The Middle East and Eastern Europe are both in chaos these
days, and the administration is clearly struggling, apparently without a
coherent overall strategy, to figure out
what America should do. Reacting to
humanitarian crises, as we have done over the past few days, is not an overall
strategy. I would suggest that we ought to build an overall strategy based exclusively
on American long-term interests, not on whatever local humanitarian crises the
world media chooses to headline each day.
In the Middle East, while bleeding hearts blather
about Palestinian “rights”, a pragmatist would ask, who are our real friends
and supporters in the area? Israel is
certainly one, and a bastion of democracy and political stability in the midst
of a very bad neighborhood. Saudi Arabia
and Jorden, while not democracies, are stable governments with many interests
in common with America (notably counterbalancing Iran’s influence and suppressing
Jihadist groups) . And Egypt and Turkey,
while not exactly friends right now, certainly have been in the past and could
be in the future good allies.
The Palestinians, by contrast, danced in the streets on 9/11,
and seem incapable of getting their act together and supporting a non-extremist
government. They are not now and probably never will be America’s friends, nor
will they ever be effective allies. Iraq and Afghanistan are riven by sectarian
divides, and will be weak and ineffective governments for the foreseeable future. The Kurds in Iraq, by contract, are effective,
progressive, democratic and tolerant, and currently strongly pro-American.
That would argue that America national interests are best
served by supporting our friends in the neighborhood, which means helping the
Kurds repel the Islamic State fanatics, and perhaps even helping them become an
independent nation. It also means
helping Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon resist the incursion of the
Islamic State jihadists. And it means
supporting Israel in rooting out Hamas in Gaza, even if it is a bloody and unpleasant
business.
Frankly, I suspect the much mooted “two state” solution is
unworkable. It would certainly be
workable if the Palestinians could put together and maintain a government
strong enough and willing to suppress the more extreme jihadist elements in their
society, but there is no evidence whatsoever that they are or ever will be
capable of doing that. So long as the Palestinian government either supports or
at least is incapable of restraining the jihadists, Israel would be foolish to
allow a hostile Palestinian state to come into being within its borders.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, Colen Powell’s “Pottery Barn Rule”
clearly applies: “If you break it, you
own it”. Well, wisely or unwisely we broke both of those nations, so now we own
them. What can we do about their
situation? In Afghanistan tribal rule
will always be stronger than the central government, so it is probably useless
to keep trying to get a strong central government in place. At best we can pursue a long-term policy (probably largely
though NGOs) of moving the tribes into the modern age, and helping them enough
that we come (eventually) to be seen as friends rather than occupiers.
Iraq is an unnatural state anyway, put together arbitrarily
by British colonials in 1932 by simply drawing lines on a map, without any
reference to who lived where. It looks
like it is on the verge of fragmenting back to its “natural” sectarian cultures,
and it probably ought to simply be allowed to do that. That would end a lot of the current
Sunni-Shia strife. Certainly American national interests are not furthered by
continuing to try to force this unnatural merging of disparate, and even
hostile, cultures and religions. If Iraqis
ever become tolerant of their cultural differences, it will come about from
their own efforts, and probably over generations, not from America pressure and not quickly.
In the far East, the Ukraine would like to become more European
and we ought to actively support that for two reasons: (1) a more Europe-facing
Ukraine would in the long term probably help Russia itself move away from its
undemocratic and corrupt Soviet heritage and toward a more normal place in the
world, and (2) a failure to support the Ukraine against Russian aggression will
make other newly-freed Eastern European nations, like Poland, the Czech Republic,
Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, etc. question the security and usefulness
of their current alliance with the West.
These are my suggestions. There are no doubt other
views. But in any case we need SOME SORT
of coherent long-term American foreign policy toward these regions, not this
endless reaction to local events, often with little or no thought to next steps
or the “then what” question?
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