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2 Obama drags Middle East baggage to
Asia By
Peter Lee
The signature event in United
States-Chinese relations last week was not the
anti-climactic release of the US Defense Strategic
Review, which re-emphasized the Barack Obama
administration's widely touted ambitions to
perform a strategic pirouette from the Middle East
to East Asia. It was the murder of another Iranian
nuclear scientist in Tehran.
The
assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan by forces
unknown serves as a message that the Obama
administration will find it difficult to reinvent
itself as the savior of Asian peace and
prosperity; instead, the United States will find
itself reprising its dreary and detested role in
the Middle East soap opera as defender of the
pro-Israel/anti-Iranian status quo.
In
some respects, the 2012 campaign against Iran is a
rerun of
the drama of 2010 (which
itself was a re-run of the George W Bush sanctions
push of 2008, which in turn was a reprise of the
sanctions push begun in 2006), with the US
badgering China to jump on the anti-Iran
bandwagon, and Washington brandishing the stick of
sanctions against the Chinese banking system while
simultaneously dangling the carrot of sweet, sweet
Saudi crude before Beijing.
But
there's a big difference as well.
In
2010, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama could
hold out the hope that hope that coercing Iran on
its alleged nuclear ambitions would be balanced by
an integration of Israel into the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime and a nice,
geo-friendly win-win outcome for the Middle East
(including Iran) and the world.
In
2012, pressure by the Israeli government and its
US allies, enablers, and opportunistic supporters;
Saudi Arabia's post-Arab Spring anxiety and
aggressiveness; and the demands of the upcoming
presidential campaign have combined to compel
Obama to abandon his dreams of Middle East
denuclearization, peace, and rapprochement with
Iran.
Instead, Obama joins the
dismal, unbroken series of recent US presidents
whose only option is to demand Iran's head on a
plate as part of a zero-sum win for Israel's Likud
and the House of Saud ... and unambiguous loss for
the People's Republic of China (PRC). Certainly,
Obama has done his best to escape his Middle East
conundrum, if not solve it.
Recent statements of the
White House, State Department, and, with the
announcement of the Defense Strategic Review, the
Pentagon have been filled with the Obama
administration's palpable yearning to refocus the
United States as the indispensable counterweight
to rising China, the welcomed champion of
militarily weak East Asian free market democracies
(plus handy ally communist Vietnam, of course),
and deserving piggy at the trough of runaway Asian
economic growth.
Indeed, there is a decent fit
between the Asian ambitions of the United States
and the needs of China's smaller and put-upon
interlocutors in Asia.
The
idea of a nuanced dance between the American eagle
and Chinese dragon, not driven by ideology or
security anxieties, but a realist tango of
interest orchestrated by the intellectual
brilliance of Beltway international relations
wonks has understandably engaged the fancy ... of
Beltway international relations wonks.
United States foreign policy
insider Steve Clemons reported the official line
at his blog The Washington Note, together with the
welcome news that Vice President Joe Biden, an
affable and indefatigable schmoozer, will serve as
the human face of America in dealing with the
Chinese leadership - a role I suspect that the
cool, tense, and intensely cerebral Obama has
little inclination or ability to fill, especially
since his mission in Asia is now to administer
self-righteous public scoldings to China for its
perceived transgressions:
China Vice
President Xi Jingping, widely estimated to be
the successor later this year to Hu Jintao as
China's next generation President, will visit
Washington, DC in February - and the message,
communicated by new China handler-in-chief Joe
Biden, will be constructive but hard-headed,
interest-driven mutual US-China engagement in
which the US will communicate that it's legs in
the region aren't weakening with China's rise -
but rather getting stronger and providing an
ongoing platform for the peace and stability
that have benefited much of the region
including, as one senior White House national
security official told me, CHINA. [1]
Since CHINA has been upgraded to
all-caps status, we can assume that the US is very
serious about the policy. Will harsh reality
support this carefully thought-out plan?
In
support of the effort, in January Obama paid a
visit to the Pentagon to roll out the Defense
Strategic Guidance intended to put the military
aspects of the vaunted "strategic pivot" to Asia
in place…and sound a combined warning
klaxon/dinner bell to American defense
contractors.
The Washington Post made the
inadvertently unnerving point that Obama's
election year strategy was to give the uniformed
services what they wanted, so that partisan-minded
Republican critics would be confronted by a solid
phalanx of top brass:
By enlisting
the military's help in defining its strategic
priorities, Obama has sought to ensure that he
has the military's support when his defense
budget goes before congress, including the
committees led by some of his toughest
Republican critics. Military leaders, in turn,
now have reason to believe that Obama will not
agree to more cuts. [2]
As to what the
military and the civilian leadership want, well,
it's China. Quoting from the report:
US economic and
security interests are inextricably linked to
developments in the arc extending from the
Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian
Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of
evolving challenges and opportunities.
Accordingly, while the US military will continue
to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity
rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.
[italics in original] [3]
However, the
document also states that the United States
military, reflecting the Obama administration's
infatuation with the 21st century War Lite model
of regional proxies supported by US airpower and
low-cost drones, will be a leaner machine, capable
of fighting one and a half full-dress wars,
instead of the traditional two-fer.
Even when US
forces are committed to a large-scale operation
in one region, they will
be capable of denying the objectives of - or
imposing unacceptable costs on - an
opportunistic aggressor in a second
region.[italics in
original]
Analysts are welcome to draw
the inference that Asia-Pacific is the main
theater, and the US military is going to equip
itself for an ocean war over there.
That's certainly the
conclusion that the "Center for a New American
Security" (CNAS) - a left-leaning think tank
founded by current State Department China honcho
Kurt Campbell - drew.
CNAS jumped in to flesh out
the US policy with commendable (or suspicious)
alacrity, issuing a 115-page report on the
Asia-Pacific theater titled "Cooperation From
Strength" backed by an interactive website
designed to publicize and sell the
menace.
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