Middle East Strategy at Harvard

As the presidency of George W. Bush draws to a close, MESH members have been asked to assess his legacy. What did the Bush administration do right and do wrong in the Middle East? What is the proper yardstick: Administration rhetoric or the range of the possible? Finally, as the pollsters put it, are we better or worse off in the Middle East than we were eight years ago?

MESH members’ answers have appeared in installments throughout the week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and yesterday). Today’s responses, the last in the series, come from Steven A. Cook, Mark T. Clark, and Jon Alterman.

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Steven A. Cook:: George Bush’s Middle East report card:

Effort: B
Willingness to Listen: F
Cognitive Issues: F
Grasp of Abstract Issues: F
Recognition of Complex Problems: F
Group Interaction: D

Overall Grade: D-

Comments:

George and his friends have demonstrated strong views about the Middle East, but precious little grasp of the region’s history, politics, and culture. While the President et al. have made a strong effort, their unwillingness to listen and insistence that their views were superior to all others accentuated their knowledge deficit. As a result, not only have they not achieved their goals in the region (democracy in Iraq, a Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel, OBL “dead or alive,” the end of the Asad regime in Syria, Egypt leading the region in freedom, ending the U.S. addiction to oil, draining the swamp of extremists, getting Hezbollah to “stop this s***,” and disarming Iran), but in most cases Washington’s approach has produced precisely the opposite of the desired effect.

Many of George’s friends argue that things are better in Iraq these days. This is certainly true, but nobody is quite sure what will happen in Iraq. There are still a variety of issues that can undermine the progress of the last year. In addition, George’s grade suffered because he was unable to think through the consequences of his actions. The invasion of Iraq did get rid of an awful regime that was a menace to the region, but created an opportunity for another awful regime to be even more of a menace to the region.

I have to give some credit to the President for speaking out forcefully about democracy and freedom in the Arab world. A lot of people there did not like it (at least publicly), but it did have a salutary effect on the dominant discourse in the region. Arab leaders have had a very hard time changing the subject from reform and political transformation since the “forward strategy of freedom” was articulated in November 2003.

Still, the rest of this effort to promote change was either poorly conceived (see Al-Hurra), or old ideas wrapped up with a new bow (see MEPI). The administration’s diplomatic tin ear did not help (see Rice, Condoleezza “birth pangs of the new Middle East” or Hughes, Karen “Saudi women should drive, Middle East tour 2006”). Once again, deficits in grasping abstract issues, in group interaction, and in willingness to listen forced the administration to virtually abandon the freedom agenda once the situation in Iraq deteriorated and Islamists scored electoral gains in Egypt and Lebanon as well as a victory in Palestine. This resulted in a return of the state throughout the region, but particularly in Egypt. It turns out Cairo did not lead the region in freedom but rather repression, as the Mubarak regime used almost every coercive instrument at its disposal to undermine, intimidate, and destroy its opponents.

George does not generally avoid conflict, but he exhibited a demonstrable unwillingness to deal with the Arab-Israeli problem. He did get involved from time to time, but only reluctantly and for reasons that often had little to do with finding a resolution to the conflict. Moreover, when the President did get involved, he failed to grasp the complexities of the issue, resulting in cavalier commitments about the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of his term. Indeed, while actively discouraging Israel from exploring peace talks with Syria, the administration’s problem with abstract issues resulted in the belief that negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas—two weak and wounded leaders—held “special promise.”

I am afraid that despite a lot of effort, exorbitant resources, and a not insignificant amount of blood, Middle East policy over the last seven and one-half years is a D-.

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Mark T. Clark :: On the broadest level, I agree with John Lewis Gaddis’s assessment of what may become George W. Bush’s legacy in an article found here. Comparing previous presidential legacies, he points out that many of the arguments that now rage over Bush’s policies will, as with the majority of policies of previous presidents, fade into the background.

Importantly, though, Gaddis believes that in Bush’s “Second inaugural” the president laid out a vision—a transformation, if you will—of the U.S. approach to international politics regarding the promotion of democracy in the world, including the Middle East. He proposed promoting democracy with the “ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Gaddis adds:

If the Bush Doctrine was meant in that sense—if ending tyranny is now to be the objective of the United States in world affairs—then this would amount to a course correction away from the 20th-century idea of promoting democracy as a solution for all the world’s problems, and back toward an older concept of seeking to liberate people so they can solve their own problems. It could be a navigational beacon for the future that reflects more accurately where we started and who we’ve been.

I believe Bush will have a second, narrower legacy as well, one that will serve U.S. interests in the future. In the proving grounds of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Bush has restored the belief that the United States can fight and win an insurgency. We could win a conventional conflict, as in Iraq in 1991, but after Vietnam, it became conventional wisdom that insurgencies were virtually impossible to win. Lebanon in 1983 and Somali in 1993 only confirmed that view. The rapid defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11 began to change that perspective. That war, of course, is not yet finished, but there are signs that it may settle soon.

Iraq, however, may come to cement this view. The initial success of rapidly defeating Saddam’s ragged army was overtaken by the unexpected insurgency, fueled by sectarian strife and outside support. Despite mounting problems, Bush insisted on pursuing the “surge” against opposition by many of his generals and members of Congress. The surge restored the fundamentally important element in a new, stable government: security for its citizens.

In other areas of the Middle East, he will have a mixed legacy. It will be unaffected by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If it was difficult to get resolution with the Palestinian Authority, it became impossible with a government split between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The one stain on his legacy in the Middle East may be the Iranian nuclear program. Giving Europe the lead to negotiate with Iran failed to net any gains. And, as the Europeans are learning, the Iranians are not serious about a diplomatic solution. They want a nuclear weapons program. Anything short of military intervention may never have worked. But given the administration’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and Iraq, it had no serious cards to play against the Iranians.

Excepting the last point, we are better off than we were eight years ago.

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Jon Alterman :: The United States is far worse off in the Middle East than it was eight years ago. There is an easy way to tell this is so: those whom the Bush administration has most avidly sought to weaken and isolate are stronger than they were, while the United States and the secular liberals that the Bush administration sought to nurture are weaker.

While the world does not miss Saddam Hussein, the governments of Iran and Syria did not cower after his fall. To the contrary, by acts of omission and commission they helped deepen Iraq’s agony despite the presence of more than 100,000 U.S. troops intended in part to intimidate them. Their allies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have also seen their fortunes rise, despite U.S. insistence on their isolation. Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon has increased, and it now has veto power over the government. Hamas not only won an election that the Bush administration pressed forward, but it now controls territory of its own.

Although the Bush administration denied it vehemently at the time, the invasion of Iraq was always a roll of the dice, and a trillion dollars in, it remains unclear how those dice will land. Given the intelligence information available in 2002-2003, one could make a plausible argument for going in, but it is impossible to either justify or excuse the rank incompetence that characterized the first years of the occupation (which, in the best-case-scenario reasoning that underlay the military planning, was only supposed to last 90 days). Driven by hubris and a belief that with the events of September 11, “everything had changed,” officials were selected for loyalty over experience, with predictable results. Saddam’s fetish of loyalty had destroyed Iraq the first time; the Bush administration’s fetish of loyalty helped destroy it a second.

Bloodied in Iraq, the United States has far less pull in the region than it had a decade ago. In the Gulf, friendly governments actively undermine the Bush administration’s policy and engage in energetic diplomacy among Palestinians and Lebanese to make up for the administration’s shortfall. While these governments remain reliant on U.S. arms, they actively seek to balance U.S. influence with that of other outside powers such as France and China, and they seek to assuage the Iranians out of fear that the United States cannot protect them.

The bright spot is that there has been a good deal of progress on counterterrorism, especially in the last several years. A series of attacks within the Arab world persuaded governments that the problem is not merely a Western one, and their security services are both better prepared and better informed than a decade ago. Their newfound skills have helped decrease the number of attacks against civilian targets around the globe, and deeper intelligence cooperation has helped protect U.S. civilian lives.

Yet, much of the progress in counterterrorism has come at a cost. In 2003, the Bush administration appeared convinced that the brutality and ineptitude of Middle Eastern governments were principal drivers of terrorism; by 2007, it was clear that regional governments were the U.S. government’s chief allies. The U.S. government went suddenly from seeking to reform the status quo to zealously supporting it, and abruptly abandoned a wide range of opposition figures who had taken risks out of confidence in U.S. backing.

While there have been a series of U.S. missteps in the region, what has not happened is as important as what has. After the death of Yasser Arafat, the United States had an unprecedented opportunity to move forward on Arab-Israeli peace issues. A new Palestinian president came into office with broad support and legitimacy, and a record of speaking hard truths to Palestinians in Arabic. Yet, the opportunity to build up Mahmoud Abbas as a credible peacemaker was lost, in part out of an ambition ceaselessly to wring yet one more concession out of him.

The setbacks that the United States has suffered in the Middle East are reversible, but it will take years of effort to bring the United States back to the same level of regional influence enjoyed in 2000. The Bush administration has little of which to be proud.