The Middle East has been and will remain one of the central focuses of U.S.’s foreign policy in the coming years. President-Elect Obama will doubtless need to reevaluate America’s alliances, commitments, and objectives in the Middle East beyond the immediate concerns of U.S. troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This was the topic of Cornell International Affairs Review’s third event of the fall semester, “The 2008 Election and the Middle East,” which featured distinguished Near Eastern Studies Professor Ross Brann. As Professor Brann made clear, the Middle East is laced with conflict. In the Sudan, the Darfur region continues to be a humanitarian tragedy that has yet to be stabilized. Somalia faces warring tribes, disagreeing factions, civil strife, and lacks any sort of stable government or civil authority. Many non-oil producing countries in the region have been destabilized by the volatility in the food market, and this has the potential of adding to political/social instability in many countries. Turkey recently experienced a severe constitutional crisis, and is now dealing with the ongoing instability of its Southern Kurdish regions. Lebanon is but another country with a weak governmental authority and extralegal paramilitary forces whose strengths outweigh those of the government. On top of all of these sources of instability looms the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, and the growing threat of Iran.
Anti-Americanism has been growing in the Middle East, and over 90% of people view the United States as a threat to regional security. Professor Brann also argued that, even when Iraq is taken out of the picture, we are increasingly viewed as the guardians of the status quo in the region. The problem can be seen as a general consequence of U.S. policy failure. In the past, our foreign policy involved a traditional balance between coercion and diplomacy, but is now guided more by military intervention and the unilateral threat of coercion. The conclusion seemed to be that a return to a more traditional foreign policy would do a world of good for the U.S.’s standing role in Middle Eastern conflict.
The focus of Professor Brann’s lecture was U.S. foreign policy, but it is also important to consider the limits of U.S. policy as a tool for mediating Middle East conflict. Would a more traditional foreign policy employing a more multilateral approach really prevent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from calling the United States the Great Satan, or curb the PLO’s intentions of eliminating Israel? And what about Islamo-Fascist hatred of the West? It would be naive to believe that, had the U.S. been pursuing a different foreign policy at the time, the events of 9/11 would never have occurred. The Bush administration’s alleged policy failure can only account for so many conflicts in the region.
The U.S.’s disadvantageous position in the Middle East is also not a foregone conclusion. Consider this alternative viewpoint offered by Georgetown's Grant Gibson: in the nineties states such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, the Gulf States, and Egypt acted independently of, and often in opposition to, American foreign policy. However, the twin rise of Islamist terrorism and Iran have caused a paradigm shift in the region. Both Al-Qaeda and Iran represent forces diametrically opposed to the current regimes of the aforementioned countries. As the decade has worn on, these twin threats have shown themselves capable of striking within these states and extending their influence. This fear of Iran and Islamists has led large swathes of the Middle East to turn to the United States to guarantee security. American military bases, defense agreements, and American arms have proliferated at a rapid rate across the region. American influence has reached the point where there are only two countries not considered "allies" (i.e. quasi-client states) in the region: Syria and Iran. So, perhaps, despite all of the negative public opinion polls, the U.S. actually holds a slightly advantageous position in the Middle East.
