The U.S. imperial postulate in the Mideast

Apuda The

2000

U.S. Imperial Postulate in the Mideast

by Adam Garfinkle

A

ntoine Boulay de la Meurthe said of Napoleon’s murder of the Due d’Enghien, “it is worse than a crime, it is a blunder,“l a judgment recalling the oft-forgotten third line of Lord Acton’s maxim on power and corruption-that ‘@eat men are almost always bad men.“* Both sentiments embodied the rock-hearted moral philosophy of nineteenth-century empire: in the affairs of state one emphasized efficacy rather than law, dominion rather than compassion. For the scions of empire in that century, such choices were self-evident, even though in the liberal imperia of Britain and France at their zenith nobler rationalizations from clerics and men of letters were required to sate public sensibilities with talk of the “white man’s burden” and la m&s&z cidzbatrice. In those political cultures, such rationalizations were the ballast of the ship of state, whose true course was guided by calculations simultaneously more base and basic. The balances thus struck allowed imperial professionals to carry out their business relatively unperturbed. British soldiers were fighting virtually every year during the nineteenth century in various foreign climes, and yet, the Boer War excepted, the con&ct never impinged fundamentally on the course of British political life. Such a balance has never taken shape in America-not yet anyway. Americans have not habitually placed moral reasoning at the service of ration d&at. U.S. history has instead resembled a protracted wrestling match between the two, and it has never been clear which would prevail. ‘Ihat is partly because the United States is the worlds fust and greatest mass democracy, its foreign 1 Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe quoted in CA. Sainte-Beuve, Nozuxa&x Lund?% vol. 12 (18701, p. 52, cited in Oz@rd Diclionay, of Quokztions, rev. 4th ed., ed. Angela Partington (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 137. 2 George Seldes, camp., The Great 7Boecghtr;. rev. ed. (New York: Balantine, S’%, p. 3.

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Adam Gaxfhkle is the executive editor of The NatzbnalInterestand director of the Middle East Council at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Winter 1997 I 15

GARFINKLE policy subject to broader public scrutiny and influence than that of any great power in history. Indeed, America has never had anything approaching an insulated imperial class comparable to those of Britain or France. Whether such a balance can be struck, even for a limited time and in a circumscribed area, is the central question of US. policy in the Middle East. That is because, with some silent differences, what the United States is doing in that part of the world, particularly in the Persian Gulf, is best described as imperial: Washington aims to stabilize the region even if it must use force to do so (as it has proven in the past). And the confessed reasons are neither transcendent nor sentimental, but cold-bloodedly strategic. Consider the prima facie evidence for the imperial American postulate. The Middle East is the only region of the world in which U.S. military power is growing in the post-cold war era, as exemplified by the institutionalization of the Central Command and the forming of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet for patrolling the Persian Gulf. Many of the region’s states are virtual American protectorates, whether because the United States would defend them in extremis and helps deter their adversaries on a day-to-day basis (as with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Israel), or whether because it exerts influence through the power of the purse (as in the largest Arab country, Egypt). Regional entities opposed to the American role, by contrast, are the subject of literal attack (as with Iraq), moral ~cation (mainly Iran), and economic and other sanctions (including Syria, Libya, and Sudan). While most of America’s associates in the region are far from being democratic, U.S. officials rarely hesitate before denouncing the internal affairs of unfriendly states. It follows that most such unfriendly states assume the existence of surreptitious American efforts to harm them. It is also illustrative of the imperial vocation that not only does “enlarging democracy” drop out of the U.S. diplomatic vocabulary when discussing the Middle East, but Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chiefs in several of the friendlier countries of the region at times act as virtual proconsuls and are far more imposing figures than the American ambassadors in situ. The American imperium in the Middle East is rather coral-ce~~y compared with how the British used to exert their power around the Arabian Sea-but it is real. The United States lacks broad formal and public defense agreements with countries such as Qatar and Bahrain, and speaks of “access to facilities” rather than “having bases” in these countries, but that is a distinction without a difference, The ~v~shed truth is that, seven thousand miles from their own shores, a few men in Washington have arrogated to themselves the task of monitoring, managing, and policing this fractious and important region, It is no small task that they have undertaken. The job involves, at the least, assuring the internal political stability of a dozen allies and proxies; preventing interstate warfare (including wars between U.S. clients) and working to resolve conflicts to decrease the likelihood of such warfare; and containing two of the most imposing states of the region, Iran and Iraq, whose current regimes reject the U.S. presence and all of its subsidiary purposes. Dealing with

16 I 0rbi.s

The Middle East Iran and Iraq (as well as with Sudan, Syria, and Libya) means, not only deterring them from classical military aggression against their neighbors, but afsa fighting the terrorism that these states sponsor, trying to curtail their acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and related delivery systems, and sometimes protecting elements of their own populations from government persecution. The United States does not even have the fit11support of its major European and Asian allies in this endeavor, yet it is in large part for the general benefit of those allies that American imperial policy was adopted in the first place. And this effort is expensive. The figure $40-50 billion per year is often mooted, but as with the politically slanted estimates of US. NATO-related spending in the late 197Os, it is impossible to separate the cost of a regimal force from that of the base force? In addition, much of the U.S. equipment sent to the Middle East in recent years has not been newly built but has come from Europe and elsewhere. Still, the U.S. presence is costly, especially relative to one measure of what the United States takes from the Gulf: roughly 10 percent of its oii imports, at a value of $10-15 billion per year. Perhaps, as proposed by Lawrence Korb, U.S. allies in Europe and Japan, who are more dependent on Gulf oil than the United States is, should be asked to defray some of this cost or else accept U.S. military drawdowns in their regions to accommodate the U.S. presence in the Persian G13lf.~ That raises the central question: Why is Was~~on undertaking such an effort so far from home? More pointe&y, why is it doing so when the previous geopolitical rationale for caring about the Middle East-the prospect of a strong Soviet presence denying the flow of oil to Western Europe and Japan-no longer exists?

The Roots

of the Imperial

Policy

The Americanimperial impulse in the Middle East has three sources: historical inertia, dumb fascination, and geoecunomic calculation. Unly the third is readily acknowledged, but aLImerit examination. One should never underestimate the power of historical inertia, The foreign policy of a bureaucratized great power is a little like a semitrailer: you need a good deal of space and a great deal of skill to turn one around, Policy is not concorded in tastefully tin&shed rooms by small numbers of savants; in shaping a policy for a region such as the Middle East, many thousand public servants from several branches of government have to pull in the same &ection and in the right way, and that is not easily done even in the best of times. Mare to the point, however, governments fail into habits, The United States has exercised great influence in the region from the time of the Truman Doctrine 3 See FUba.ra Clxuy, Time Bomb: 7%~Escalation of U.S.Security CommiYm@ni$ in the Persian Gdf Regiorr, Policy Analysis, no. 248 OJvashington, IX,: Cato Institute, Aug. 29, 19961. 4 Lawrence J. Korb, ‘FWiing the Bag In the Gulf,” New Yo& Thes, Sept. 18,19%.

Winter 1997 I 17

GARFINKLE (19471,and especially since the days of the Eisenhower Doctrine (1957). Americans have learned to like this role, for in addition to being benign, it has seemed heroic and even historic. In this respect, U.S. Middle East policy is of a piece with U.S. foreign policy in general, which has yet to come to terms with the profound d&continuities brought about by the end of the cold war. That is evident from the various strained efforts, both inside gove~ent and out, to justify a pressing need for presumably benign American hegemony in the absence of any clear and present threat to vital U.S. interests5 Now it is true that sudden shifts in U.S. policy can be unwise, for the United States is not the only country used to comfortable and predictable patterns in ~t~ma~onal relations~ps. But that is different from justifying a US. unipolar hegemony on the basis of threats that do not exist, Historical inertia thus consists of two bad habits: not thinking enough about changed circumstances, and trying very hard to show that circumstances have not really changed. Dumb fascination is a less-orthodox factor, but real just the same. Many educated Americans seem to be ~ord~ately fascinated with the Middle East. Many find Israel or Palestine, Jews or Arabs, the desert or the Holy Land-and especially the combination of all these -to be emotionally intoxicating. Americans have long had a special relationship with Israel, that is to say with both the State of Israel since 1948 and the children of Israel for roughly four and a half centuries before that. It is hard to overestimate the impact of these sentiments on U.S. Middle East policy, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, over the past half century.” Arabs, Persians, and Turks have proven alluring, too, because they are exotic enough (i.e., non-European) to be attractive to Americans, but not too exotic (i.e., “aboriginal”) to be excluded from what is considered the historically most relevant sections of the glol32. For whatever reason, many Americans seem to become enveloped in the mysteries and misanthropies of the region to the point that logical, strategic rationales for spending time, money, and energy are often little more than afterthoughts. Since the end of the cold war and the peace treaties Israel achieved with Egypt and Jordan, the ArabIsraeli conflict has been reduced in scale to at most a communal irritant. It is no more dangerous than the travails of Ulster-another of only a few emotionally gripping tempests in the global teapot as far as most Americans are concerned. Yet consider how much attention U.S. diplomacy has given this issue during the past three years, compared with how much serious, high-level a~ention has been paid to European security or China. There is no rational way to explain the disparity; it is a product of 5 On efforts inside the government, see Department of Defense, United States Securi& Shzrtegyfor the Emt A&-P~c~J% R@on (Washington, DC.: Department of Defense, Feb. 1995). On efforts outside the government, see Joshua Muravdxik, ?he ~~a~ ofAmerkan .!_ehsh@ cwashingron, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1996); Robert Kagan, “A Retreat from Power,” Commcmtaly, July 1995, pp. 19-25; and William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “Toward a Net-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” Foreign A&in, July/Aug. 1996,pp. 18-32. 6 For an extended discussion of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, see Adam Garfinkle, “U.S.-Israeli Relations after the Cold War.” Q&ix, Fall 1996, pp. 557-75.

18 I Orbis

The Middle East fascination-and perhaps, too, of historical inertia, the drive to wrap up old business. Easier to explain is geoeconomic calculation, which means oil, If there is a cogent strategy underlying U.S. Middle East policy, it revolves around the consensus that the stability and prosperity of East Asia and Europe are essential for global peace, and that a key to that prosperity is the ava~b~~ of Middle East oil in reliable volume and at reasonable cost.’ Given the tremulous politics of the Persian Gulf, it is widely assumed that the availability of oil cannot be guaranteed without external oversight. And because no other power can do it, the United States undertakes the task. That is really very simple, and only true cynics (and pure academics) see a need to complicate or obfuscate the matter. Cynics see the U.S. government as a front for the major oil companies, caring more about corporate profits than about world order. It is strange, however, for self-styled progressives to make such arguments about oil, for oil is a special commodity. It is the only substance that when plugged into the domestic economy can, by its elevated price, produce inflation and recession simultaneously. ‘Ihe international price of oil determines whether or not there will be development in poor countries, and whether or not people there can buy food and medicine. Whoever thinks that the matter solely concerns corporate profits knows little about how the world works. American Middle East policy, then, is based partly on unconscious habit, partly on a collective mental aesthetic, and partly on a broad but largely unscrutinized consensus about strategic need. Thus, it is not an imperial vocation identical to those of the ~et~n~~en~~ European empires. There is no intention to annex or colonize. There is no plan to stay in perpetuity. Nor is there any assumption of future war. Rather, U.S. military projection is overwhelmingly conceived of in terms of assurance and deterrence. There is no master plan that sees influence in peripheral areas-the Balkans or Central Asia-as necessary to fum up control over the core imperial zone, as the British sought influence over the Ottoman Empire to control the route to India.8 The key economic motive is indirect, too. It is not corporate profits or exploiting the wealth of foreign lands that matters most in the American calculus, but a devotion to preserving the scope and vigor of the liberal international order created by dint of U.S. power after World War II. That is imperialism with a difference; it is perhaps best thought of as a kind of global Benthamite utilitarianism, using power to seek the greatest good for the greatest number, as opposed to a narrowly self-centered Hobbesian (or Darwinian) strategy. But it is, artery, too much to expect most Iranians or Iraqis to recognize the distinction. 7 See William E. Cklom, “How to Create a True World Order,” Orb& Spring 1995, pp. 155-72. 8 Contrary to the claims of Michael Lind and Jacob Heilbrunn, “The Third American Empire,” New Yti ‘ITmLs, Jan. 2, 1996.

Winter 1997 I 19

GARFINKLE The Innocent Imperialist

Abroad

Beyond historical inertia and fascination, neither of which can sustain an American imperial policy in the Middle East for very long, two questions arise: Is the U.S. geoeconomic calculation, based on the importance of oil to the present world order, a persuasive aviation for U.S. policy? And if so, is the United States going about its business in the region in an effective way? The answers are, respectively, yes and no. The United States need not be a global hegemon, nor can it remain one for long-both the dynamics of the balance of power and the personality of American national~m militate against extended U.S. hegemony. But for now, at least, the Middle East is a special place in that it is both especially important and especially volatile. Other spots are one or the other, but rarely both (the Korean peninsula and the Ukraine are the other two areas that could potentially claim this dubious dual honor). And only the United States is in a position to keep the lid on the region, p~~larly in dealing with unconventional weapons proliferation,” Certainly no other power, least of all America’s allies in Europe, has the clarity of mind to fight terrorism as it needs to be fought. So U.S. military superiority, economic clout, “soft power” born of the appeal of American values and culture, and relative tenacity all conduce to that being an American job. And unless one does not care about the liberal political and economic order that has come to characterize most of the world since 1945, it is a task that must be performed either until oil ceases to be so important or until the region manages to balance itself without external aid.l’ The latter scenario is not likely anytime in the near future. And as to the former, while it is not impossible (and would be welcomed), America has never seriously pursued long-term alternatives to oil. So in the interest of maintaining international order the United States has assumed the imperial mantle. But how well is it executing its self-imposed duty? The less-than-stellar U.S. performance is reflected in three related domains: the toleration of prev~~ation beyond prudence; the alienation, through half measures, of faint-hearted allies; and the error of sentimentalizing and extending what should be strictly instrumental relationships.

Confronting Terrorism The usual tactical misjudgments that occur in any administration have reached alarming levels during President Bill Clinton’s tenure. Still, however noteworthy such gaffes may seem-for example, when high-level American 9 For an edifying fright, see Robert Taylor, “The Bio-Terrorist Threat,” New Statesnan, May 11, 1996, pp. 42-43. 10 For a contrasting view, see Ted Galen Carpenter, “U.S. Has No Role in Iraq,” USA Today, Sept. 3, 196; Coruy, “Tie Bomb.”

20

I Orbis

The Middle East officials inadvertently help Necmettin Erbakan become prime minister of Turkey,l’ or when another official proclaims his certainty that Syria “wants a relationship with the United States” despite Hafz al-Asad’s having thrice publicly snubbed the U.S. secretary of state that same week”-they are compa~~vely minor matters. Not so minor is tolerating prevarication beyond prudence. As seen in the November 1995and June 1996attacks on U.S. personnel in Saudi Arabia, (most probably) the downing of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996,and the World Trade Center bombing of February 1993, the United States is being assaulted through state-sponsored or state-abetted guerrilla warfare attacks and terrorism. (Attacks against armed U.S. forces on foreign soil are not properly called terrorism; random attacks against U.S. civilians clearly are.) While those hostile to the United States-almost certainly Middle Easterners in these cases-carry out deliberate attacks against Americans, U.S. ofhcials ponder, (sort of) investigate, piece exploded airplanes back together, pass the occasional piece of legislation, tighten security to the point where Americans do not feel like paying for it anymore, and consider expanding the FBI presence abroad.i3 But they demur from pursuing the source of the evil. Granted, it is often difficult to find the source of such attacks. And as an open society the United States is vulnerable to revenge for its revenge-the 1988bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, for instance, was almost certainly a Libyan payback for the April 1986US. bombing of Tripoli-but that should not be a deterrent. U.S. political culture will always demand that violent retaliation against U.S. enemies be predicated on a nearly judicial level of evidence. Still, the organization of the U.S. government makes locating instigators of terrorism far more difhcult than it ought to be. It is easier for terrorists like Ramzi Yousef to enter the United States (and slip out again) on an Iraqi passport than it is for a Boston socialite to bring an Irish or Portuguese maid into the country for the summer. The wall between the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies when it comes to investigating any act of terror perpetrated on U.S. soil hinders ~ves~gation of state-sponsored terrorism and encourages further disasters. l4 This bureaucratic gridlock makes it rational for foreign governments that promote terror to sponsor attacks on U.S. soil rather than abroad. In the United States, instead of fearing the CIA and associated agencies, terrorists need worry only about the FBI, an organization manifestly unable to investigate terrorism properly or stop foreign terrorists. Some, mainly outside government, add to the delusion surrounding the U.S. approach to terrorists through another kind of prejudice. Many observers 11For specifics of Peter Tamoh% and Nicoias Bums’s mistakes, see Lally Weymouth, “Saddam’s New Friend,” Washington Post, July 16, 1996;. 12 Steven Erlanger, “Christopher’s Shuttle Now Stretches to South Lebanon,” New Yo& Times, Apr. 25, 1996. 13 R. Jeffrey Smith and Thomas W. Lippman, “FBI Plans to Expand Overseas,” Waddngton Post, Aug. 20, 1996. 14 See Laurie Myiroie, “The Worid Trade Center Bombiig: Who is Rat-n& You&? Why It Matters,” ‘Ihe ~a~~Z~~~t, Wmter 1995/96, pp, 3-15.

Winter 1997 I 21

GARFINKLE write off the attacks against U.S. personnel in Saudi Arabia as the work of indigenous forces (some returned from fighting in Afghanistan) and Saudi expatriates, such as Osama bin-Laden or Mohammed al-Madam. Journalists are especially fond of throwing the Reagan administration’s support for the Afghan mujahidin back in the face of the executive branch, as if to suggest that sup~~g the Afghan resistance to the Red Army was a bad idea. (It was not.) Such critics ignore that terrorists and terror-sponsoring states understand the art of subcontracting. So even if native Saudis who say they admire bin-Laden were the triggermen in the Saudi events, and even if some of the materiel for the November 1995bomb came across the border from Yemen, those facts by no means establish the innocence of, for instance, Iraq. After all, most U.S. military activity in Saudi Arabia is directed against Anti-Western Iraq-from monitoring the no-fly zone in the south to launching leaders see U-2 flights across the rest of the country. Indeed, the former head of Iraqi military intelligence, General Wafiq al-Samarra’i, opportunity in has said that the special sabotage groups and intelligence units what they set up before the war in the Persian Gulf to strike at Saudi Arabia interpret as have never been disassembled.15 But some observers are so flaccidity and furated on Muslim radicals and “loose networks” of terrorists that the obvious motives and capabilities of Iraq are ignored. Conirresolution. ~bu~g to U.S. complacency is a special form of cognitive dissonance that could be called pugilist immunity: “We already beat them, so how could they dare harm us?” Failure to understand the subcontracting phenomenon causes additional problems as well. There is nothing wrong with proceeding methodically before determining if TWA Flight 800 was downed by an act of terror. But the notion that reassembliig the aircraft will reveal the culprit is foolish. If the explosion was caused by a bomb, its signature implicates Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PPLP-GC). Several other airplanes were similarly bombed, including Pan Am Flight 103, and there is substantial evidence that a Jibril terror-for-hire team was the trigger in some, or even most, of these atrocities. Qhirteen members of the PFLP-GC were arrested-and eleven were soon released-by West German police two months before the Pan Am Flight 103 attack, and they were found with bomb materials, including a Toshiba casette recorder, later known to have been used in the bomb in that attack.) But that still does not indicate who hired them: Libya, Iran, Iraq, bin-Laden, or some other state, group, or individual? Uncovering terrorist links requires old-fashioned as well as new high-tech intelligence capabilities. And while those addicted to spy novels tend to believe that Washington has such capabilities in spades, government intelligence tools are in fact in serious need of upgrading. Stark U.S. passivity in the face of such attacks is equally damaging. In response to the Iraqi attempt to murder ex-president George Bush on a visit 15“Iraq: Al-Samarra‘i Assesses Saddam’s Position,” Foreign Broadcast Information Sewice, Daily Report Near E& and South Asia, Aug. 3, 1596,pp. 42-44, from A~-~~~ (London), July 28-Aug. 3, 1396.

22 I Orbis

The Middle East to Kuwait in 1993, the Clinron administration’s extremely mild retaliation-a single cruise missile attack on the Defense Miistry building in Etaghdad at night-was so disproportionately weak compared with the attempted enormity that it invited universal ridicule in the region. Nor did the LJnited States retaliate militarily against Libya for Pan Am Flight 103, or for the World Trade Center Bombing, which was probably an Iraqi-directed operation, or for the Saudi bombiigs.16 But for the lack of retaliation-especially in the case of Pan Am Flight 103, where there was unequivocal evidence of Libyan involvement-TWA Flight 800 might have arrived safely in Paris on the evening of July 17. Americans are, to be sure, slow ro anger. But this virtue has its price, since Middle Eastern political cultures do not share the American affectiun for restraint and helping the underdog, and anti-Western leaders see opportunity in what they interpret as flaccidity and irresolution, In short, it is possible to be too careful, reserved, and patient-and American administrations often are, I-Iappily, there are recent signs that American patience is wearing thin.” Lastly, there is nu doubt that whether or nut Iran is responsibfe for a particular atrocity, the mullahs in Tehran do all they can to harm the United States. Secretary of State Warren Christopher was said to bear a special animus toward Iran, and one explanation for his obsession with achieving peace between Israel and Syria is that he understood what a blow that would deal to Iran’s regional influence. And yet Christopher declared that it is not the aim of the U.S. government to change the regime in Iran. That regime tries to build nuclear weapons, sponsors terror, buys submarines to threaten access and egress in the Strait of Hormuz, declares the United States to be perverse and satanic, affronts the American sense of liberty and free speech by passing death warrants on authors whu are not even Iranian citizens-and still Washington declares the United States to be at peace, in effect, with the regime’s legitimacy and longevity. That said, total isolation of Iran by the United States is not necessarily the best way to change the government there. Such efforts could actually help the regime by providing an external focus that draws attention away from dissatisfaction with the government’s performance. The policy also presents a dilemma to several neighboring states in Central Asia and the Caucasus, for whom the alternative to doing business with Iran is doing business with Russia. Moreover, isolating Iran generates trouble with key US. allies in Europe and East Asia. The Sin

of Hdf

Measures

That particular kind of trouble, in turn, raises the issue of the U.S. penchant for half measures. The Iranian defense budget is less than 3 percent of that of the United States in any given year. C~uIa~v~ly, American power 16On Iraq’s probable involvement in the World Trade Center attack, see Mylroie, “The World Trade Center Bombing.” t7 See the reportage of CIinton administration internal deiibetxtions in David B. Ottaway, “U.S. Considers Shp+ging R Our With fntematiimal Terrorism,” W~~j~g~on Pm& Oct. 17, 1996. Winter 1997 I 23

GARFINKLE

is ~easu~bly

greater than that of Iran, whose military has shown thar it cannot mount combined-arms operations even on its own soil. Yet the best the United States can do, in the context of dual containment, is to shout about how evil the Iranians are and impose economic sanctions-and even sanctions were undertaken seriously only after the prospect of a particularly large deal between Conoco and Iran shamed the Clinton a~s~a~on intu action. Washington has also placed sanctions on Libya for its role in downing Pan em Flight 103 and gotten the whole mess blessed, aptly enough, by the United Nations. But when Muammar Qaddafi himself violated the air-communication measure of the sanction regime to fly to an Arab summit in June 1996, the U.S. government did nothing. Congress is equally prone to half measures. US. law now sanctions other countries-including many key U.S. allies-who do significant business with countries such as Iran and Libya. There is some entertainment value in irritating the purveyors of “constructive engagement” with Iran, those who argue that normal contact will moderate Iranian behaviur but who refuse to set any markers for measuring that moderation as they skulk all the way to the bank. But to suppase that even these types of sanctions will have any significant effect on Iranian policy is nonsense. Economic sanctions are by way of real efficacy in ~t~ma~on~ politics what doing things to shadows is by way of real efficacy in physics, While U.S. policies have apparently convinced some U.S. allies to be more careful about supplying sensitive dual-use technology to Iran, such policies have done virtually no harm to the mullahs or to their grip on power. The net effect of the effort, then, is mostly gratuitous harm to U.S.-European relations-not to mention America’s reputation for fair play and respect Fur the rules of the World Trade Organization. Is Indeed, the reluctance of European allies to support the U.S. cruise missile attacks on Iraq on September 2 and 3, 1996, may be ascribed in part to the bad blood created by the sanctions policies, which are but a public relations-inspired substitute for a real policy. It is too bad that the Cl&on a~s~~un did not take Theodure Roosevelt’s famous advice-to talk softly but carry a big stick- instead of having done precisely the opposite.

As for sentimental&&g U.S. relationships and extending them beyond prudence, much has been said with regard to the U.S. courtship of Baghdad after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, and it is all true. And recall the strange, stxry-eyed approach-complete with Bibles and birthday cakes-taken toward Khomeini’s regime during the 19854% Iran-Contra debacle, as if the many 18 For examples of the contending positiot~, see Congrwsman Toby Roth, “New Iranian-Libyan Sanctions Wii Only Hurt US.,” Wiz6lSheeJoud, Aug. 6,19%; Congr+.?.wman Gerald B. Solomon, “Toss lawn Gauntlet On kin and Libya,” ~~S~~~a~~ Aug. 23, 19%.

24 I Orbis

The Middle East years of American fascination with things Persian could somehow magically melt the hearts of the armed ayatollahs of Qom. More important, though, these individual incidences are part of a larger, ugly pattern. Since the British departed “east of Suez” in 1971, the United States has played the role of off-shore balancer but played it poorly. In those twenty-five years, the Persian Gulf has been in the throes of war or war crises for ten years, and the havoc of the Iranian revolution spread over at least another two. (Events like civil wars in Yemen, border brushfires between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, armed banditry and drug smuggling in Balu~s~n, and any of several forms of Kurdish violence are, for this part of the world, too insignificant even to count .I) The American role in this mayhem, while it certainly does not explain all of the region’s problems, has not been slight. Washington started out by counting on the shah as a pillar of the Nixon Doctrine, but the American embrace was so suffocating that the shah could not reap the nationalist credit that was his due for leading the Org~~on of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ charge on the pocketbooks of the developed world. After he fell from power, American policy failed to find an alternative to the reign of the mullahs. While the U.S. policy tilt toward Iraq came a bit later, Washington’s volubfe dismay over the Iranian revolution must have weighed as a factor in Saddam Hussein’s decision to invade Iran in September 1980. For the next eight years, that war put the oil supply at risk, but the United States was unable to end the war. Worse, to spring American hostages in Lebanon, Washington sent weapons to Iran in 1985, a move that Tehran probably took as encouragement to fight on against Iraq. After the war finally ended in June 1988, the continued American tilt toward Iraq no doubt encouraged Saddam to believe that the United States would not react to his grabbing Kuwait. The source of these mistakes lies not only in Washington’s failure to be sufficiently nimble but in its failure to read properly the geopolitics of the area. To be sure, Iran is large and dangerous as an adversary, and so it has seemed natural to build up Iraq to balance Iran-particularly since the Gulf Arabs appear to lack the capacity for genuine self-defense. (Kuwaiti, Saudi, and other Gulf state officials insist that the Gulf Cooperation Council can in time do the job; they are wrong.) But building up Iraq to balance Iranian power, as the United States has attempted to do on several occasions in the last twenty years, inevitably conjures an Iraqi threat to the Arab Gulf. This problem is inherent in the power constellation of the region: an Iraq strong enough to balance Iran is also strong enough to threaten Saudi Arabia, hence the need for the burdensome U.S. military presence.

Dual Dismemberment? If the United States wishes to lighten its load in the region, and have the luxury of maintaining a smaller and less politically corrosive military presence in the Arab Gulf, it ought to at least consider, not dual containment, but a Winter 1997 I 25

GARFINKLE slightly asymm etrical form of dual dismemberment. Some argue that the Iraqi state should be allowed (perhaps even helped) to fall aparti Others urge that the Iranian regime should be helped to collapse as well. While there are risks to such policies- not least being questions of timing, management, and the lack of local allied support-some alteration of the present geopolitical status quo is the only way to solve the underlying structural problem that requires a large U.S. regional presence in the first place. Perhaps such policies would cause more problems than they would solve, perhaps not. But one thing is certain: Was~~on’s present Middle East policy, based on empty words and counterproductive economic sanctions, will never bring about such an alteration. The late summer 1996 dustup between Iraq and the United States amply illustrates this point. The creation of the northern Iraqi haven for the Kurds in April 1991 was the quintessential half measure and a terrible tease for the Kurds, The haven was established by the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War coalition to resettle more than a million Kurdish refugees. The literal haven was a small area on the Turkish border in the northwestern section of northern Iraq that contains the city of Dohuk and that Iraqi ground forces were prohibited from entering. All the area above the 36th parallel constituted the northern no-fly zone, Part of that no-fly zone, in the east, is Kurdish (including the city of Irbil), but the other part covers Arab-populated areas in Iraq. Iraqi ground forces were never prohibited from entering this area or Kurdish areas south of the 36th parallel around Sula~aniyah that were abandoned by Iraqi forces in the fall of 1991. The creation of the enclave and the related no-fly zone stopped the bkxdletting by the Iraqi army, undermined Saddam Hussein’s authority, tied up more than half of the remaining Iraqi armored corps, and provided a focus for Iraqi opposition. In 1992, democratic elections were held in the north, and all seemed well. As long as the haven existed, it weakened Saddam, and when he fmally fell from power, as nearly everyone presumed he soon would, a new federal arrangement would emerge in a kinder, gentler Iraq. But the United States never intended the haven to blossom into an independent Kurdish state. (It is therefore hard to blame Massoud Barzani of the Kurdish Democratic Party for turning to Saddam for help against Banani’s local adversaries when he all but certainly knew that the United States would in the end betray his interests, just as it did those of his father, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, in 1975.) The creation of the protected Kurdish enclave was understood from the start to involve delicate issues. First, even a temporary, semi-independent Kurdistan held certain implications for Turkey, which was, and still is, fighting a civil war against its own Kurdish insurgents. Secondly, Iran was sure at some point to see northern Iraq as a staging ground for harming both Turkey and Iraq by manipulating Kurdish politics, a tradition of Iranian governments dating back at least to Reza Shah, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty. It was assumed, 19See Daniel Byman, “Let Iraq Collapse,” irhe NutiondInterest, Fall 196,

pp.48-60.

The Middle East however, that the Saddam problem would be solved before these dangers became bent. Obviously, that scenario was not borne out. Everything depended on Saddam’s downfall and the political cohesion of the Kurds until that time. Perhaps the United States did too little to ensure such cohesion, as has been widely claimed, but Kurdish history did not justify confidence that cohesion would be easy to maintain, or even possible at all over an extended period, Thanks largely to Iranian meddling in July, Saddam acted in August, and the safe haven quickly fell to him dough his Kur~sh allies, no~i~s~~g two feeble U.S. cruise missile attacks. The subsequent U.S. military buildup was intended to even the psychological score as well as to protect U.S. planes and pilots in an expanded southern no-fly zone. But U.S. military moves after the fact could not change the outcome: Saddam enhanced his internal power significantly by regaining access and influence in Kurdistan, Despite a subsequent comeback by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Saddam won the round, and if he wins a few more, his power to menace other American interests in the region-including those having to do with the Arab-Israeli peace processmay well return. Overall, the episode reveals the contradictory and muddled nature of U.S. policy. The United States has repeatedly infringed on Iraqi sovereignty with no-fly zones, no-drive zones, safe havens, sanctions, and cruise missile attacks, all the while affirming the legitimacy of Iraq’s current borders. Washington wants Saddam out but will not hurt him in northern Iraq for fear of helping the Kurds “too much” and enabling them to achieve permanent independence, and for fear of abetting Iranian intrigues. This policy makes no sense: either respect Iraqi territorial integrity or do not respect it. A better approach might be not to respect it, say so plainly, take the associated risks, and patiently explain the reasoning behind the move to America’s allies. Had the United States been pursuing double dismemberment in late August, it would have had an unambiguous interest in decimating Iraqi Republican Guard forces in the north (more difficult without Turkish cooperation but hardly impossible) as well as regime strongholds near Baghdad. It would also have preserved and tried to strengthen the Kurdish redoubts with a mind to turning the area into a rump Kurdish state, and in so doing dealt a blow to Iran, whose leadership fears an independent Kurdish state as much as Baghdad does. Managing Turkish opposition to such a policy would have been difficult, but it would not have been the end of the world. Instead, the United States found itself punishing Saddam for doing something objectively anti-Iranian (defeating Jalal Talabani’s pro-Iranian PUK), and it managed to alienate Turkey anyway, whose military sided with Barzani and Saddam in this round on account of its desire to prevent northern Iraq from becoming a staging area for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Moreover, in refraining from attacking Saddam’s forces where they were actually inflicting damage, American credibility in the region suffered considerably. This tiptoethrough-the-tulips approach to Saddam is no doubt one reason that the Saudis declined to stick out their necks on behalf of the United States. Their reasoning Winter 1997 I 27

GARFINKLE followed the unimpeachable logic that while a dead beast cannot attack you, a wounded one can and probably will. If American policy tends to be overly deferential to enemies, it aiso sentimentalizes “friendly” countries and regimes, For instance, the real U.S. concern in Saudi Arabia is not the five thousand princes of the Saud family but the oil. Counting only proven reserves, Saudi Arabia can pump oil at the current considerable levels, or even at higher levels (lo-13 million barrels per day), for more than two hundred years before running out. Chances are that other forms of gove~ent in the Arabian peninsula would also be eager to sell large amounts of oil, so the rule of the House of Saud is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to safeguard U.S. interests. The United States should not be blithely indifferent to whether or not the Saudi regime falls, of course, but the predictability and convenience its rule affords do not justify tolerating every Saudi desideratum when American soldiers stationed on Saudi soil are at risk. Saudi Arabia needs the United States as much or more than the United States needs Saudi Arabia, and the United States should act accordingly.

Doing the Job Even were American timidity, geopolitical myopia, and sentimentality expunged in a sudden rush of common sense, not all American problems in the Middle East would go away. Many of the threats to friendly regimes there today are less external than internal, and the predominantly military instruments that have been brought to bear in the region are unsuited to blunting them. The Middle East suffers from daunting demographic and economic problems and several forms of bad government. Many of these endemic problems are subject only to long-term solutions, mainly through self-help. It is never fun to watch a country go to hell- as with Lebanon in the I97Os, Sudan in the 1980s and Algeria in the 199Os-but not all such tragedies are the fault of the United States or need to be U.S. problems. So, large though they are, U.S. strategic interests in the Middle Fast are still limited and instrumental, not all encompassing and integral. To shelter those interests, the United States need not do everything to do enough; that distinguishes a global U.S. imperial policy defmed by an unlimited, if morally uplifting, sense of mission from a specifically delineated, unsentimental imperialism driven by a desire to &BW down the need to project a major U.S. force presence in the long term. Unfortunately, it looks like the United States will be stuck maintaining a sizable military presence in the Persian Gulf for some time. There are alternatives to the present muddle, but none that is cheap, easy, or likely to succeed anytime soon. Happily, though, the American people are likely to tolerate the U.S. imperial vocation in the Middle East barring significant casualties, continually depressing CNN footage, or the government’s drawing too frequently from the public purse for Middle East-related purposes. The best ally that the imperial bureaucrats have in this regard is most Americans’ perdurable lack of interest in things foreign. The muscular Wiisonian crusaders often complain about just 28 I Orb&

The Middle East that, but in so doing they perversely damage their own cause: Why call public attention to a necessary task that cannot be justified in the terms Americans like to hear? Overall, the United States must resist being taken in by its moral imagination. Washington must think of the U.S. imperial vocation in the Middle East as a job, not a mission. Jobs end, but missions hardly ever do. If this distinction can be kept clearly in mind, then when America errs, at least its errors will be taken as blunders, not crimes.

Winter 1997 I 29