The Middle East ensnares another U.S. president |
Little about the U.S. attacks on Iran makes sense.
I will leave it to regional experts to explain the rationale behind and the impact of the strikes that U.S. President Donald Trump launched last week in coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As usual, my goal is to focus on the potential impacts on this part of the world and what it says about U.S. foreign policy — especially at a time of supposed tectonic shifts in U.S. thinking.
The U.S. and Israel have launched “major combat operations” against the regime in Iran. After assembling the largest armada in recent history, Trump initiated “Operation Epic Fury” (who comes up with these names?). Airstrikes claimed dozens of casualties, among them Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled the country with an iron fist for 40 years. Also reportedly killed were more than 150 people at a girls’ school, most of them students.
Trump has called on the Iranian people to rise up, the hard-line conservatives to give in and declared his readiness to talk to the government about a peace deal. Iran responded with retaliatory strikes against targets across the region, killing scores, among them six U.S. military personnel as of Monday. Undaunted, Trump said “We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”
The first question is “why” — a question with many angles and interpretations. It could mean why destroy a nuclear program that, according to Trump, had been “completely and totally obliterated” last summer and at a time when U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations in Geneva were reportedly making real progress.
It could mean why promote regime change in Iran when Trump’s own National Security Strategy, released in November, says “there is less to the problem (of conflict in the Middle East) than the headlines might lead one to believe” and “The key to successful relations with the Middle East is accepting the region, its leaders and its nations as they are while working together on areas of common interest.” A nuclear deal would seem to fit that last objective.
It does mean why devote time, attention and resources to a region the NSS concedes is less important because of energy diversification, when the NSS calls the Indo-Pacific “the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds” and argues that “To thrive at home, we must successfully compete there.” Note too that Trump’s National Defense Strategy, released in January, prioritizes defending the homeland, U.S. interests throughout the Western Hemisphere and deterring China.
The best response to that challenge is the argument that ending the Islamic regime in Tehran allows the U.S. to focus on those other priorities. Except, of course, the U.S. documents aren’t conditional. They don’t say that Washington will focus on the Western Hemisphere and China when the Middle East threat — which has been diminished — will be eliminated. Either those are priorities or they aren’t.
That “conditionality” of the U.S. commitment has ensnared other U.S. presidents. George W. Bush was trying to make China the preeminent concern of his administration when the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks occurred. They made terrorism the U.S. priority and China helped consolidate relations with Washington — in a downward spiral after a U.S. EP-3E reconnaissance plane was forced down on Hainan Island, China, after colliding with a Chinese J-8 fighter that April — by pledging to work together to combat that threat.
President Barack Obama’s “pivot/rebalance” to Asia in 2011 was similarly sidetracked, although the blame for that better reflects a lack of bureaucratic commitment — time and resources — along with external events. Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and Syria used weapons of mass destruction against civilians in 2013.
The Syrian situation made clear the dilemma any U.S. president faces when contemplating action in that region. Japanese officials and experts (among others) complained that Obama’s failure to follow up with kinetic action when Damascus crossed his “red line” and used chemical weapons undermined the credibility of U.S. threats and, subsequently, its deterrent.
That argument ignored the resulting diplomatic agreement that was supposed to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons and, more importantly, the charge that striking Syria would mean that Washington was again failing to follow through on its desire to focus on the Indo-Pacific. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Those commitments and deployments have real costs. In addition to the charge that they are proof that the U.S. can’t focus, the Wall Street Journal this week reported that military officials warned that the U.S. risked running out of munitions and it is racing “to destroy Iran’s missile and drone force before it runs out of interceptors to fend off Tehran’s retaliation.” Patriot batteries have been redeployed to the region from South Korea. Expect increased U.S. pressure on allies to compensate for those movements and shortages.
Another argument for striking Iran is that it undermines the “axis of authoritarians” that has been ready to seize on U.S. missteps and misfortunes and challenge the West’s global preeminence. Proponents claim that Beijing’s unwillingness to do more than offer diplomatic complaints about U.S. strikes — like its inaction following the Jan. 3 kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — exposes China as a paper tiger when it comes to protecting its allies and partners.
Not quite. China doesn’t have alliances. It has close relationships but nothing that would entail the commitment to another country’s defense found in U.S. alliances. Bilateral relations are largely transactional and that alignment of nations is, reports Patricia Kim, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a U.S. think tank, a group of “loosely connected opportunists — united more by shared grievances than shared goals.”
Kim counters that Beijing’s restraint isn’t cause for celebration but should worry U.S. and regional strategists. For her, “it’s a sign of strategic focus. Beijing is sharpening its military, economic and technological edge within its own borders and its immediate region. That’s where it sees the real contest with the United States unfolding — not in Tehran, but in the Indo-Pacific.”
Ryan Hass, another fellow at Brookings, writes that the U.S. moves could strengthen deterrence in the region but signaling its resolve to defend allies (Israel). But, he warns, it could “embolden” Beijing by demonstrating the efficacy of precision strikes to decapitate Taiwan’s leadership.
This does not mean that China is taking its cues from other countries. Beijing will move against Taiwan when it feels it must — or can — regardless of precedents set by other nations. The attack on Iran undermines the credibility of U.S. objections, but international complaints have little impact on either Beijing or Washington these days.