The Agony of Obama’s Middle East Policy
As Nouri al-Maliki agreed to step aside earlier this week, and even though the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of confidence (“muted enthusiasm”) in his replacement, President Obama’s reluctant re-engagement with Iraq continued. It has been agonizingly painful for the man who made opposition to the war in Iraq the cornerstone of his national political appeal and who trumpeted his withdrawal from Iraq as a mission accomplished to recommit U.S. forces to the country, but President Obama has had little choice.
With Maliki is gone, his choices get harder. The biggest problem is going to involve the fight against ISIS. So far, the administration’s strategy seems to have three main components: bomb ISIS when it goes on the offensive beyond its current holdings, arm the Kurds, and use the carrot of more aid to persuade the Baghdad government to do a somewhat less awful job of running the country—less discrimination against Sunnis, less politicization of the army.
The trouble is that all these strategies so far are half hearted—and hedged about with the typical hesitations, restrictions and cautionary measures that are the hallmark of this president’s foreign policy style. Bomb ISIS—but not too much. Help the Kurds—a little. Those policies are more likely to produce a stalemate than anything else, and at this point, a stalemate is a huge ISIS win. Every day ISIS controls huge chunks of territory is another day that hundreds and thousands of radicalized militants will see the ‘caliph’ as their leader. It is another day of collecting taxes, training fighters, teaching bearers of Western passports to carry the fight back into their home countries and otherwise building the legend of ISIS. It is also another day in which ISIS can go on slaughtering moderate Sunni opponents in Syria.
The core problem with President Obama’s strategy isn’t, in this case, the ‘split the difference’ approach that undermined his administration’s effectiveness in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It’s about substance. The only way to beat ISIS and bring about some kind of stability in the Middle East is to reach out to conservative Sunni forces who favor stability. In Iraq, this would be the tribal leaders and military figures responsible for the Anbar Awakening. In Syria and Lebanon it is a combination of the remnants of the sane wing of the Syrian opposition with the forces who support people like Hariri in Lebanon. Ultimately, it is about working with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to stabilize the Sunni world.
This is probably the safest and the most practical course for American policy, but it’s likely that a solid U.S. commitment to this strategy would alienate Iran. The Obama administration up until now has consistently put the goal of reaching an accommodation with Iran ahead of its relationship with traditional allies in the region. This hasn’t produced a nuclear deal, much less a workable grand geopolitical bargain, but it has allowed negotiations to go forward—albeit at great cost to American influence in the rest of the Middle East.
Now, however, this always difficult balancing act is getting more expensive. Without the serious support of Sunnis in Iraq and Syria, ISIS cannot be crushed. But the Sunnis are feeling betrayed at the moment—by the Obama Administration’s record of hot words and cold deeds in Syria, and by its abandonment of the Iraqi Sunnis as part of the cut and run strategy in Obama’s first term.
History has handed President Obama one great opportunity after another, but he keeps throwing them away. Had he worked harder with Iraqi Sunnis early in his administration, his predecessor could have had the blame for the war while President Obama could have reaped the rewards of a stabilizing Iraq. Had he moved hard against Assad early on, Iran would have been under tremendous pressure to reach a compromise with the US—or watch its entire regional position collapse. Even in the last two months, the willingness of the Saudis and Egyptians to work with Israel offered an unprecedented opportunity for a different and much more productive approach to the peace process and to Israel’s relations with the Arab world.
It’s not clear how many more opportunities President Obama will have.