Afterword

In the months since I fi nished writing this book and it went into production, dizzying changes have overtaken the Middle East. Deaths in Syria’s full-blown civil war topped 100,000, with arms, money, and foot soldiers pouring in from other Mideast countries and beyond. The U.S. administration accused the Asad regime of killing more than 1,400 Syrian citizens in a nerve gas attack and threatened an armed response. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, not only survived increased drone attacks but created a scare large enough for the United States to shut down its embassies throughout the region. The seemingly indestructible Turkish regime was shaken by the largest popular protests there in decades. Iran elected a new president whose rhetoric breathed new hope for avoiding a military confrontation over his country’s nuclear program. Secretary of State John Kerry’s indefatigable diplomacy improb-ably succeeded in restarting the long-dormant negotiations between Pal-estinians and Israelis. And, after the hopeful events of the Arab Spring, Egypt simply imploded. Its elected (but tone-deaf) regime headed by the Muslim Brotherhood faced massive public protests followed by a military takeover followed by other massive protests against the coup followed by severe repression against the protesters followed by yet more protests against the repression. And the story is far from over.

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The one element in the Middle East that seems not to have changed is how the region has managed to continue insinuating itself into the center of international aff airs. For the United States, the unfolding crises in the area kept it at the top of the foreign-policy agenda despite the administra-tion’s stated preference for a turn to Asia. There certainly was no shortage of reasons to deemphasize the Middle East in U.S. foreign policy making. American energy dependence on Mideast oilfi elds declined markedly. Continuing economic shakiness in the United States amplifi ed worries about imperial overreach. Problems in the region were so complex as to seem beyond solution. The domestic fatigue in the United States from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan eroded public support for an active, let alone interventionist, foreign policy in the Middle East. And the Obama administration was very attentive to that public fatigue, as seen in its zigzag decision making following the Syrian regime’s poison-gas attack on its own population.

Still, despite all the forces pulling the United States away from the Middle East, Obama, like Nixon and other previous presidents, found that the United States could not seem to get up and walk away from that troubled area. The threats the region posed, its critical geostrategic posi-tion, its bountiful mineral resources, the penchant to produce crisis after crisis, and the now-substantial history of U.S. commitments to Mideast countries all point to the fact that the United States could not and will not turn its back on the Middle East. What is much less clear is what kind of role America will take in the region.

The legacy of the extended recession and the even more prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide War on Terror dictates that the United States cannot be the sort of hegemonic power that many imagined it would be after World War II or again after the Cold War. Realists always worried about the United States operating abroad beyond its resources and capacities to infl uence events. If anything, the eco-nomic and security crises of the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century heightened those worries and demanded a trimming of America’s sails. The idea of an imperial America, of a superpower with an 80 percent or greater share of world leadership, if it ever had any merit, can now be as-signed to the dustbin of history.

But a more limited United States does not mean withdrawing into its shell. It is still the world’s leading power, and with that comes inter-national responsibility. The abject failures in American foreign policy in this century’s fi rst decade demand now not a shirking of a key inter-

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national role for the country but a rethinking of America’s global respon-sibilities in making the international arena as peaceful and friction free as possible. At the center of that reassessment lies the volatile Middle East.

In that region, four key events in the spring and summer of 2013—another Obama foreign-policy speech, the coup in Egypt, the poison-gas attack in Syria, and the resumption of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotia-tions—pointed to the contours of such a new role for the United States as a world power and a continuing permanent player in the Middle East. That emerging role makes no grandiose claims to reshape entirely the dynamics of the region or state-society relations in Mideast countries; no defi ning war or grand military alliance or extravagant nation-building project is on the horizon. What is possible is a role that establishes the United States as an essential partner with other powers and a backstop against actions that could threaten the region as a whole or challenge key international norms essential for the functioning of the international system. America can help manage confl icts, if not solve them; facilitate and mediate wherever possible among confl icting parties; and join with others to deter mischief making.

The fi rst event indicating the emergence of a new U.S. role was a major foreign-policy speech at the National Defense University by Obama in May 2013. In it, he sketched out some of his new thinking on America’s place in the world. Much of it directly applied to the Middle East. He addressed both practical tactics, such as the use of drones, and broader strategy, including the announced end of the War on Terror. Citing the end of the Cold War and 9/11 as the two defi ning moments in the last generation for the United States internationally, the president set out the need for limits on fi ghting terror: “America is at the crossroads. We must defi ne the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will defi ne us.” Obama went on to state what I suggest in my conclusion, a move from a War on Terror to specifi c targeted actions against terrorists. To date, the speech seems to have had little resonance in actual policy making, but even the rhetorical statement limiting the parameters of U.S. action abroad, of moving from crusades to police actions, is important.

Second, the series of eruptions in Egypt in the summer of 2013 helped defi ne the limits and possibilities for the United States during the birth pangs of the latest Mideast transformation. The limits of what the United States could do to infl uence the course of events became evident through the massive protests against President Mohamed Morsi, the usurpation of power by the military, the sit-ins by Morsi’s backers, and the heavy-handed

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crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters. For better or for worse, Egyptians will need to work out their deep divisions mostly by themselves. What Obama offi cials could do, at times with some eff ect and at other times with little or none, was cajole and keep lines of communi-cation open. The U.S. position could not be determining, but it certainly could be one of several important factors as events played out.

The third event, still unfolding as I write, was the Syrian regime’s nerve-gas attack in August 2013. As the confl ict turned from a Syrian tragedy to a major threat to regional and international peace and as the Syrian regime violated one of the most widely held norms of warfare, the uncertainty of America’s capacities bubbled to the surface. U.S. politi-cians’ opinions ranged from calling for an all-out assault on the Asad regime along with ramped-up support for the rebels to opposition to any intervention at all by the United States in the confl ict. Obama drew what he called a “redline,” which the massive poison-gas attack crossed. The president’s intent was to signal that when basic international norms are jeopardized, the United States will intervene with force. But with all the recent memories of the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, interven-tion could not proceed as in the past. It had to be mediated through the caprices of fl agging international support, the stalemate in the United Nations, a confl icted Congress, and wariness on the part of the American public. The United States was not paralyzed, but any decision to intervene directly faced a much higher bar than in the past.

Finally, Obama’s second-term secretary of state, John Kerry, under-took a single-minded mission to restart Palestinian-Israeli peace nego-tiations. Improbably, he succeeded not only in sitting the parties down but in persuading them and Arab states to undertake some important confi dence-building measures. The obstacles to achieving a bona fi de peace agreement remain huge, and few analysts are sanguine about the near or medium future.

Nonetheless, Kerry’s approach revealed some of the possibilities for a renewed U.S. role in the region. His doggedness sent clear signals to the Israelis and Palestinians, as well as to others, that the United States continues to have an abiding interest in the region’s confl icts, that it has staying power in the area, and that it still has the clout to demand and win key concessions from the parties and neighboring states. Moreover, Kerry used precisely the frame that I recommended in my fi nal chapter, the Arab Peace Initiative, moving the confl ict from a strictly bilateral is-sue to a larger regional scaff olding.

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The secretary brought Arab foreign ministers to the United States and persuaded them to once again reaffi rm the initiative. This time, however, they agreed to the added element of the possibility of deviating from the exact pre–1967 War borders through land swaps between Israel and Pal-estine. The swaps would allow fl exibility in setting the fi nal borders, es-pecially permitting Israel to retain the most populated settlement blocs. A number of important Israeli politicians also accepted the initiative as a framework for the future, including a key member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, a senior Israeli cabinet member from the Yesh Atid Party and former head of the Shin Bet security service, and the faction head of the Ha’Tnua party (another member of Netanyahu’s coalition).

What Kerry did not do was explicitly tie the Arab Peace Initiative into a larger strategic vision as I suggest in chapter 13. Offi cials in the Obama administration often continue to talk about the Middle East as if it were a series of burning fi res. The challenge is to fold issues into a broader U.S. role in the region. Even here, though, there were hints of the develop-ment of a larger strategic vision. In May, the British press reported that the Obama administration was pushing a new alliance, the so-called 4+1 plan. Its members would be Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates plus Washington.

Several points regarding this purported plan are worth noting. First is the fact that such an alliance could not be possible without the Arab Peace Initiative and success in moving toward a fi nal solution of the Israeli- Palestinian confl ict. A second notable element is the absence of Egypt in the plan, which needs to be integrated into any regional coali-tion, whatever the outcome of its internal battles. Third is the centrality of the implied strategy of containing (rather than attacking) Iran. That country has been markedly weakened by the draining confl ict in Syria, but it still poses some of the most vexing challenges for the Unites States internationally. A regionally based coalition that included Washington would ramp up pressure on Iran to engage diplomatically. And, last but certainly not least, such a plan would off er the now much more limited Washington a series of partners, including Israel as a strategic partner, not to remold the Middle East as a whole or individual countries in the region, but to help create “a benign international environment” in a cur-rently highly explosive part of the world.

Joel S. Migdal Seattle September 9, 2013

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