policy aim and one that’s been reasonably succesful (afaik)

But to speak about regional stability isn’t really to say anything (it’s a meaningless soundbite) and has proved to be pretty unsuccesful if it was a genuine policy. It’s in the second part (the regional stability claim) that I think John Q’s position is right in a lot of ways. That US policy *has been* (imo) incoherent on the specifics; on what they want to achieve regionally and how they’ll do it, and so has generally been reactive and open to manipulation by regional allies.
Gulf war 2 then (not solely as an abberation but as an outgrowth of US policy) makes more sense if you look at US policy as slightly incoherent, reactive and commited to stability in specific cases (US allies) rather than as a general good.

I dont know really. Instability in the Gulf States doesnt neccesarily equate to less Sunni extremism (it probably leads to more) so I dont think the two positions are that much in opposition. I think the issue was avoided less to appease the Saudis, and more because the US didnt really perceive the threat as that great prior to 9/11.

Re Andrew F.: “the US is integrating and subordinating its approach to ISIL into a broader set of strategic goals.” The US, across recent administrations at least, has seemed leery of actually exercising much leverage on allies to get them to do what it wants or thinks they shd do. This has been obvs. true w/r/t Israel. But seems also true now w/r/t, e.g., Turkey: WaPo headline has US admin “exasperated” at Turkey’s reluctance to act in the current sit. on its border. But at some pt exasperation shd give way to more direct exercise of leverage — current policy seems rather indirect as a means of doing this (though obvs. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes).

The only recent bright spot (or one of the few) for US policy in the region (broadly construed) is the settlement of the Afghanistan election dispute, transition to a new govt there, and signing of the bilateral security agreement. That cd have come out considerably worse than it has. That doesn’t guarantee the long-run outcome will be ok, of course, but it avoids the imm. problem.

Shorter J Thomas: “The Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires……”

The shifting alliances and complexities of factional oppositions in the Middle East just guarantee we’re going to screw up. There is no way we can’t, if we engage. One of the biggest, of course, was toppling Hussein, which sent most of this mess into motion and made Iran much, much stronger. The Iran/Iraq situation, however, was obvious enough to recognize before hand and avoid. And we didn’t. Even the first time around. But especially invasion number two.

The odd thing, though, was that we had been clearly opposed to the state of Iran from 1979 on, but opposed to Hussein rather abruptly only when he decided to invade Kuwait in 1990. Prior to that, he was BFF with Reagan, Bush Sr., Rumsfeld, etc. etc. Suddenly, with a push from the wicked witch in London, Bush Senior decides to shift the balance in the region slightly in Iran’s favor by crushing Hussein, and then Dubya finishes the job. It never seems to end.

JQ writes: “I wrote that the US is debating how much support to give to Assad. THis was a straightforward statement of fact.”

Somewhere in the Pentagon and/or CIA someone is working on all sorts of possibilities not being actively considered or debated, but the statement “the US is debating how much support to give to Assad” is ill-founded and misleading. It is sloppy writing at best, and the further assertion that this misstatement is or was “a straightforward statement of fact” compounds the error.

The Obama Administration denies that there is any debate at all on that question. I do no believe there is a single significant American official or politician who is advocating support for Assad. There is some debate over whether to escalate from political opposition to a regime change policy, with a third group – a by now somewhat familiar left-liberal and right libertarian alliance – urging non-involvement. The last group has been somewhat quieter since the public beheadings, the Obama policy statements, and opinion polls showing significant support for doing something against IS. To the extent there is any significant debate regarding support for Assad, it remains a debate among defense intellectuals – such as those participating in that linked discussion from the NYT op-ed pages – and it is not a debate over how much support to give to Assad, but about whether to give any support to Assad or, more accurately, whether to align with and coordinate with Assad openly. Terrorism expert Max Abrahms has been arguing for that position for some time now, while attracting little observable support.

There are also numerous hawks who argue that the chemical weapons deal amounted effectively to legitimizing Assad, and I think there’s some truth in that argument, but there’s no prospect of repeating that deal, so it is not being actively debated in or outside of government prospectively. That debate would be more accurately termed “whether we have, intentionally or not, supported Assad,” akin to the “does attacking IS help Assad?” question.

@159

#154 LFC

“So, since our policy is to weaken any middle east nation that starts to look strong except [Israel], just possibly we’re doing it for them.”

The problem is that there’s little compelling evidence that US policy consists of “weaken any country that starts to look strong except Israel.”

?? Are we living on the same planet?

Do you have an example of a middle east nation apart from Israel that started to look strong, that we didn’t try to weaken?

#165 John Quiggin

Is there much talk and/or debate in the USA about Turkey’s position? There is quite a bit in the UK press, for example

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-in-kobani-turkey-ignores-kurdish-fury-as-militants-close-in-on-capturing-the-town-9785903.html

It’s still not clear to me how the USA (and UK and others) will deal with the position of Turkey. As I’ve said earlier in this thread, the incoherence isn’t that the USA has new allies but that it still has its old allies who appear to have very different objectives.

@J Thomas
Do you have an example of a middle east nation apart from Israel that started to look strong, that we didn’t try to weaken?

I just think the guiding maxims of US policy in the region, to the extent they can be identified, are slightly (but perhaps only slightly) less crude than “weaken any country that starts to look strong except Israel.” (I have no particular expertise on the hist. of US ME policy, though I am somewhat interested in, inter alia, the pd of the Eisenhower Doctrine.)

LFC – Salim Yaqub wrote a book (Containing Arab Nationalism) specifically on the Eisenhower Doctrine in the Middle East if youre interested (though I havent read it personally)

CK MacLeod @164:

Well, it’s difficult amidst all the abstracted curlicues to pin down the exact points of inference and implication; that’s beyond my hermeneutic skills. So I have to rely on a sense of the general tenor. But you do seem, at least, to be endlessly rationalizing U.S. imperial overreach, as if it were some sort of grand strategy upholding universal “liberal democracy”, where I tend to see incoherence, disintegration and devolution, on the part of grossly incompetent, irresponsible and ignorant ruling elites. (And the rise of “mass societies” in the 19th century is, at the very least, an incomplete description; the emergence of industrial capitalism was a main driver. So “making the world safe for MNCs” might be a better description of the “universal” interest that is being pursued).

As to the general issue here of the Assad regime, the U.S. doesn’t have to support, nor supply it, just acknowledge it. The Russians and the Iranians can provide the support and supplies. (Oops! Those are other pieces of the puzzle our fearless leaders have massively screwed up on.) The real trick, almost impossible to achieve, is to wean the Sunni areas off of supporting Daesh or other Islamic extremists, while leaving them sufficiently armed so that they can feel capable of securing themselves, but not so much that they can go on the offensive. Syria and Iraq likely will never again be unified states. At most peace could be re-instituted on the basis of loose confederations.

But the position of Erdogan puzzles me. Previously, he had pursued conciliatory policies toward Syria and Iran, for the sake of security and economic benefits. When and why did he become a Sunni warrior?

jch @173; It’s been almost three years since Erdogan turned against Assad publicly. You can read the former’s own explanations at this NYT article – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/world/middleeast/turkish-leader-says-syrian-president-should-quit.html?_r=0 Not easy to reverse yourself on statements like this one, directed at Assad long before East Ghouta or maybe 160 or so thousand casualties ago:

Just remove yourself from that seat before shedding more blood, before torturing more and for the welfare of your country, as well as the region… It is not heroism to fight against your own people. If you want to see someone who has fought against his own people, look at Nazi Germany, Hitler, Mussolini, Ceausescu of Romania. If you do not learn your lesson from them, look at the Libyan leader, who pointed his gun against his own people and, only 32 days ago, got killed in a way that none of us desired, after using the same phrases that you use.

Erdogan’s predicament in this respect is similar to the USG’s, since Obama & co have made similar statements about Assad, and also because Obama & co likely believe them to be true statements.

As for the rest of official US Syria policy, for a few years now it’s been, I think, not too far from the one that you and Ronan seem to favor: a unity government combining regime elements with nationalist opposition forces, cleansed of war criminals and irreconcilable Jihadists; devolution of central powers as practicable and desired, but not break-up of the state.

In the past, at points when the regime seemed more vulnerable, and before the Western-recognized opposition in its earlier incarnation had been discredited, the US hoped to use the Syrian army and other elements of the government to re-build the state quickly (learning from the Iraq experience, ideally). That Assad, with Russian and Iranian support, combats this strategy aimed at his eventual removal with a traditional (and, incidentally, IS-like) counter-strategy of his own should also be considered. By implicating his dependents in unforgivably atrocious crimes, he burns bridges between the former and everyone else. In a parallel manner, Assad’s military campaigns have always focused more on nationalist or “moderate” opposition than on IS and other Jihadist-extremist elements, trying to clarify the choice for everyone else as “me or the terrorists.” IS has somewhat similarly focused much more on its competitors, and on expanding and consolidating its areas of control, than on fighting Assad.

Though Assad’s approached has many vulnerabilities, it has worked especially well in regard to the US, where the idea of funding and arming friends of Al Qaeda is a non-starter, and where people, I guess including you, who would be happy just to see the bloodshed stop, see giving into his regime as the best way to achieve that worthy goal. Yet in the same connection backers of the anti-IS campaign, who wish the US and coalition were doing much more in Syria, believe that the “double effect” (objectively aids Assad) problem has been exaggerated, and that, under a truly consequential escalation against IS, it would be at worst only a short-term concern before the conflict was clarified in a different way: Without the terrorists to point to, the Assad regime would be revealed as the true obstacle in the way of a political settlement and a return to civil peace.

With the terrorist threat being actively “handled,” the main impediment in America to supporting the Syrian opposition substantially would also be removed or reduced. To be implemented successfully, however, this IS-first strategy would eventually require a major commitment from the international community, led by the US and allies, and backed by American and other Western citizens among whom the Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan experiences have reinforced skepticism about our or anyone’s ability to shape a favorable outcome. Whether this is the wrong lesson, or a right lesson in some cases, a wrong one in others, would be another discussion. Prospects for success would also be greatly aided by Russian and Iranian cooperation, which, however, if obtainable at all, might come at a high price.

May seem hard or impossible – may go better than expected. Either way, since the American public is prepared to accept risks in order to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Jihadist extremists (i.e., Al Qaeda under whatever name), it is possible for this President to commence an attack on IS while waiting for events that might make shortening the timetable or escalating the military investment politically possible, or might turn our attention elsewhere.

The bear wants honey. The bees want to protect their hive. As the bear keeps smashing the hive, the bees are getting more and more agitated. They sting, motherfuckers. The bear starts swinging his paws, in all directions.

How does this story end? What will the American public do, other Western citizens, the cunningly clever Assad, the President? Will the international community deliver a major commitment? I can’t wait to find out.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the US has a conscious policy of knocking down any powerful government or non-state actor (except Israel) in the region.

I am not suggesting that either. I don’t say this is a conscious policy on the part of the USA or the US government. (What would it even mean for the US government to be conscious?)

I don’t say this is a conscious policy on the part of the US House of Representatives. (What would it even mean for the US House to be conscious?)

I don’t say this is a conscious policy on the parts of Reagan, Bush senior, Clinton, Bush junior, and Obama. (What would it even mean for Bush junior to have a conscious policy?)

I say only that for whatever reason, this is what happens.

Brett Bellmore,

That is a very offensive comment. There are many great cultural things from the Middle East. and most of their troubles these days are from all the exploiting and dominance from European countries and America for so long now – if these Western countries were not so belligerent all the time to other countries then the other countries could concentrate more on their culture and not on being scared and angry.

Brett Bellmore – you were just yourself the other day on the other thread advocating executing women for having abortions! Maybe you will rethink this now perhaps?

The entire culture of everyone in the Middle East does not consist exclusively of beheadings and executions of women. This is like someone saying American culture has no redeeming features and is exclusively about American drone killings of foreigners and white Americans murdering young back men.

You yourself must see how you are in some ways like the middle eastern people who are very strict about their culture – just see how upset you get with your government if it tries to let gay people marry or implement sensible sort of gun ownership restrictions like we have in Australia. You get greatly outraged about both these matters.

I am not well versed in contemporary middle eastern culture – but i liked iranian movies very much. But after America and its allies went to war on Afghanistan and Iraq the Iranian government has gotten more strict – so the filmmakers cannot any longer make the films they would like to make in Iran. This is very sad – but not so bad as what can happen to women in Evin prison. But J Thomas notes your American prisons are not very safe for women either (probably not as bad as Evin, thankfully). Anyway – all this Anglo warring with the Middle East that seems have started right after WW2 with the Suez incident and then got exacerbated after the OPEC crisis – does not help the countries have a happy peaceful culture. Quite the opposite.

I was told a story once of Roosevelt being on a boat with I think a leader from a the middle east (I have forgotten who) – and because he was in a wheelchair the middle eastern man tried to follow him around the boat to try to get him to have better more fair relations with the middle east – but Roosevelt would not listen. It is about time the governments started behaving peaceably and not leading us into wars all the time.

“Brett Bellmore – you were just yourself the other day on the other thread advocating executing women for having abortions! Maybe you will rethink this now perhaps?”

Not really, executing somebody for committing murder is rather different from executing them for being the victim of a rape.

But I suppose you can’t distinguish between punishing somebody for doing something, and punishing them for having something done to them.

@20: “Anything we do to attack ISIS supports Assad.”

“I thought we’d got past the “objectively pro-Saddam” stage. Clearly not.”

No, we haven’t. And for some reason:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/world/middleeast/us-focus-on-isis-frees-syria-to-battle-rebels.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=1

“Such attacks — from airspace that American warplanes now enter at will — have fueled anger at the United States among opponents of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who wonder why the Americans are leading the fight against the Islamic State but give free hand to a dictator whose fight to remain in power has left as many as 200,000 of his own people dead.”

Known liar’s who caused past problems, like for instance Oliver North, are awarded their own TV shows.

ZM: Yes, they respond with violence. So we should kill the conservatives, just as Charles I was executed. There was a prospect of secular nationalism and socialism in the middle East. That’s increasingly vanished because we refuse to support it. But let’s not ignore that killing ISIS members is like killing Nazis: a stand against barbarism and for humanity.

If Republicans were carrying out a genocide, I’d be all for killing them. But they aren’t. Political violence is a terrible, terrible thing. But sometimes nothing else will do.

Watson Ladd,
“ZM: Yes, they respond with violence. So we should kill the conservatives, just as Charles I was executed. There was a prospect of secular nationalism and socialism in the middle East. That’s increasingly vanished because we refuse to support it. But let’s not ignore that killing ISIS members is like killing Nazis: a stand against barbarism and for humanity.”

Killing people is violent – so then this is a circular argument indeed.
Conservative straw man “they’re evil – let’s kill them”
Watson Ladd “you made a violent response – let’s kill you”
Watson Ladd2 “you made a violent response – let’s kill you”
Watson Ladd3 “you made a violent response – let’s kill you”

This is like either the old woman who swallowed the fly or that Jewish song for a holy day where the same thing happens – except with multipliers of Watson Ladds killing each other.

I am very much against the execution of Charles 1 by the parliament – it was improper.

If you liken ISIS to nazis you can look at the role anglo imperialism played in each. Germany was fragmented and late to nationalise by force – and then when it did it was landlocked and the other European cou tries had lots of colonies and Germany was late and to catch up to the other European powers made great wrong plans. All the other European countries should not have been having colonies – if they had not it is fairly unlikely Germany would have had such imperial ambitions and we had ww1 then Germany had a nazi government and we had ww2.

It would be good to try not to have ww3 – so we should stop exploiting and dominating other countries.

With Ze Kraggash, Watson Ladd and ZM as stars in the cast, I am watching the Nutcracker Suite from the balcony. It’s beautiful.

Brett, you said ”executing them for being the victim of a rape.” You should read your links more carefully.

The second one in particular, whilst controversial, doesn’t even seem to have any cultural quirks: one person killed another, claimed self-defense, didn’t succeed. Happens all the time everywhere, I’m sure. No one was raped. The first link doesn’t fit your description either.

#200

Excuse me if I’m mistaken, but aren’t you here at Crooked Timber battling the liberals–obsessively–because of the horror with which you view them?

Sure looks that way.

Well, but as far as we know he isn’t killing any of them. Or even fighting. He merely disagrees a lot.

The danger is still there. Sometimes it’s styles of reasoning that serve as the magic spell to turn people into monsters, and if you accept too many of the bad guys’ premises or even general approaches to thinking, you could be infected.

But “Be careful when you disagree with monsters, lest you become one” just doesn’t have the same ring.

J Thomas,

Or even fighting.

You don’t perceive BB’s role here as fighting the liberals??

I do. I’d say the ax he’s grinding is unusually weighty.

Further to 202,

If we look at the service to corporate interests, including and maybe especially military-industrial interests, then US foreign policy has certainly had plenty of success.

Well that esculated quickly…

#204

It’s not about violence, but coming to a town, killing the men and raping the women. That’s what ISIS does.

Yes, and they’re a tiny minority that does not represent anybody. The only reason they are winning is that Sunni extremists pay a lot of money to arm them.

And when they find a hospital, they kill the doctors, rape the nurses, and then they pull the babies out of the incubators and kill them and steal the incubators. Or was that story left over from last time? No, time before last.

I dunno. When we get into these situations where it isn’t at all obvious that we should be supporting either side, we start getting atrocity stories that tell us the side that is closer to fitting our interests is getting atrocitied by the horrible guys. Maybe often they’re true though I believe often they aren’t.

Maybe Saddam was the only one in the Iran/Iraq war using poison gas – we know he was because we gave it to him.

In the Bosnian war at least three sides set up “rape camps”, Bosniak and Croatian camps were mostly for Serbian women while Serbian camps were mostly for Bosniak women and some Croatian. But we heard mostly about the Serbs doing it because they were the designated enemy.

We were making a big deal of Assad using poison gas until he started looking like the lesser evil.

I’ve gotten tired of it. There are people who have a pretty big budget to lie to you, to influence your opinion. Any source you believe, they will try to subvert or imitate because US opinion is an important goal. I’m less and less willing to believe anything much, which is itself a lesser win for them.

#203 Mattsky

You don’t perceive BB’s role here as fighting the liberals??

I haven’t noticed that liberals who post here tend to suddenly disappear. Is Brett turning them in to be arrested, fired, moved to subsistence farms with no internet, etc?

I only see him disagree. He makes claims that mostly would convince no one unless they already agreed with him.

Some liberals respond to him, which maybe distracts them from something important. But if they have nothing better to do and they enjoy it, who should complain?

I haven’t noticed that liberals who post here tend to suddenly disappear.

You don’t seem conversant in the English language…

p.s. Aspects of the history are fairly well known, at least in some circles (Chile ’73, School of the Americas, Nicaragua, etc.). No need to rehearse in detail.

With respect to recent policy in Syria and Iraq, the orig. topic of the thread, I don’t see quite the level of incoherence in US policy that some here do, though some things cd have been handled considerably better, no doubt. There was no sizable constituency in the country for a highly active intervention vs Assad, even though he was/is slaughtering his own pop. and dropping barrel bombs on villages. The humanitarian-intervention impulse in US policy has been selective and prob. inconsistent (inconsistency does not always and necessarily equal incoherence), and the Obama admin, as Andrew F’s comment above suggests, took a dispassionate, even cold (if you like) weighing-of-costs-and-benefits approach. Sometimes that may be the least bad thing to do. The advent of ISIS has changed the weighing. One can argue about whether the judgments on this score are correct, but they appear to me (as of this writing) to be at least somewhat defensible. (That’s a tentative view on my part, and I may change my mind.)

Analysis of the various moves made under Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama in Iraq and surrounds too often leaves out the failure to engage with reality….

Sometimes it may involve a rational attempt to deal with US irrational beliefs.

I think the Bush administration had the idea that we won the war so we could do anything we wanted. So for example they set out to create an Iraqi government that did not include any Ba’aths and did not include any religious people, and they wanted that government to have an army run by Americans that Iraqis would fight and die for. When asked when we intended to leave Iraq, Bush said that the US military was still in Germany after more than 50 years but we weren’t exactly occupying Germany.

And I think maybe a lot of US voters believe that Iraq was not doing that badly when Bush handed over control to Obama, so if anything goes wrong it’s Obama’s fault. Because he’s a secret Muslim who wants things to go wrong.

And so Obama tries to do enough about anything that looks like a problem to the public that he can claim that he’s doing the right thing, even though any time he starts to do less while it still looks like a problem to the public, then he will be called a defeatist who is losing and admitting defeat.

J Thomas

and a strategy built on irrational beliefs has what claim to competence?

In terms of what a foreign policy (or any other policy) is supposed to do – ie achieve a workable medium to long term balance between different interests, this is simply incompetence.

I think this is a gray area. Pursuing one’s interest (who’s?!) and largely succeeding… can that easily be dismissed as incompetence? Like LFC I’m not remotely defending US policy in latin America or the caribbean. Otoh, I would not hesitate to call Bush’s policy in Iraq among the most incompetent in US history.