Does US Overstate Importance of Middle East?
Does US Overstate Importance of Middle East?
Scott Stearns – Voice of America
Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States must remain “deeply engaged” in the Middle East because it has a direct impact on the U.S. economy and national security. But is the Obama administration overstating those threats?
In the six months since the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, there has been an upsurge of violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and 50 days of fighting in Gaza.
Yet Kerry continues to meet separately with Palestinian and Israeli leaders, looking for an opening to restart talks on a two-state solution while keeping up momentum at home, where he says Americans cannot wall themselves off from the Middle East.
“We have to be deeply engaged – deeply engaged – in this region because it is directly in the interest of our national security and our economy," he said.
But in an essay for the magazine Politico, Cato Institute analyst Justin Logan says Washington overstates the region’s importance.
“American attention to the Middle East is disproportionate compared to the Middle East’s strategic impact," he said.
On security, Kerry says no ocean can shield Americans from danger.
“And that is a primary reason why the Middle East matters. But it also matters because our friends are so important to us. We are proudly and unapologetically connected to Israel and many Arab states with whom we have worked closely for decades," he said.
Those decades of military support should have changed the U.S. view of risks facing Israel, Logan says.
“It has a qualitative military edge over all of its conceivable rivals in the Middle East. It has terrorism problems. It has a very nasty dispute with the Palestinians. But none of these endanger Israel’s survival as a Jewish state in that part of the world. So we tend to overstate that consideration," he said.
On economic risks, Logan says the Middle East accounts for just six percent of global Gross Domestic Product, including oil exports, with no one power positioned to monopolize supply.
“Iran isn’t going to conquer Saudi Arabia, vice versa, etc. So the energy security problems, which are under-defined, actually aren’t that great for us. They could be. But there’s no prospective danger in the near term," he said.
Kerry says the United States cannot walk away from the Middle East even as it approaches its own energy independence.
“Any serious disruption to the Gulf oil supplies can have major consequences for our own well-being, as well as the global economy to which we are all attached today," he said.
Kerry says the United States is also linked to the Middle East by “rich spiritual and ethical traditions” that have helped shape Americans’ belief in the importance of every human being – a conviction that he says is now “under vicious assault.”
“Sure, we could turn away, pretend that we don’t see or hear what is happening. But America would not be America if we turned our back on that suffering. It is not who we are, it is not in our DNA, and it is not in our interest," he said.
Kerry says nowhere are the “building blocks of international security” at graver risk today than in the Middle East, where in Egypt, for example, he says violence threatens to drag the entire region into “total turmoil.”
While we the US chased jihadi’s and AQ since 9/11 and got deeply pulled into Iraq which gained the US absolutely nothing and AFG where we have failed again this was ongoing in central Europe as we paid no attention.
What was along the way our military strategy as we seemed to not have a national strategy—COIN, CT, SOF, ink blot theories, FID—BUT what did we forget to do which we are at one time really good at —-CAM.
One point that was missed—is the ME really deeply needed for the US economy–no not really, and how is our dependence on that so called ME oil—gone down massively since fracking has created the US as one of the really top oil producers.
And central Europe, the Baltics–the EU in general—not important?
What is actually an interesting development–while we the US were tied in knots by black flag waving Islamic fascists–the Russian military recently held a major exercise in the far eastern which replicated the actual invasion of an mid sized country—CAM total coupled with integrated SOF and intel units complete with a division size airborne assault. When was the last time the US military held a multi service force major exercise anywhere in the world?
Social media picked up on it immediately and started asking questions and then it hits the Western media just now—seemingly ignored it actually?
How did we get so pulled away from our traditional allies and out of our traditional military concepts of CAM in favor of COIN or better yet why did we abandon CAM and thought COIN was going to be here forever?
Former #Putin’s adviser: #Russia was preparing for the war with #Ukraine &West for 11 years, so it will be long
http://goo.gl/1o0FKr
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-war-games-spill-secrets-175912339.html
Russia’s Igor Strelkov Claims Responsibility for Unleashing War in Ukraine:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russias-igor-strelkov-claims-responsibility-for-unleashing-war-in-ukraine/511584.html
Russian UAV reconnaissance over Donetsk region cont., 9 cases in last 24 hours. MI8 helic. and SU25 flights spotted near northern UA border
Artillery shelling from Russian territory registered first time since the 5 Sep. ceasefire. Shells were shot in eastern part of Luhansk obl.
RF army and terrorists continue movements of military units on east Ukraine, attacks and shelling continued in all directions
And in the face of the above—3200 none boots on the ground, weapons and bombers were sent to the ME and to say the Ukraine MREs, blankets and other “non lethal” aid—but that does not stop Russian T-72B2/3s, t-80s and T-90s.
Social media summed it up —-Again, lethal aid no. Humvees yes
And those black flag waving guys—still on the move in Ramadi and nothing we have done on the “lethal side” has stopped that-interesting is it not we are ready to stop them but say and or do nothing against Russian expansionism?
To state it more simply—
Do those black flag waving radical Islamists threaten a water tower in Des Moines, Iowa or does this threaten the entire US?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/11/20/could-russias-new-nuclear-weapons-win-world-war-iii/
IMO the water tower is safe –the US as a whole needs to rethink it’s position towards Russia in a hurry as the Russian leadership is truly in “an altered state of reality” and think they can win and are voicing their willingness to use nuclear weapons when they “feel threatened without warning”.
For the first time since WW2 —MAD does not impress them.
Bill nails it with his observation that even if America becomes energy independent, that won’t make the rest of the world energy independent, and America’s role in Middle Eastern security will remain largely unchanged. Anyone who doubts the Middle East’s long term role as a lynchpin of international security is ignorant, disingenuous, or just plain wrong. One could make a case that the Israeli-Arab dispute doesn’t directly impact American security, but that case typically ignores the role that the Israeli-Arab dispute plays in the wider Middle Eastern security landscape. Any dismissal of the importance of these factors to American national security requires gross oversimplifications of current events and a wilful ignorance of historical precedents.
It never ends, the endless rounds of justification for being forever involved in every nook and cranny of the Middle East:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisenhower-proposes-new-middle-east-policy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11242893/Iran-offers-to-double-oil-exports-if-nuclear-deal-reached.html
Define Middle East, define critical interests, define conflicting interests, and there you have it, the decades long mishmash of competing agenda, priorities, lobbies, ideologies and business interests that define the mishmash of American policy toward the region. Everyone has their own idea about what is our interests should be, but what they never stop being in the Middle East is the constabulary that took over from the old colonial order even as we wed ourselves to the Saudis in complicated ways, far more complicated than any one word could do justice: oil, dollar, religion, habit, emotion, global, leadership, you name it.
To ask American elites that have zero ability to be intellectually tough, fit and focused (exaggeration, I know, but it’s a comments section) to pick just one or two and see those through to a reasonable conclusion is to ask too much. Add to that the emotional and intellectual habits the average American has picked up over the years, and, why, Outlaw and I might go back to being simpatico around here, except I disagree on Ukraine.
But he’s right on the expansive “nice to have” versus “must have” nature of our Middle East wish lists.
For those that think Russia does not want to take the entire eastern Ukraine or what Putin calls “New Russia”—here comes the next move.
So what is more important bombing black flag waving radical Islamists or stopping neo imperialism in central Europe?
#NATO sees movements of the Russian troops along the dividing buffer line in eastern #Ukraine – sec.gen. @jensstoltenberg in #Lithuania
Regarding resources, what Kerry et al. seem to be focusing on today are not so much natural but, rather, human resources.
Thus, the hearts and minds of the people of the Greater Middle East and elsewhere.
All of whom we seek to change — via inspiration and state and societal transformation — into more valuable, reliable and usable “products.”
In other parts of the world, and post-the Cold War, this mission (to make the human resources of the world — via inspiration and state and societal transformation — into more valuable, reliable and usable products) this has largely been accomplished.
Not so in the Greater Middle East; so we place a great deal of our focus, energy and emphasis there.
We also place much of our focus, energy and emphasis in the Greater Middle East to, hopefully, prevent people in places like Indonesia from “back sliding” and, thereby, becoming less valuable, less reliable and less usable as “products;” products whose job it is, in our eyes, not so much to pray — but, rather — to produce and consume.
Thus, “the importance of the Middle East,” I suggest, to be viewed more along “human resource”/”human capital” lines.
Is/are the US air strikes against the IS really just reinforcing the role of the Shia militia’s against civilian Sunnis’ and in the end also supporting with US fire power Iran in their expansion into physically Iraq?
Good Jihadists vs. bad Jihadists? – “#Iraq’s Shiite militias are becoming as great a danger as #IS.”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014
Sometimes Russia itself fails to remember historical events they themselves instigated.
17.11.2007 Dugin’s radical Russian nationalist group broke into the UA cultural center in Moscow & smashed an exhibition on the Holodomor
Russia officially says the Holodomor is not an ethnic genocide. Duma passed a resolution in 2008 saying it should not be considered genocide
From the Ukrainian view—
In the memory of the fusilladed Renaissance:
Ukrainian artists,writers,poets,scientists,most of which were destroyed by famine of 32-33 years
It looks like the spiritual descendants of Stalin, Kaganovich and Postyshev didn’t dissolve in the darkness of history.
Within two years of the Bolshevism genocide Ukraine has lost from 4 to 10 million innocently murdered citizens.
Today, when food riots have started in the occupied territories of the Donbas, gunmen are shooting vehicles with Ukrainian humanitarian aid
In order to fully understand either the IS and or Russia ie Putin history seems to have gotten lost along the way.
Seems some US politicians cannot figure out either what the strategic “vision” should be—noticed he did not want to “declare war on Russia”.
Maybe because he is intimidated by Russian nuclear weapons thus has no opinion on the Ukraine events.
2:05pm · 24 Nov 2014
Rand Paul tries to boost his foreign policy chops by calling for a declaration of war on ISIS:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/24/rand-paul-declares-war-on-isis-and-calls-for-boots-on-the-ground.html
The US does not overstate the importance of the Middle East, instead, the US overstates:
1. The importance of certain post-WWII allies in the Middle East
2. The importance of shaping the governance of the Middle East
3. The importance of religious-based ideology in political conflicts in the Middle East
4. The need for military basing in the Middle East
Bottom line is that the US has always had important interests in this region, and likely always will. Our challenge currently is that long-suppressed political grievances have collided with the information age, setting in motion a degree of political activity that is very disruptive to systems we’ve worked hard to put in place and sustain over the past several decades. Those systems are not important, the interests are. We need to assume more risk and allow systems to evolve or fall away as new systems for nurturing those interests emerge.
To do otherwise puts our foreign policy at odds with our national narrative, and that type of perceived hypocrisy is terribly erosive of our national influence. We have surrendered our narrative to the extremists, and have linked arms with those dedicated to sustaining the status quo. It is time to reclaim our narrative and work with governments and populations alike in this era of unprecedented political evolution.
And another Obama national security type bites the dust over the IS and Ukraine.
NBC News quotes sources as saying Defense Sec Chuck Hagel just wasn’t up to the job
http://on.nbc7.com/BG8qkw3
pic.twitter.com/QAd1C4jjYJ
Of course the blogger world in Europe immediately comes to the conclusion that this is the reason that we are spending billions fighting now IS and virtually nothing on the Ukraine.
If the National Security Council would read some of the comments here at SWJ they might be a little ahead of the game and they should feel free to quote SWJ.
Blogger comment:
I can’t think of a precedent for how White House is handling this Hagel announcement. Have they ever nuked someone like this as he departs?
Some say this is the weakest national security team ever assembled in the last 20 years as it appears that dancing on one wedding is about they can handle even if that.
1. Iran an ongoing failure as the Iranians are still not willing to give up nuclear weapons grade enrichment and the dream of a nuclear weapon—actually the failure of the Ukrainian Budapest Memorandum would indicate to many countries—if you have nuclear weapons never ever give them up for vague and hallow assurances of your national integrity and borders.
2. IS strategy if there was one is a failure and the bombing has driven more anti Assad fighters into the arms of IS and yet into the bombing campaign we still do not a coherent strategy on Syria
3. And we have absolutely no concept and or strategy for dealing with Russia as a neo imperialistic power on the move in central Europe, the Balkans and the Baltics in recreating the Soviet Empire and declaring along the way “we are not afraid of MAD”.
Hagel said to be stepping down as defense sec “under pressure” as admin seeks someone better-suited to fighting ISIS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/us/hagel-said-to-be-stepping-down-as-defense-chief-under-pressure.html?
Speaking truth to power will always kill your career these days at the SecDef level.
By Justin Sink – 10/30/14 01:40 PM EDT
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel wrote a memo to National Security Adviser Susan Rice sharply criticizing the White House strategy on Syria, according to reports from The New York Times and CNN.
The two-page memo details “concern about the overall Syria strategy” and called for a more defined plan for handling the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a senior U.S. official told the cable network.
The unnamed source said Hagel was concerned that the U.S. could lose gains it made in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) if it did not alter its strategy toward Assad.
The Obama administration is facing a difficult quandary in Syria, where ISIS has seized control of large swaths of the country amid a bloody civil war between Assad and rebel groups.
The White House has repeatedly called for Assad’s removal from power, but there is some concern that by targeting ISIS, which is also fighting the brutal dictator, the U.S. could embolden his regime.
Will be provocative concerning the lack of any strategy for either the IS and or the Russians.
This kind of sums it up the current US strategy or lack thereof:
This must’ve been what America in the late 1850s felt like. Disaster’s imminent, everybody knows it, nobody wants to face it, keep dancing.
A really really good study done by the Latvia government on the “Branding of New Russia”–follows their previous work published on the new Russian military doctrine “New Generation Warfare”.
Shows the total importance of a thorough info war campaign in support to that new military doctrine such as the current Russian campaign and which we in the West can only dream about.
Center for Security and Strategic Research of NDA, Latvia. Strategic Review “Branding Novorossija”:
http://www.naa.mil.lv/~/media/NAA/AZPC/Publikacijas/SA-10_NOVORUS.ashx …
Taken from the article–it is the exact same approach used by IS in their global info war campaign since 2004 used to recruit, radicalize, and now to support their “new Caliphate”.
Branding is a powerful tool for influencing mass consciousness, because targeted and sophisticated image building creates a shortcut to people’s minds, attitudes and behaviour. The principles of branding allow for packaging complicated political ideas into symbols that are easily perceived by the masses. Of course, one can debate whether the concept of Novorossiya, as it has emerged in the context of Russia’s involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, can be defined as a brand. Nevertheless, outlining the idea of Novorossiya from the perspective of branding reveals its communicative strength. The aim of this strategic review is to discover which elements construct Novorossiya as a brand from the viewpoint of the project’s promoters.
Anyone understand why if the SecDef was bringing up Russia and Putin as a serious threat to focus on—then why was he being ignored by the WH and the NSC?
That what his job is for.
It all goes back to the concept of “speaking truth to power even if power does not like the message”.
Hagel had warned Obama that US needed to be tougher, more focused on Putin http://on.wsj.com/1veTR24 via @WSJ