MIDDLE EAST NEWS & ANALYSIS US

Is the Middle East Americas to Lose?

The colonialist idea of the US losing a country or a whole region should be
banned from the political discourse of the 21st century.
by Richard Falk
June 15, 2015 No Comments

President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, 4

June 2009. In his speech, President Obama called for a new beginning between
the United States and Muslims, declaring that this cycle of suspicion and
discord must end. (Chuck Kennedy/White House)
Iwas appalled by the embedded colonialism of a recent issue of The
Economist (June 6-12, 2015), boldly proclaiming its mood of geopolitical angst on
its cover titling its featured story Losing the Middle East. Any glimmer of
doubt about the intent of the magazines editors is removed by displaying a
somewhat bedraggled American flag on the cover accompanied by the sub-title
Why American must not abandon the region. The rationale offered for this
political imperative within this most revered journal of intelligent establishment
guidance strikes me as even more appalling than this provocative packaging giving
the plot away before we even begin reading the story.

What the Economist Proposes

The argument set forth rests on the colonialist assumption that the Middle East
is Americas to lose, although not quite, as the lead editorial ends with an
enigmatic distinction: The idea has taken root that America no longer has what
it takes to run the Middle East. That it ever could was an illusion. But America
has a vital part to play. If it continues to stand back, everyone will be worse of
including the Americans.
We are never told whether the catchall everyone includes the people of the
region, and whether they even matter in the calculations of this organ of elite
opinion primarily concerned with the wellbeing of the West, which is linked
seamlessly to the operations of the neoliberal world economy.
The strong implication of this lead editorial, never adequately explained, is that
America should intervene more throughout the Middle East to reverse, or at
least contain, present disruptive trends. Why this is so is never really explored
beyond the misleading supposition that American military capabilities can
improve the situation if brought more directly to bear and without explaining
why, insisting that existing alignments with political actors in the region,
regardless of their character, should be reinforced and strengthened.
The pragmatic side of what The Economist seems to be proposing is two-fold:
First, a militarist prescription for the pursuit of Americas regional interests,
which are identified as counter-terrorism, oil, and preventing nuclear
proliferation; secondly, a willingness to accept contradictions in protecting these
interests, such as siding with Iran against the Islamic State (IS) in Iran and
opposing Iran in Syria.
It is within this framing that [t]he Middle East desperately needs a new,
invigorated engagement from America. That would not only be within Americas
power, it would also be in Americas interest. Its central critique is that
President Obamas policy is too weak and wavering to be effective, which is
clarified by the insistence that [h]e must be ready to use force. Mr. Obamas
taboo about deploying American soldiers against IS in Iraq has led to a selfdefeating shortage of special forces to guide air strikes to their targets.
In their view, Obamas approach has created a vacuum that has exacerbated
the strife and disorder. The fuller story in the body of the magazine also
welcomes the prospect that either Hillary Clinton or any of the Republican
presidential hopefuls seem determined to be far readier than Obama to
intervene forcibly throughout the region.
Behind this scathing criticism of Obama is the evident belief that Americas
geopolitical muscle if applied with skill, militarily and diplomatically, could have

lessened the chaos and violence that now pervades the region. Such an argument
seems deeply flawed.
To begin with, it is hardly accurate to portray Obama as standing aloof from the
struggles going on in the Middle East. It is actively militarily engaged against IS
and Syria and is in the process of becoming militarily reengaged in Iraq at the
present time. It was a strong advocate of the regime changing NATO
intervention against Qaddafis dictatorial rule in Libya, and it has quietly gone
along with the counter-revolutionary shift in Egypt that destroyed the hopes of
humane governance, at least temporarily, that surfaced with such excitement in
early 2011 throughout the region.
My own view is that this degree of American military and diplomatic engagement
brought more, not less, chaos to the Middle East. And now, as if to take the
critique of The Economist immediately to heart the U.S. Government has
announced plans to pre-position heavy weaponry and military personnel in several
points in the region so as to be in a better position to intervene rapidly should
further crises emerge.
Criticizing the Obama Approach
In my view, the burden of persuasion should always be upon those who favor
greater reliance on military force whether in the Middle East or elsewhere.
Without acknowledging any inconsistency,The Economist concedes that the Bush
invasion of 2003 and subsequent occupation of Iraq was a disaster, illustrative
of imprudently intervening in a massive fashion. As every major effort at
intervention by the United States has revealed, upping the ante by intervening a
bit more, is a slippery slope that has eventually led to defeat after defeat, most
vividly evident in the trajectory and outcome of the Vietnam War.
This unquestioning militarization of the political imagination, which is what comes
through in this sharp criticism of Obamas approach, does not even pause to
consider the benefits of allowing the dynamics of self-determination to control
political outcomes in the 21st century.
An unlearned lesson of geopolitics in the post-colonial world is that the power
balance has decisively shifted as between intervention by the West and national
forces of resistance. These forces have learned to be more effective in their
combat tactics, but above all, have come to understand that time is on their
side, that a foreign intervener will give up the quest at some point implicitly
acknowledging that military dominance is not able to impose a political outcome
at acceptable costs.
This is not just a matter of democratic societies becoming impatient in the face
of a drawn out distant wars with questionable justifications, which causes death

and injury to its young citizens, but the deeper realization that the post-colonial
politics of resistance over time subverts the will and morale of the intervener.
This happened as clearly to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan as it did to the
United States in Vietnam, or later in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is more of a
reflection of the structure of shifting power relations than of a weakening of
ideological resolve.
The central metaphor of losing the Middle East presupposes that it was
Americas to lose rather than an acknowledgement of the empowerment of the
peoples of the region and their governments with respect to the control of
national and regional destinies. The metaphor of winning and losing is a colonialist
framing of geopolitics that amorally vindicates hegemonic ambitions, especially
the virtues of Western control. It gives priority to Western interests in a nonWestern geographic domain, and pretends that such an orientation conveniently
also happens to be an expression of fidelity to Western values, including
democracy and human rights, and of benefit to the affected societies.
Nowhere in the extensive article are doubts raised about the unconditionality of
support for Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies that oppress their
populations and subject women to humiliating social constraints or to Israel that
has dispossessed most Palestinians from their own homeland, and held the rest
captive.
The Economist has the temerity to couple its sharp criticism of Obamas
allegedly soft diplomacy by anticipating what is misleadingly described as a
return to the center that is expected to occur after the U.S. presidential
elections in 2016: The next American president may well be warmer towards
Israel, and more willing to turn a blind eye to new settlements in the occupied
territories. He or she might do more to reassure Gulf monarchies and speak
more sternly to Iran.
What a strange set of hopeful expectations!
Obama turned a pretty blind eye to Israeli settlement expansion during the last
several years, even instructing his representatives to vote in isolation to shield
Israel from UN censure over settlement expansion.
His administration has also gone along with the basic approach of the Gulf
monarchies, although timidly voicing some recent doubts about the wisdom of
respected Saudi air strikes directed against the Houthis in Yemen.
And it is astonishing to note that the Obama presidency is situated by The
Economist in the political spectrum as left of center? The idea of returning to
the center implies that American regional policy these last six years had
somehow veered toward the left. And therefore, for me what The

Economistcalls the center would more accurately be described as the right, or

even the hard right.
In most respects, including policy toward Iran, Iraq, and Israel, Obamas
essential approach has been to sustain continuity with the policies of the George
W. Bush presidency. There was the same willingness to threaten Iran with a
military attack if seen to be crossing the nuclear threshold, a similar stance
toward supporting the Shia governing process in Iraq, and the same
endorsement of Israels defiance of international law, as well as insulating its
nuclear weapons capability from even a whispered challenge.
There are more fundamental deficiencies in this analysis by The Economist of
what has gone wrong in the region and what to do about it. There is a seemingly
blind eye toward the relevance of the history of Western responsibilities for
the unfolding political ordeal that is being enacted throughout the Middle East.
This perspective overlooks such defining antecedents as the playing out of
British and French overt colonial ambitions in the aftermath of World War I and
of the statist goals of the Zionist Movement as abetted by British policies
during its period of mandate administration.
Imposing arbitrary boundaries on the region by Europe meant establishing
unnatural political communities that could be held together (or broken apart)
only by violence from above (or below). In a revealing respect, Lebanon is a
poster child of this era of Sykes-Picot diplomacy, having been carved out of
Ottoman Syria to satisfy Frances egocentric craving at the time for a colonial
possession in the region with a Christian majority.
The Economists policy prescriptions are also notable for their failure even to
mention international law or the United Nation. These normative sources of
authority and constraint are evidently seen as of utterly no concern to the
geopolitical optic through which the magazines august editors perceive policy
options for the region. But if China were to assess its approach to the
sovereignty disputes involving the Spratly Islands with the same cavalier
attitudes toward the relevance of normative authority, the West would be up in
arms, persuasively contending that such behavior is dangerously destructive of a
moderate political order in the Pacific.
The Old Geopolitics versus the New Geopolitics
Even when it comes to the pragmatic level of analysis, I find that The
Economists sense of editorial guidance is woefully shortsighted. Lets accept
their focus on terrorism, oil, and nuclear proliferation even accepting as
accurate their portrayal of American interests.
Surely, the best way to combat jihadism is a measured withdrawal from the
region.

As for oil, the Arab producers in the region have shown through the years that
their policies are market-driven with scant attention to ideology as shown by
their readiness to throw the Palestinians under the bus.
Most persuasive of all, nuclear proliferation would be best prevented by
establishing a nuclear free zone in the Middle East, which all governments
except Israel favor, and have done so for several years.
In other words, the idea of trying to fill the so-called vacuum following the
European retreat, which began during World War II and was consummated by
the 1956 Suez War, with American military power and diplomatic muscle
epitomizes the old geopolitics of Western hegemony rather than relying on a
potential new geopolitics of self-determination.
There is, of course, little assurance that the outcome of the interplay of
domestic and regional forces in the Middle East will be ethically satisfying or
politically stable, but there is at least some likelihood that going with the postcolonial historical flow will produce better results than further reliance on the
United States to continue battling the strong currents of nationalism.
This clarion call for enhanced trust in the nostalgic imaginary of the old
geopolitics seems historically tone deaf. It represents a reliance on the old
geopolitics of militarism that should have been discredited long ago by its
record of failure and its incredibly high opportunity costs.
At the very least, adopting this new geopolitics of self-determination might
enable the politicians and citizenry of the United States to take a much needed
and long overdue look within its own borders, and devote much more of its
imaginative and material resources to creating a humane society at home,
starting with its physical and moral infrastructure.
One good starting point for such a program is with the language of political
discourse. This idea of the West losing a country or, as with The
Economists cover story, losing a whole region, should be banished from the
21st century political imaginary, and with it the realization that such a concept of
winning and losing is worse than anachronistic, it is obsolete.
It might be helpful to recall that for many years the American political right
accused the U.S. Government of losing China only to discover later in the Cold
War that China had become a valuable geopolitical ally in the core struggle with
the Soviet Union, and still later, that China as much as any country, keeps the
world economy from unraveling.
Barack Obama, Iraq, Islamic State, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, US Foreign Policy, Vietnam War, Yemen
Richard Falk

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who

taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa
Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of
California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board
of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. From 2008 until May 2014, he was the
U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian
territories occupied since 1967.
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