WASHINGTON - More than five years after invading Iraq as a first step towards
"transforming" the Middle East, the administration of US President George W
Bush seems to have lost its footing - let alone its unquestioned domination -
throughout the region.
The talk of "democratizing" the region has almost entirely disappeared from the
administration's rhetoric as Washington has had to sacrifice whatever pressure
it had been willing exert on "friendly authoritarians" among Arab states to
bolstering their rule against popular sentiment that has become considerably
more hostile toward the US than before the invasion.
Similarly, its plan after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war to forge a de facto
coalition between the Jewish state and those same
"moderate" authoritarians against the threat posed by Iran, Syria and their
allies in the Levant has also come unraveled.
Not only has the administration repeatedly refused to pay the Arabs' price for
such an arrangement - putting serious pressure on Israel to reach a peace
accord with a unified Palestinian government based largely on a return to the
1967 borders - but the assumption that the Arab Gulf states, in particular,
would support - or even welcome, as some hawkish officials believed - an
eventual military confrontation between Washington and Tehran has also proved
illusory.
The one area in which Washington has made some progress has been in Iraq, where
sectarian violence has fallen sharply over the past 18 months, in good part as
a result of more successful counter-insurgency tactics pursued by General David
Petraeus during the "surge" of some 30,000 additional troops.
But the strategic goal of the "surge" - national reconciliation between the key
sectarian and ethnic groups in Iraq - remains elusive, as evidenced by the
latest impasse between Arabs and Kurds over Kirkuk and the certainty that
long-promised regional elections will be delayed until next year. Even Petraeus
continues to warn that the security gains made since the "surge" got underway
in February 2007 remain fragile and could be reversed in the absence of
significant political progress.
Washington's continuing pre-occupation with Iraq, as well as its growing
concern about Afghanistan and Pakistan, has effectively put an end to its
larger transformational ambitions in the Arab world, in particular, leaving
local powers to work out their manner of getting on with each other, even in
ways that make the administration uneasy or even angry.
"The hardline, confrontational policy the United States has embraced under the
Bush administration has inadvertently demonstrated the limits of US power,"
according to a recent paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. "... The rejection of diplomacy has reduced the United
States to a condition of self-inflicted powerlessness regarding many problems."
"The vacuum is being filled in part by US adversaries - Iran, Syria, Hamas and
Hezbollah - and in part by friendly Arab regimes, which seek to find a way
forward in situations where US policy has contributed to stalemate," according
to the report, entitled "The New Arab Diplomacy: Not With the US and Not
Against the US", by Carnegie fellows Marina Ottaway and Mohammed Herzallah.
That has been particularly notable with respect to the gradual detente between
Iran, Washington's main regional nemesis since the Iraq war, and Saudi Arabia,
traditionally Washington's most important Gulf ally.
That process, which has included two visits to Saudi Arabia by President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad, as well as his unprecedented participation at a Gulf Cooperation
Council summit, is credited in major part to King Abdullah, who has made little
secret of his aim - contrary to that of the administration's hawks - to reduce
Sunni-Shi'ite tensions, that came to the fore after the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Abdullah, who shocked the US when he negotiated the ill-fated unity government
in Palestine between Hamas and Fatah in early 2007, also worked with Iran to
calm sectarian tensions in Lebanon that year, despite his steadfast backing for
Washington's efforts to isolate Syrian President Bashir al-Assad.
Similarly, Qatar, which hosts a huge US air base, has played a leading role in
reducing tensions in the region, most notably by negotiating a political
settlement to the long-running stand-off in Lebanon in May that resulted in the
dilution of the US-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. While US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice endorsed the accord during a visit to
Beirut in June, most analysts in Washington and in the region depicted the
result as a serious blow to Washington's regional position.
"Many essentially friendly countries are openly willing to pursue policies the
United States disapproves of, presenting Washington with a fait accompli
and the choice of either openly criticizing the action of its so-called allies
or grudgingly tolerating it," according to the Carnegie report. "[T]he United
States has little leverage over the policies of even friendly countries."
While the new report focuses primarily on Arab diplomacy, even Washington's
closest ally in the region, Israel, has declared at least partial independence
from the Bush administration, notably by using third parties in the region to
engage adversaries whom Washington persists in trying to isolate.
Thus, through Egypt, it has negotiated what appears to be an increasingly
effective ceasefire with Hamas and may soon conclude a prisoner exchange with
the Islamist group, just as it did - again in the face of Washington's clear
disapproval - with Hezbollah last month.
The government of (outgoing) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has also been pursuing
increasingly intensive, Turkish-mediated negotiations with Syria that have,
according to the Israeli press, acquired the backing of the Jewish state's
entire security establishment.
Damascus has been the target of unceasing efforts by the White House, in
particular, to isolate and punish, ever since neo-conservative hawk Elliott
Abrams assumed the top Middle East post in the National Security Council on the
eve of the Iraq invasion. Indeed, it was only two years ago, during the opening
days of the Israel-Hezbollah war, that Abrams suggested that Israel carry the
fight into Syrian territory.
Now, according to Israeli press reports, the two countries are within reach of
a final peace accord which could come as early as the next round of proximity
talks in September. Damascus, however, is insisting that Washington give its
explicit blessing to the agreement, a blessing that, given Abrams' enduring
influence despite the wishes of the State Department and the Pentagon, most
analysts believe will likely await the arrival of a new administration in the
US next year.
While such "negative power" remains a very real factor as Bush's tenure winds
down, it appears increasingly detached both from any practicable strategic
vision and from the wishes and desires of key US allies in the region.
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy, and particularly the
neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
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