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The
elusive quest for a strategy
By Ehsan Ahrari
United States President George W Bush's November 6 speech, billed as "Forward
Strategy of Freedom in the Middle East", is anything but a strategy, since the
imminent problems in the Middle East are growing violence in Iraq and the
resuscitation of the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)-Israeli
process.
It seems that both the current administration and the Democrats in Washington
are clueless about what to do about those problems. As The Economist notes in a
recent essay, "It is fair to say that the Iraq problem has injected a new
uncertainty into politics at home. It has produced a curious (and possibly
temporary) role reversal, with Democrats talking about security, Republicans
about the economy. But at the moment the reversal has not been enough to
challenge Mr Bush's dominance. And the Democrats have still not found a clear
strategy to turn the president's Iraqi travails into victory next November."
The unstated aspect of this observation is that Bush has yet to find a winning
strategy for Iraq or for the Middle East.
His November 6 speech was perceptibly seen as an attempt to change the focus of
debate on Iraq as his Department of Defense is bringing about important
tactical changes regarding force rotation and rethinking on the role of the
Iraqi Governing Council (ICG). It seems that the only constant about the Bush
administration's handling of Iraq is the quest for a strategy.
The speech came at a time when Iraq is looking at an inferno of violent
attacks. As much as Bush attempted to couch his speech along with two memorable
speeches of his illustrious predecessors - the 1918 Fourteen Points speech of
president Woodrow Wilson and the 1941 Four Freedoms speech of president
Franklin Delano Roosevelt - its main audience, the Arab populace, greeted it,
according to one source, "with scorn".
Conspicuously absent from his speech was the Israeli occupation of Palestinian
territory as a source of major turbulence in the occupied territories. A
nameless Arab diplomat is reported to have observed, "The main purpose of the
speech is clearly domestic because he [Bush] now has to put the war in a
principled framework."
The London-based Arabic language daily, al-Quds al-Arabi, wrote, "Arabs want
democracy. They hate their corrupt regimes more than they hate the United
States." It went on to add, "But they are not going to listen attentively to
the speech of the American president, first, because the consecutive American
administrations, in the past 50 years, supported those regimes ... and because
all true democracies in the world came as a result of internal struggle, not
due to foreign intervention, particularly American."
Unlucky for Bush, his speech came at a time when Saudi Arabia seems to be
edging toward increased domestic violence that is aimed at the regime. If the
rumors that al-Qaeda is behind the recent terror attack in the capital are
true, then we might be witnessing the making of a problem that threatens to
engulf the entire region in turbulence. Considering the fact that the al-Qaeda
leadership has manifested a predilection for strategic thinking, the timing of
the attempts to destabilize Saudi Arabia is highly favorable to their penchant
for creating chaos. More to the point, the jihadi forces in Iraq would only
receive a major psychological boost by the escalation of violence aimed at
ousting a major American client.
If one examines what is happening in South and West Asia, and links it with the
rising instability in the Persian Gulf region, the US is edging toward
encountering a huge problem. 
Instead of being closer to eradication because of the US military
campaign in Afghanistan, and President General Pervez Musharraf's own
systematic endeavors to fight that terrorist group in Balochistan and on the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border, al-Qaeda is gathering strength in both those
countries.
Further west, political restiveness in Iran is on the rise, with the hardline
ayatollahs behaving like ostriches with their heads in the sand. Their fervor
for remaining in power is only matched by their refusal to reform the political
system. Consequently, seekers of political reform in Iran - a country whose
about 60 percent of population is under the age of 30 - may not have much of a
choice but to express their anger through massive demonstrations, thereby
pushing their country toward a civil war.
West to Iran, Iraq has become an epicenter of forces of turbulence and jihad
against the US occupation. It is anyone's guess whether the jihadis are
supported by the Ba'athist loyalists of Saddam Hussein or whether they are in
full charge of attacks on foreign forces in Iraq. Now the contagion of violence
is spreading to the south of Iraq, into Saudi Arabia, one of the largest states
of the Persian Gulf, the largest owner of energy reserves, and, above all, the
birthplace of Islam.
The Bush November 6 speech is also seen by its critics as an attempt to change
the rationale for invading Iraq. At first it was Saddam's purported development
of the weapons of mass destruction. When that proved to be unfounded, the
argument shifted to claims that the weapons labs and other related evidence
would be uncovered, once the US had the opportunity to comb through the
evidence and sites in Iraq. When that did not materialize, the current emphasis
is that the ouster of a nefarious dictator and the liberation of Iraqi people
was a noble enough reason to invade Iraq.
However, from the perspectives of the international community, all those
rationales are regarded as flimsy at best, or even phony. If the ouster of a
dictator were to become a rationale for invading Iraq, then, according to the
international critics, the Bush administration should go after most, if not
all, dictators, especially Kim Jong-il of North Korea, who is reportedly armed
with nuclear weapons.
The Bush speech may also be aimed at his domestic audience, which is becoming
unhappy with the deteriorating state of security in Iraq. That might be one
reason why he has attempted to link his administration's occupation of Iraq
with the US occupation of Japan and Germany. But the chief problem of the
current administration is that the US presence in Iraq is still begging for
wide international support in the form of massive economic assistance and vast
participation of multinational peacekeeping forces.
Those who oppose the US occupation have, by unleashing a campaign of terror
aimed at all outsiders and even those Iraqis who are working for the Coalition
Provisional Authority, created the feeling among the American supporters that
they are nothing less than potential and constant targets. The demoralizing
effects of such feeling may become apparent if the pace of presence violence
against outsiders were to continue.
A logical sequel of the November 6 speech is that the US renews its attempts at
international support and participation. Senator Joseph Biden, a ranking
Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called for such a
measure. "The US is a country right now basically in search of a strategy," he
stated during an interview on ABC News on November 7. "And I think its time to
make a fundamental shift in which we are going about trying to win the peace
here [Iraq]." Biden categorized Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's advice
to Bush regarding Iraq as faulty and said, "If I were president, I would ask my
secretary to leave." Biden also called for the US handing over security to
North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led forces, and changes in the Iraqi
Governing Council, since the members of that body are reported to be too
focused on their own interests.
More than focusing on personalities, the dire need for the US is to
internationalize the Iraqi occupation, instead of "Iraqification", another
phrase that reminded one of the Vietnam era - "Vietnamization", which was not
exactly a historical example of shining success of the US. Even if one were to
view Iraqification purely as a "here and now" concept, there is little doubt
that it will take a long time for Iraqi security forces to become credible
enough to take charge of law and order. In the meantime, the international
forces of chaos would only intensify their attempts to eradicate them. If
anything, the anti-US forces have thus far proven to be entirely agile in
selecting targets for mayhem.
The events of the past six months underscore one fact: the sand of political
stability in the entire Middle East is shifting. From the PLO-Israeli
conflict-related turbulence to the continued violence in South Asia and the
Persian Gulf, forces from the West as well as East are determined to bring
about changes of their preference in the region. The toppling of Saddam has
proven that even the US predilection for democratic change cannot be brought
about without recourse to violence.
A response to this upcoming chaos has to be of an international nature, and
Bush's strategy for the region must seek just such a response. Democracy is
likely to come to the Muslim Middle East. But the chances of its success are
enormous only if it emerges from within the region, along with moral and
material (which does not include military invasion) support from abroad. A
strategy that is aimed at bringing about such a change is very much in the
vital interests of the US and, indeed, the global community.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent
strategic analyst.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
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