The United States developed an interest in the region in the 1940s as President Roosevelt began thinking about the post-war international order. Since then, under American leadership, a political architecture was shaped guaranteeing the region’s stability.
For six decades, under administrations from both parties, American power acted as the pole that kept the tent up. Over the past four years, however, President Barack Obama has pulled that pole away, allowing the tent to sag and, in parts, fold.
The American abdication under Obama has led to a transition from a problematic status quo to an uncertain future. It has also created a vacuum that various opportunist powers are trying to fill.
Under Obama, Russia has gained a veto over aspects of American foreign policy, ranging from the building of a missile shield in Central Europe to halting Iran’s nuclear program, to humanitarian intervention in Syria. After two decades of virtual absence from the Middle East, Russia is trying to regain at least some of the influence that the Soviet Empire once enjoyed.
For its part, Turkey, acting as an opportunist power under its neo-Ottoman leadership, is trying to cast itself as the leader of a new Middle East dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood behind a political facade. Four years ago, Turkey was the region’s only nation that had no problems with its neighbors.
Today, it has problems with almost all of them. Because it is a member of NATO, Turkey could drag the alliance into uncertain waters in the service of its own ill-defined ambitions.
Meanwhile, Iran is gripped by unprecedented fear and hubris — fear that it might be the next target for regime change and hubris about exporting its anti-West ideology of hate to the rest of the region. As in Russia’s case, Iran is both encouraged and frightened by the American retreat. It is encouraged because it sees new opportunities to project power in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf and Iraq. But it is also frightened because it might end up facing a new bloc of Arab-Sunni powers determined to push it back into its Shi’ite box.
Obama’s worldview was shaped by two factors.
The first was his desire to be the opposite of what he thought George W Bush was. He saw his predecessor as a “my way or the highway” cowboy who had dictated to others and hit them on the head when they got out of line. The first half of the Obama presidency was spent on an apology tour of the region during which he blamed the US for much of the region’s troubles and spun the cobweb of new contradictions.
For example, in 2009 when Iranians rose against their despot, Obama refused to back them because that would have looked like endorsing Bush’s “Freedom Agenda.” Hatred for Bush also led Obama into backing Tunisian, Egyptian and Yemeni despots until the 11th hour. Even then, he preferred an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood rather than democratic oppositions that Bush had tried to help, albeit with little success.
Not being Bush was also a motive in Obama’s decision to downgrade ties with Iraq which, thanks to American blood and treasure, has emerged as a beacon of light in a dark region.
Having established that he was not Bush, he still had to show who he was. The answer was the second factor in his policy: an exaggerated belief in the potency of his own political sex appeal.
Obama thinks that things would happen simply by wanting them to.
He promised to create a Palestinian state in one year, appointing Sen. George Mitchell as special envoy. But then he forgot about Mitchell — who found out that he had been taken for a ride and resigned.
Wishful thinking also shaped Obama’s policy, or simulacrum of policy, vis-a-vis Iran. He stretched his “hand of friendship” to President Ahmadinejad and was roundly rebuffed.
Foreign policy is the ultimate preserve of the president. Thus the political persona of the president, in fact his character, plays a crucial role in determining foreign policy success or failure. A prisoner of fantasies about the world and his own prowess, Obama has proved incapable of developing a realistic policy capable of dealing with a complex and dangerous region. In the process he has sown the seeds of storms that he or his successors might face, at a high cost to the United States.
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The New York Post