Good essay: "W Gets a Third Term in the Middle East"

Worth a read. While he's done great damage to the American economy, much ofObama's foreign policy has been solid.

W Gets A Third Term In The Middle East

The international consequences of the fall of Qaddafi and, hopefully, of his Syrian colleague, will also take time to play out.  (At a minimum, let’s hope that Qaddafi’s interrogation forces him to reveal once and for all how his name is actually spelled.)  But there is one fact that needs to be pointed out because nobody really wants this to be true.  That truth is that the United States has become more powerful in the Middle East today than at any time since the early 1950s.  Perhaps not since President Eisenhower’s CIA helped restore the Shah in Iran has the US loomed this large in the political calculations of Middle Eastern regimes.

This is partly because US military power has an unrivaled global reach, but it is also because the US alliance network in the Middle East is stronger than it has ever been.  With the NATO countries including Turkey on the one hand, and the support of key Arab countries on the other, the United States (when wisely guided) is if anything more powerful now in the region than at any time ever.

Neither President Obama’s critics nor his defenders really want to look at this situation straight on.  His critics would have to acknowledge that far from capitulating to our enemies and giving away the store, President Obama has in some respects improved America’s regional position.  But his defenders must also squirm; in general, President Obama succeeds where he adopts or modifies the policies of the Bush administration.  Where (as on Israel) he has tried to deviate, his troubles begin.

The most irritating argument anyone could make in American politics is that President Obama, precisely because he seems so liberal, so vacillating, so nice, is a more effective neoconservative than President Bush.  As is often the case, the argument is so irritating partly because it is so true.

President Obama is pushing a democracy agenda in the Middle East that is as aggressive as President Bush’s; he adopts regime change by violence if necessary as a core component of his regional approach and, to put it mildly, he is not afraid to bomb.  But where President Bush’s tough guy posture (“Bring ‘Em On!”) alienated opinion abroad and among liberals at home, President Obama’s reluctant warrior stance makes it easier for others to work with him.

******

President Obama began his administration by backing away from Bush’s Middle East policy. Increasingly, he has embraced its key elements.  In some ways he plays the game significantly better than his predecessor; in others he creates his own set of problems. Nevertheless, well over half way through President Obama’s tenure in office, we can see that regime change and democracy promotion remain the basis of American strategy in the Middle East — and that force is not excluded when it comes to achieving American aims.

The victory in Libya is satisfying, but the future of Syria is the most important issue in the Middle East today.  The destruction of the bond between Syria and Iran is America’s most important strategic goal; the fall of Qaddafi is chiefly important at this point because it increases the pressure on Assad.The Bush-Obama agenda marches on.

 

Comments

[Judith Anderson]

Solid? Let's take China...Israel...just for starters.