Middle East

Regional Fears of Western Primacy and the Future of U.S. Middle Eastern Basing Policy - Dr. Andrew Terrill.  U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute monograph, 15 December 2006.  The United States has a core national interest in maintaining peace and stability in the Middle East as well as containing or eliminating threats emanating from that region. Yet, there is often disagreement on the ways to best achieve these goals. The author seeks to present his analysis of how the United States and other Western states might best address their military cooperation and basing needs within the Middle East, while still respecting and working with an understanding of regional and especially Arab history and concerns. He also provides policy recommendations based upon his analysis.

The Middle East Crisis: Six "Long Wars" and Counting - Anthony Cordesman. Center for Strategic and International Studies report, August 2006. The Middle East is never a peaceful place, but even by regional standards, the US faces major problems in virtually every area. Even if one ignores the problems raised by enduring issues like energy, development, demographics, and normal politics and diplomacy, the US and its allies are now directly or indirectly involved in six “long wars:” The war in Iraq, the struggle with Iranian proliferation and "adventures", the war in Afghanistan and the problem of Pakistan, the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, the Israeli-Lebanese struggle, and the broader war on terrorism.  It is easy lose sight of one or more of these conflicts under the pressure of dealing with the others. It is equally easy to lose sight of the connections between them and the fact they really are “long wars.” Almost regardless of the level of violence involved, all of these conflicts now promise to involve religious, ideological, political, and perceptual struggles that will play out over at least a decade.

The Impending Collapse of Arab Civilization - Lieutenant Colonel James Lacey, U.S. Army Reserve. Proceedings article, September 2005. More and more of our strategic judgments are being built upon the untested edifice of two books: Bernard Lewis' The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror and Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order . While there have been a few critical reviews of both works, for the most part they have become the basic canon of 21st century strategic thought with very little serious negative commentary. In military publications and briefings these works are now cited repeatedly and uncritically as authoritative support for developing strategic concepts. Both books paint a dismal global picture. Huntington argues that for centuries civilizations have been kept apart by distance and serious geographical obstacles. However, modern technologies are eroding these obstacles and as civilizations begin to interact on a more regular basis they will find each other so repugnant they will be unable to resist trying to slaughter one another. Bernard Lewis is not as pessimistic about the global environment. Rather, he focuses his dire warnings on just the Muslim world, which appears to him on an irreversible road to doom.

The Future Security Environment in the Middle East: Conflict, Stability, and Political Change - Edited by Nora Bensahel and Daniel Byman. Rand study, 2004. This report identifies several important trends that are shaping regional security. It examines traditional security concerns, such as energy security and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as newer challenges posed by political reform, economic reform, civil-military relations, leadership change, and the information revolution. The report concludes by identifying the implications of these trends for U.S. foreign policy.

The U.S. Military and The Evolving Challenges in the Middle East - Anthony Cordesman. Naval War College Review article, 2002. The U.S. armed forces have long faced challenges in the Middle East, and they have generally done so with considerable success. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 did not create a radically new set of problems in the Middle East for services that had already experienced attacks on the Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon, punished terrorism by attacks on Libya, fought over a decade of asymmetric warfare with Iraq, and suffered from terrorist bombings at the National Guard Training Center and the al-Khobar barracks in Saudi Arabia and on the USS Cole (DDG 67) in Yemen. Neither 11 September nor the war in Afghanistan has made fundamental changes in U.S. interests in the Middle East or changed the basic strategic rationale behind the American military presence in the Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean. If anything, what is now called the “war on terrorism” exposed the depth of the challenges that have been evolving for many years, as well as the risks the United States will face if it does not come to grips with the security problems of the Middle East. Terrorism and asymmetric warfare are clearly part of that challenge, but only part. We still confront the problems of protecting a key source of the world’s energy supplies, supporting Arab allies and Israel, securing sea lines of communication, and dealing with weapons proliferation. We still face the risks of major regional contingencies and of war with Iraq, and possibly Iran. Terrorism and asymmetric warfare simply add new dimensions.

The Middle East in the Shadow of Afghanistan and Iraq - F. Stephen Larrabee. Rand study, 2003. On May 5-6, 2003, Rand and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy held a two-day conference in Geneva that examined the impact of the Iraq war on the security of the Middle East. It was attended by specialists from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. This document summarizes the main issues and points of discussion at the conference: the impact of Iraq on the war on terrorism; the future of Iran and Iraq, repercussions of the war on Syria, the Levant, Turkey, Jordan, and the Arabian peninsula; and the effect of the war on transatlantic ties.

The "Arab Street" and the Middle East's Democracy Deficit - Dale Eickelman. Naval War College Review article, 2002. Even before the events of 11 September 2001, it was already becoming clear that rapidly increasing levels of education, greater ease of travel, and the rise of new communications media were developing a public sphere in Muslim-majority societies in which large numbers of people—not just an educated, political, and economic elite—expect a say in religion, governance, and public issues. State authorities continue in many ways to be arbitrary and restrict what is said in the press, the broadcast media, and in public, but the methods of avoiding such censorship and control have rapidly proliferated. Today, silence in public no longer implies ignorance. Silence, or apparent acquiescence, is often a weapon of the weak. In some countries of the Arabian Peninsula, a “politics of silence,” in which audiences applaud tepidly rather than with enthusiasm, is one of the few forms of public protest available, despite the simulacra of democratic forms offered by repressive and authoritarian governments. For instance, Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was reelected with 99 percent of cast ballots in 1994, but few Tunisians would take at face value his response to a French journalist’s question that such results, far from being “a bit too good,” merely reflected “the profound realities of the Arab-Muslim world” and that the vote was “a massive adhesion to a project of national salvation.” Public silence in Tunisia in the face of such claims does not equal agreement with them.

How to Win the Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror - Robert Satloff. The Washington Institute of Near East Policy. Public diplomacy should, in the best of circumstances, focus on three objectives: sharpening America's image; investing in identifying, nurturing, and supporting allies; and promoting U.S. interests. In the post-September 11 era, the critical new element is the ideological battle against Islamism. Those who dismiss this as a public relations challenge and not a potentially cataclysmic life-and-death struggle are wrong; it is far more akin to the choice between communist and free during the Cold War. While this is principally a fight being waged by Muslims against Muslims, within each society, the United States cannot avoid its role as a central player. This is a series of national struggles within a global context, and a string of individual national defeats could spell a catastrophe for U.S. interests and ruin for America's friends on three continents.

The Middle East in 2015: The Impact of Regional Trends on U.S. Strategic Planning - Edited by Judith Yaphe. National Defense University Press, 2002. This volume was begun in 1999, when the National Intelligence Council asked the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University to examine change in the Middle East. At that time, little political change had occurred in the region in 30 years. In fact, the governments of the Middle East had shown a remarkable stability. Except for the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and a military coup in Sudan in 1989, the region had been stable. Most rulers had been in place for a generation—Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad since 1971, the Iraqi Ba’thists and Saddam Husayn since 1968, Jordanian King Hussein since 1952, Moroccan King Hassan since 1961, Omani Sultan Qaboos since 1970, and Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi since 1969. The same families have ruled Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states for much of the 20th century. Iran, the only country in the region to undergo a revolution in the past 25 years, passed power to new leaders through elections. Assassinations in Egypt and Israel brought in new leaders but did not change the basic political structure in those countries. With the exceptions of Qatar, Iran, Sudan, and Algeria, transfers of power were orderly and preordained by elections (in Israel) or family, tribal, or party consensus.

Democracy in Arab Countries: Problems and Prospects - Robert Satloff. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, January 2004.After pan-Arabism and Islamism, it is heartening to consider the prospect that democracy may be the next great wave to wash over Arab countries. Whether it actually takes root or is merely a passing fancy depends on three sets of actors: local leaders, local populations, and what is euphemistically referred to as "the international community."  The most difficult hurdle is that democracy needs democrats, as United States President George Bush noted recently in London, and Arab democrats are weak and fragmented. Though they can agree on what they are against--e.g., their opposition to radical Islamism--they are divided on what they are for. That does not even address the complicating factor of Islamists who mouth the democratic line and want entry into the big democratic tent but who are the most fundamentally anti-democratic element in the region.

Arcs of Instability: U.S. Relations in the Greater Middle East - Geoffrey Kemp. Naval War College Review article, 2002. What do we mean by “the Middle East”? There is no single, agreed definition of its political or geographic boundaries. Geographers, historians, journalists, and government bureaucrats all use the term, yet they frequently mean different things. The Department of State speaks of “the Near East,” to include North Africa, the Levant, and the Gulf countries—but not Turkey, since that state is a member of Nato. In contrast, the Department of Defense divides the region another way. U.S. Central Command has responsibility for military operations in a zone that includes Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, the Gulf Cooperation Council states, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Excluded are the Caucasus, Turkey, Israel, Syria, and India; the first four remain under the responsibility of European Command, while India falls under Pacific Command. The breakup of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the newly independent republics of the Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan) raised new questions about where exactly the Middle East begins, where it ends, and whether it can be comprehensively, consistently delimited. How then should we define the Middle East? One option would be to use the phrase “Greater Middle East,” which has gained some currency. So formal a designation, however, implies a degree of precision that is not presently justified. It assumes there is a generally accepted definition of which countries to include and which to exclude (as in the case of continents—say, the line between Asia and Africa). In fact, however, selection is bound to be arbitrary, because rationales for including one country and excluding another are based on judgments as to what the determinant variables are. If one is primarily interested in strategic geography rather than religion or political alliances, one necessarily selects countries differently from those who would wish to analyze, say, the Muslim world or the Cold War confrontation states.

Strategic Geography and the Greater Middle East - Robert Harkavy. Naval War College Review article, 2001. Occupying a pivotal position at the juncture of Europe, Africa, and Asia, the “Greater Middle East”—here defined as the sum of the core Middle East, North Africa, the African Horn, South Asia, and ex-Soviet Central Asia—likewise occupies a crucial position with respect to some of the major issue areas of the contemporary era.¹ Those issue areas are energy sources and availability; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems; and the dangerous pairings involving Israel and the Arabs, Iran and Iraq, and India and Pakistan. Surely, this region in its aggregate has come to be viewed by the contending and aspiring world powers—the United States, Russia, a united Europe, China—as a strategic prize, maybe the strategic prize. The geographic aspects of these issues can be analyzed by moving from macro to micro, from grand strategy to operations and tactics (climate and terrain). The new missile programs involving WMD do not easily fit within this framework but apply across issues.