Search for Mideast peace: US abdicates leadership

The intelligence and political analysts of the US and its Western allies have long been casting doubt on the benefits and costs of their engagement in the Middle East, particularly since the Twin Tower attack on September 11, 2001. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and fall of the communist Eastern Europe, the relevance of sustaining Israel at $1.8 billion annually could not be rationally justifiable. The impact of inappropriately boosting the Taliban in Afghanistan against the Soviets and mainland US attack on 9/11 got some of the political analyst rethinking of the strategic need to disengage and plan abdication from the wider geo-political influence to recover from $1.6-trillion deficit and to maintain internal social cohesion. Debt held by the public will grow by $11.2 trillion between now and 2027, from $14.3 trillion today to $25.5 trillion by 2027. As a share of gross domestic product (GDP), debt will rise from its post-World War II era high of 77 per cent in 2017 to 91 per cent by 2027.

It is generally believed that Israel incited the US after 9/11 to attack Iraq with fake intelligence of Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) which was contradicted by all intelligent agencies of the US and its Western allies. This had caused a mistrust between the US and Western alliances and Israel which isolated the latter politically and diplomatically since then.

In this context, the remark by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) may be found to be pertinent: "For fifty years, we have treated the achievement of security for a Jewish homeland in Palestine as our top priority in the Middle East. We have sought to achieve this by military aid to foster and guarantee Israeli military hegemony in the region and by diplomacy aimed at brokering acceptance of it by its Arab and Muslim neighbours. The results are in. At no small cost to the United States in terms of the radicalisation of Arab and Muslim opinion, oil embargoes, subsidies, gifts of war materiel, wars, and now anti-American terrorism with global reach, Israel has become a regional military Goliath, enjoying a nuclear monopoly and overwhelming superiority in the region's battle space. But US diplomacy has definitively failed. In no small measure as a result of its own decisions, the Jewish state has no recognised or secure borders. Although acknowledged as an unwelcome fact, Israel remains a pariah in its region. In many ways, acceptance of Israel's legitimacy is receding, not advancing, under the impact of the racial and religious bigotry its policies are seen to exemplify. Israel appears to have decided to stake its existence on the dubious proposition that it can sustain military superiority over its neighbours in perpetuity. It has no diplomatic strategy for achieving acceptance by them. Nor does the United States."

BEGINNING OF US INVOLVEMENT: When Britain offered to share the spoils of the defunct Ottoman Empire after World War I in the Middle East, President Woodrow Wilson declined. It was only a temporary reprieve from creeping into involvement that began during the Truman administration. While opposing Soviet influence in Iran, Truman solidified America's relationship with Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, in power since 1941, and brought Turkey into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), making it clear, especially to the Soviet Union, that the Middle East would be a Cold War hot zone.

Truman accepted the 1947 United Nation's partition plan of Palestine, granting 57 per cent of the land to Israel and 43 per cent to Palestine, and personally lobbied for its success. The plan lost support from UN member nations, especially as hostilities between Jews and Palestinians increased in 1948 and Arabs lost more land or fled.

Three major events marked Dwight Eisenhower's Middle East policy. In 1953, Eisenhower ordered the CIA to depose Mohammed Mossadek. Two years later, as nationalist forces roiled the Middle East and threatened to topple Lebanon's Christian-led government, Eisenhower ordered the first landing of US troops in Beirut to protect the regime. The deployment, lasting three months, ended in a brief civil war.

Kennedy increased economic aid toward the region and worked to reduce its polarisation between Soviet and American spheres. While friendship with Israel was solidified during his tenure, Kennedy's administration, while briefly inspiring the Arab public, largely failed to mollify Arab leaders.

In 1974 and 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated the so-called disengagement agreements, first between Israel and Syria, then between Israel and Egypt, formally ending the hostilities that begun in 1973 and returning some land Israel had seized from the two countries. Those were not peace agreements, and hence they left the Palestinian situation unaddressed. Meanwhile, a military strongman Saddam Hussein was rising through the ranks in Iraq.

Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan administration supported Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied territories. The administration also supported Saddam Hussein in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. The administration provided logistic and intelligence support, believing wrongly that Saddam could destabilise the Iranian regime and defeat the Islamic revolution.

CHINESE AND RUSSIAN INFLUENCE: Public opinion around the world gradually began questioning the moral and political justification for engagement by the US around the world and in particular in the Middle East. Both China and later Russia took it as an opportunity for expanding their spheres of influence which does not technically challenge the US but checkmates the superpower in its backyard. This added cost to the US presence and at times had the vulnerability of both US's strategic and military strength evidently exposed.

"Arab Spring" was apparently planned and nurtured by the US intelligence, but the net benefit was harvested mainly by Russia and China. Now it will take enormous effort and huge investment and many boots of the US citizens on the ground to confront and counter the advance of Russia and China in the Middle East. In addition, the waning diplomatic influence preventing the US to make any new commitment in the region and its rippling affect is reaching others shores around the world.

"It's easy enough to hustle through three countries in the region in various states of decay before heading into the heart of the chaos: Libya is a failed state, bleeding mayhem into northern Africa; Egypt failed its Arab Spring test and relies on the United States to support its anti-democratic (as well as anti-Islamic fundamentalist) militarised government; and Yemen is a disastrously failed state, now the scene of a proxy war between US-backed Saudi Arabia and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels (with a thriving Al Qaeda outfit and a small but growing arm of the Islamic State [ISIS] thrown into the bargain)." [Peter Van Buren, The Great War in the Middle East, Tomdispatch.com, October 22, 2015.]

Peter Van Buren continues: "That brings us to Vladimir Putin, the Syrian game-changer of the moment. In September, the Russian president sent a small but powerful military force to a neglected airfield in Latakia, Syria. The Russians are now serving as Assad's air force, as well as his chief weapon supplier and possible source of 'volunteer' soldiers. The thing that matters most, however, is Russian planes. They have essentially been given a guarantee of immunity to being shot down by the more powerful US Air Force presence in the region (as Washington has nothing to gain and much to worry about when it comes to entering into open conflict with the Russians). That allows them near-impunity to strike when and where they wish in support of whom they wish. It also negates any chance of the United States setting up a no fly zone in Syria. The Russians have little incentive to depart, given the free pass handed them by the Obama administration. Meanwhile, the Russian military is growing closer to the Iranians with whom they share common cause in Syria, and also the Shia government in Baghdad, which may soon invite them to join the fight there against ISIS. One can almost hear Putin chortling. He may not, in fact, be the most skilled strategist in the world, but he's certainly the luckiest. When someone hands you the keys, you take the car."

ENTERS TRUMP: President Donald Trump is now left with the task of planning disengagement - an abdication of US responsibility which, for about ninety years, was an ambitious cornerstone of the US and its Western alliance's foreign policy doctrine. Recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel may be the beginning of the planned abdication of US leadership in the search for Middle East peace that eluded his predecessors.

President Trump unfortunately has no friend in the world of politics and traditional alliances are wary of the consequences, keeping a safe distance from him. His only saviour is President Putin, but the national apparatus of the US and its allies are deterring him from getting Putin engaged.

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