While reading George Friedman’s lengthy disquisition at RealClearWorld on the events of the last twenty or so years resulting in, in his words, “fragmentation”, a number of questions occurred to me.
Why is it better for us to try to sustain late 19th and early 20th century policies than it was for us to try to sustain late 19th and early 20th century French policies?
How does sustaining Britain’s policies help us?
How does supporting the present foreign policy objectives of the former colonial powers help us?
Is Iran a force that encourages stability in the Middle East?
Is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia still a force that encourages stability in the Middle East?
Is it possible for us to secure israel’s foreign policy objectives for them? Is it desireable?
Are our objectives of the 1970s in the Middle East still our objectives today? If not, what are our objectives today?
Someone who describes Saudi Arabia as “another British invention,” is so seeped in post-colonial revisionism, I don’t have to read the rest. I know where this goes. The closest I could come to a basis for this claim is that the British supported the Hashemites in an Arab Revolt, that gave the Sauds the opportunity to seize the Hijaz while the Hashemites were distracted.
Nor had the British “crafted Egypt into a united monarchy.” Around 1807, Muhammad Ali seized the Egyptian eyalet and established a dynasty under nominal Ottoman suzerainty for generations.
The historical trends are much longer and less obviously of foreign intervention. For the most part, European states felt the Sick Man of Europe needed to be propped up because of the instability that would be caused by its collapse.
See here. The underpinnings of the present KSA are a subject for debate. It certainly did not exist prior to WWI.
We should just acknowledge that we’re hopelessly incompetent in dealing with the MENA region, say to Hell with them all, and get out.
My strategy has the benefits of being coherent & easy/cheap to implement. As a bonus we can offer to sell everything to everyone, thereby giving our munitions industries a boost w/o having to increase our own defense budget.
(Let all the governments of the region know on the q.t. that we will bomb the fuckers to Hell and gone with whatever is handy if they don’t control their own radicals. We’re looking at you, House of Saud.)
Yes, ellipses, the rational actors in the Middle East are emergent.
@PD
🙂
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Regardless, it should be abundantly clear at this point that our ruling class don’t know what they’re doing. If you don’t know what you’re doing, STOP.
“I’m not sure where these clamps attached to the black and red wires go, so I will attach them to random things. Him, let’s put the black one on my left nipple, and the red one on my right testicle….”
That’s a fair description of our Mideast foreign policy decision making in recent decades.
Ellipses, it doesn’t seem to be the worst thing in the world to have left about 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq to deter the rise of an insurgency, train Iraqi troops and maintain pressure on the regime to make peace with the Sunnis. The troop commitment was minimal and the expectations low, but now that things are getting out of hand and we are sending troops back in worse circumstances than before.
I think the reality is at some point, the U.S. would intervene if ISIL continues to expand, so the questions are whether ISIL is likely to expand, disrupt and break down the previous order, and whether earlier forms of American containment would be more efficient.
Yeah, it would have made more sense to do what you suggest. But the fact that the people in charge did NOT do that, and in fact could NOT do that without admitting that they were wrong, is an indication that they’re going to keep fucking up. I don’t have any more faith in the other side, as they seem to have been of the opinion that Iraq was going to turn into Germany once we invaded.
Get out now before someone strategizes again. It’s our only hope.
Turning to Afghanistan, my position has been that the decision to occupy Afghanistan was a decision to keep 10-25,000 troops there indefinitely. Anything else would be dishonorable, irresponsible, and counter-productive.
Increasingly it’s looking as though dishonorable, irresponsible, and counter-productive is what we do. That argues for non-interventionism even in a case like that of Afghanistan post-9/11.
What we do? No, what our leaders do. We’re subjects now, not citizens, therefore I refuse to accept any responsibility for their actions. (And if you doubt my subjects not citizens formulation, please explain the secrecy surrounding the TPP, which the public will not be allowed to see until after its passed.)
Despite PD criticism (the merits of which I think are debatable), I generally agree with Friedman’s analysis of the situation. I think we are in a situation that is continually overtaken-by-events and thus we have little influence in the outcome. In that case it’s best to focus on core interests and allies and let things sort themselves out with minimal direct interference from us.
We used to be somewhat good at a more subtle approach that works behind the scenes, but that method doesn’t appear to be compatible with modern media and the general lack of security.