Full speed ahead, with menace
By W Joseph Stroupe
Both the US Republicans and the Democrats - virtually all of whom voted for war in Iraq in 2003 - face the moment of truth in the form of the awful, escalating consequences of a foolhardy and reckless invasion of an oil-rich Islamic Middle East nation.
The Democrats' post-election euphoria will be short-lived indeed; they've rejoiced at seeing President George W Bush get an Iraq-war-inspired no-confidence "thumpin'" and at their winning the US Congress, but they've thereby virtually inherited from the sovereign US electorate the task of somehow getting the United States out of its deepening Middle East quagmire - and, it is hoped, without it suffering a concomitant geopolitical insolvency, at a critical juncture in modern history when ever more potent and opportunistic challengers to US global power and dominance are rising in the East and when their proxies are (not coincidentally) rising across the Middle East.
The majority of the US electorate think the Democrats lack a real plan, and they do lack one. Their hope to formulate one that is workable based on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) Report is likely to turn out to be a vain expectation at best or the realization of a cruel political betrayal at worst.
The Democrats need, at a minimum, a plan that simultaneously forces Bush to change course, to bend to their will by getting the US out of Iraq soon, insulates them from blame for whatever happens in Iraq afterward while making that blame stick to Bush, and credits them with any US "win" that may somehow result in Iraq and the region after the withdrawal of forces. That is far more than a tall order, and the ISG is not much political help in this regard to the Democrats.
After the November congressional elections, Bush initially appeared to have finally come down off his single-minded, supercilious fantasies and ideological denial to begin to face the harsh reality of massive US over-reach in Iraq. His showing defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld the door and nominating Robert Gates to take his place as Pentagon chief fed the image of a president humbled and willing to listen to new ideas.
However, that facade is slipping as Bush is still refusing to modify the fundamentals of his long-standing "stay the course" policy by taking the Democrats' suggestions seriously. He is still refusing to engage in meaningful talks with Iran or Syria and seriously to consider timetables, benchmarks and a phased withdrawal from Iraq.
Bush has stepped up the bellicose talk directed at Iran and is massively reinforcing US military power in and near the Persian Gulf and also doing likewise within operational range of North Korea. Furthermore, he has reassured top Israeli leaders that they need not fear that his resolve to deal forcibly with Iran has been weakened one iota. Israeli leaders exited jubilant from their recent meeting with Bush.
As Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asserted before the election, they were not up for re-election and no matter what the voters said, the two would continue to do what they believed were the right things for the national security of the United States.
In fact, Seymour Hersh reports in the The New Yorker magazine that one month before the election, Cheney asserted in a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building that the administration would be undeterred from pursuing the military option against Iran by any Democratic election victory. The report has credibility because after the election, Bush reassured Israeli leaders of his resolve to use military force to stop Iran, as noted above.
At every turn in foreign policy, the Bush administration will battle and/or simply ignore the Democrats, seeking to discredit their proposals and undermine their unity, wherever there is a clash with what the administration believes is right. On foreign policy this remains an entirely unrepentant administration, notwithstanding its post-election pretenses of a switch to bipartisanship, the insistence that it listens to new ideas, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's calls for soft-power strategies and negotiations with Iran and Syria, and the personnel change at the Pentagon, the meaning and importance of which have been significantly overplayed by the media.
Now that the "dreaded" election losses for the Republicans have been delivered, what further foreign-policy-based political loss is there for the Bush administration to fear? Why should the administration substantively give in to the Democrats on foreign-policy issues? Short of taking the enormously difficult and risky step of pulling the plug on funding, what can the Democrats actually do now to stop the administration from largely continuing its foreign-policy line for two more years?
The Democrats have their hands full trying to find a way actually to constrain, change the course of, or otherwise humble and check the power of the current administration. The conduct of foreign policy is the prerogative of the executive branch, after all. Under mounting pressure from the Democrats to begin pulling US troops out of Iraq - something that would certainly plunge Iraq and likely the region itself into the uncontrolled fires of sectarian chaos - Bush knows his time to act is probably much shorter than the two years he has left in office.
So, rather than to bridle and make compliant this administration, the effect of the Democratic win has every appearance of
emboldening and rushing Bush on a dash toward furthering his own foreign-policy goals while he is still in a position to do so.
Long-overdue success or hastened failure?
But even if Bush had finally come to the point where he was genuinely getting in touch with the position of the electorate and with the reality of the total incompetence and profound destructiveness of his fundamentalist-evangelical, ideologically oriented, militaristic foreign policy, and even if he genuinely wanted to find a multilateral and peaceful solution to the Iraq and wider Middle East crises that employed soft-power levers, is there any real basis for concluding that the door of opportunity to such solutions has not long since slammed irreversibly shut?
The mounting fear is that attempting now at this late date, in the aftermath of strategic blunder piled on top of strategic blunder, to "save" US fortunes in Iraq and the wider Middle East may be turning out to be an exercise in futility. US regional/geopolitical fortunes were massively imperiled, and likely squandered, nearly four years ago when Washington shoved strategic alliances and multilateral considerations aside to occupy Iraq.
When the US and Britain rushed to the military option first they simultaneously scorned as contemptible the germ of traditional, fruitful, multilateral soft-power strategies and they extraordinarily sowed instead the seeds of widespread, thorny, noxious "weeds". How will they now reap instead the tantalizing mangoes, grapes and pomegranates of strategic victory and success?
They have little or no viable chance of doing so. By their distinctly ham-handed militaristic approach they unleashed virulently anti-US counter forces and strategies that have become deeply ingrained across the region. They virtually locked themselves, the wider West and the Middle East region itself into an impasse whose only "solution" is yet additional military action.
Soft-power levers
In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, the Bush and Blair administrations blatantly dismissed every semblance of genuine multilateralism and diplomacy and the traditional, strategically oriented soft-power levers in a consequences-be-damned dash to heave themselves on the military levers alone.
For nearly four years since then they have conceitedly and overconfidently continued to disregard both opening and opportunity to extricate themselves from a mounting quagmire they blindly refused to acknowledge, snubbing all along the way the repeated calls to adopt a policy of genuine engagement of the region's players in a comprehensive solution.
They have continued to pursue one-dimensional militarized "solutions" at the near-total sacrifice of all their former soft-power standing and leverage. They have thereby gravely undercut the meaningful cooperation and confidence of their allies and deeply alienated their rivals across the region and beyond.
The US and Britain now occupy a position of profound weakness as respects any possession of genuine and compelling regional/global leverage and they fully own a miserable negotiating position, and their rivals (the "evildoers") fully understand how that provides them the opportunity to capitalize on US/British misfortunes and weaknesses that are largely self-inflicted.
In any negotiations for a grand (or any lesser) solution, the US and Britain would either be mostly forced to accept the favorite terms of Iran and Syria or be left largely unable to verify compliance with and enforce the better terms of an agreement, even if they could get a promise from the regional players to adhere to desirable terms. This is an eventuality the US and Britain simply cannot accept because it would further propel Iran toward its goal of regional ascendancy over the oil-rich Arab regimes - that is the nightmare scenario for the West.
Opportunistic and clever Iran now has the US and Britain pinned into a position of strategic disadvantage, and it fully knows it. So do the much larger sponsoring powers Russia and China. These two have with adroit strategies employed Iran, Syria and other Middle East entities as their proxies and willing adherents in an insidious game to erode further, and even collapse, the Middle East and global leverage and influence of the US.
Syria is offering to "help" the US in Iraq - but it has said the US must first set a definite date for withdrawal of its forces from Iraq. Additionally, ascendant Iran and Syria have massively upstaged a weakened US and Britain by inviting the Iraqi leadership to a closed three-way summit to discuss and plot Iraq's direction. The Iraqi president has accepted the invitation. These are examples of the kind of "help" the US can expect from its regional rivals now that it owns the severely weakened position described above.
In the view of the Bush administration, Iran and Syria have already acquired too much regional influence and leverage and they are misusing those assets to cut directly across US interests and goals. To sit down at this point with them to negotiate an Iraq or wider Middle East solution would only further elevate their respectability, position, influence and leverage and make the US appear as a weak supplicant by comparison. This would boost Iran and Syria along the path of achieving regional control and even dominance.
From the Bush administration's perspective, the only conditions under which the two can be brought into negotiations are that they must first agree unconditionally to bow to the will of the US on a number of key issues. These include Iran's nuclear program and on Syria's exercising of undue influence within Lebanon.
In other words, the administration expects the two virtually to cave in first before it will engage them in an Iraq or wider regional solution. The same is true of Iran and Syria - they expect the US virtually to cave in by "changing its attitude" of seeking to cut them down to size in the region before they will agree to sit at the same negotiating table with the US. Both sides have become more, not less, intransigent as the Iraq situation nears crisis stage. Therefore, any prospect of serious and fruitful negotiations between the US and the two key players is extremely remote, at best.
Top US officials recently stated that they wished to engage Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich regimes (rather than Iran and Syria) in an intensified effort to end the mounting sectarian chaos in Iraq. However, it is unclear along what lines such regimes would specifically be asked to become engaged. These are Sunni regimes. Would they be asked to assist in tangible ways to help stabilize and strengthen the current Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government? It is not likely they would be interested in helping to boost the already worrying rise of Shi'ites in the region.
Many experts have recognized that Iraq's sectarian militias must be disarmed if the violence is to be stemmed. Would the Sunni regimes be asked to assist the US military in its efforts to disarm Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite militias? That would be a recipe for regionwide conflagration because it would risk spreading rather than containing Iraq's bloody sectarian rivalries.
Additionally, any move by the Sunni regimes to assist materially in the disarming of Iraq's Shi'ite militias and the weakening of the Shi'ite faction would risk an explosion of Shi'ite rage among their own people, since every one of the Sunni regimes must deal with its own large domestic Shi'ite population. If the US somehow succeeds in getting the Sunni regimes more tangibly involved, it will be an impending sign not of a solution to Middle East instability, but of a loss of control over the situation, its spinning out of control.
Even if the US engages in real negotiations with Iran and Syria over the Iraq crisis, the Sunni regimes are extremely unlikely to cast their lot with a severely weakened United States in any negotiations over a regional solution that would end up codifying de facto Persian dominance of the Gulf.
Yet those very regimes have no viable solution among themselves - they cannot stem Iran's regional rise. With the US increasingly in impending forfeiture in Iraq, they may wish to play Israel secretly as counterweight to Iran, but even the hint of such a policy shift risks the total alienation of their vehemently anti-Israel populace and the prospect of sharply increased domestic unrest and an overthrow of the current Sunni regimes. That would play directly into Iran's hands: the oil-rich Arab regimes are strategically stuck, and they know it.
Military, military and more military
Against this backdrop, ongoing Iranian efforts to "bear-hug" Iraq and intimidate other Gulf Arab states into a Tehran-led alliance are intensifying. Iran is suspected in the November 4 explosion and fire in one of Kuwait's refineries, and Shi'ite unrest and ever more serious threats against the Sunni regimes in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region. These are only some of the more easily recognizable tactics employed by Tehran to herd the Gulf Arab states into an alliance.
According to recent reports from the Middle East Newsline, for agreeing to ally with Tehran it will "reward" regimes by ceasing its provocative destabilization tactics. The growing Arab openness to such a regional "solution" deeply concerns Washington, which is now pointedly increasing its naval military presence inside and within striking distance of the Persian Gulf.
Additionally, Iran's recent 10-day Great Prophet II war games shocked the West with respect to Iran's ability to launch many dozens of assorted ballistic missiles in perfect coordination in mock retaliation against an Israeli/US/European attack. This demonstrated that all US bases in the Middle East and even Europe are in Iran's retaliatory striking range.
Only days after Iran's coordinated ballistic-missile launches, France successfully test-launched its newest nuclear-tipped ballistic missile, obviously pleased to let that test launch serve as a non-verbal warning to Iran that it faces a potent European retaliation if it targets Europe with its own missiles. Taking the measure of the powerful and growing US naval armada now in and near the Persian Gulf along with European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, it is no stretch to surmise that something much more than a mere passive containment of Iran may be in the offing much sooner rather than later.
What is the likely purpose behind the mounting US and European NATO naval forces in and near the Persian Gulf, if not merely for an ongoing and passive attempt at containment of Iran? Diplomatic attempts at the United Nations aimed at strapping Iran with punishing sanctions over its nuclear pursuits have miserably failed, and they are most likely to continue to fail. Russia and China will see to that. Iran has shown a stubborn determination to continue its nuclearization at almost any cost. If the West absolutely cannot get what it wants solely within the confines of conventional interpretation of UN measures, then it is preparing to accomplish the stalwart isolation of Iran by hyper-extending those measures to a significant degree.
The strategy of the West that is building here against Iran is illuminated by an examination of what has transpired in the North Korea crisis. Pyongyang played into the West's hands by forging ahead with its October nuclear test and thereby galvanizing the UN Security Council, which subsequently voted to place sanctions on the regime.
The measures were not nearly everything the US wanted, and left much to be desired in the way of stringency and comprehensiveness, but they provided a diplomatic rallying point. Under this, US allies could gather to construct what is for all practical purposes a supplementary coalition ostensibly equipped and designed to enforce UN measures, but which actually seeks to go significantly beyond the conventional interpretation and intent of the provisions of the Security Council. This means naval and other sanctions and a virtual embargo/blockade targeting North Korea.
South Korea has steadfastly refused to join the de facto supplementary coalition. But key European naval powers are actively participating with the United States, as is Australia. The US is rapidly building its military forces in the region to prepare for the ever more likely eventuality of a military strike on North Korea. Thus it has the muscle to back up its efforts at getting a cave-in of the regime at the negotiating table. While such a cave-in is still not very likely, the US and its allies pursue the possibility anyway. But they keep the full-blown military option at the ready to be exercised when it is deemed that time has run out on "diplomacy".
This is the "diplomacy" of the gun barrel - "measured" options along the military line, namely embargo and blockade designed to weaken and collapse the regime, with a crushing air campaign held at the immediate ready.
Apparently, Russia and China were caught significantly off guard by the US strategy - they assumed that by ensuring inherent weaknesses and limitations in the Security Council measure against North Korea, the US would in effect be stifled.
They miscalculated. If Iraq represented the numbskulled and disastrous US/British unilateralist strategy of UN circumvention, North Korea and Iran represent their newest (though not entirely surprising), West-slanting multilateralist strategy of UN hyper-extension. This is the strategy of getting even a weakened measure at the Security Council that can subsequently be interpreted (hyper-extended) to serve as a rallying point for "measured" multilateral military action.
The US hopes that by pursuing its military options in a measured sequence and in parallel with diplomatic efforts at the United Nations, rather than by shoving aside the UN to rush to the all-out military option first, then it can garner enough support among its allies to place strapping sanctions on rogue regimes and then either bend them or instigate actual regime changes.
There is also the distinct possibility that the regimes targeted with the embargo/blockade will strike out at the naval assets and provide the US with the "justification" to unleash a full-blown air campaign. Fully realizing and appreciating that strategy, Russia has begun to push to get Iran's case taken out of the Security Council and returned to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, and both Russia and China have issued warnings about the dangers of backing North Korea and Iran into a corner.
The flood of military assets into and around the Persian Gulf signifies an impending naval embargo or blockade of Iran designed to attempt to weaken and collapse the regime over several months, with a crushing air campaign held at the immediate ready.
Simultaneously, according to recent reports by intelligence expert Bill Gertz, Arab intelligence sources say the US and Britain have given Western-supported Iranian opposition groups the go-ahead to sabotage energy and other assets and otherwise destabilize the Iranian regime from the inside.
On November 10, a bomb exploded in Ahwaz, the most active oil production center in Iran's Khuzestan.
Stricter financial and banking sanctions have been put into place by the US and its allies. The Iranian regime acknowledged that fact when it recently stated it was decreasing its dollar-based transactions to an absolute minimum because of added US financial measures against it. US strategy is recently showing more finesse and has a more potent covert component, as compared with the much more ham-handed strategies of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It may be that we are witnessing the beginnings of the influence of new Pentagon head Robert Gates and the former team of president George H W Bush.
Why would Europe possibly be interested in participating with the US in an impending naval embargo of Iran and perhaps a massive military strike on the radical Iranian regime? The achievement of Iran's goals of regional hegemony would place Europe in grave energy-based jeopardy, because of its heavy reliance on Middle East oil. Iran's notable advancement toward achieving that goal on the ground since the 2003 US-British invasion of Iraq is not letting European leaders sleep well at night.
Despite the Europeans' apparent single focus on diplomatic solutions, they fully realize that if diplomacy fails (and it surely is miserably failing to put Iran back into Pandora's box), then the radical regime and its destabilizing agenda must be halted - period. The Europeans dislike military options, but they dislike being virtual energy-based hostages even more.
What if Russia and China see to it that no Security Council measure against Iran is adopted or, if one is adopted, that it specifically rules out the kind of hyper-extension the US seeks to employ? The US can be expected to move forward with its plans to implement stalwart sanctions and an embargo or blockade anyway, and it will likely get key European support in tangible ways, but with the usual public condemnations. If anyone thinks the US is going to be thwarted in its plans to attempt to cut Iran down to size sooner rather than later, then they haven't been paying sufficient attention.
Iran is rapidly progressing and is now dangerously close to achieving its regional aim of dominating the oil-rich Persian Gulf, all without the possession of any nuclear weapons. Employing its multiple and potent regional tentacle-like proxies and its mounting energy-based leverage, Iran is advancing on the position that will enable it to herd the oil-rich Arab regimes largely along the lines it wishes. It has far more influence in Iraq and across the region than does the US, whose leverage has collapsed. It is almost single-handedly guiding Iraq's direction and is fully able to hand a complete forfeiture to the US in Iraq, and in the wider Middle East region as a direct result.
The recommendations of the ISG, of Tony Blair, of Henry Kissinger and of many others for direct US-Iran negotiations on the mounting Iraq crisis are a full-blown acknowledgement that Iran (and to a lesser degree its ally Syria) holds the trump card. In the event of the US being made to suffer a forfeiture in Iraq, in the aftermath of the catastrophic collapse of US influence, Iran is firmly positioned to pick up all the geopolitical pieces with which to finish construction of the radical Islamic regional hegemony it seeks. The Bush administration is absolutely right about one thing - if the United States fails in Iraq, the "evildoers" will achieve a triumph of incalculable expense for the US and the West.
Again, it must be powerfully emphasized that Iran is well along the path to achieving such goals without the possession of even one nuclear weapon. Therefore the nuclear issue, though certainly incorporating a significant degree of validity, is mostly being cynically used by the US and Europe to "sex up" the Iran issue, as it were, to get notoriety for the problem of what to do about Iran's regional ambitions and conveniently to justify early and collective action - even massive military action - if diplomacy fails, as it surely appears to be failing.
Yet though the issue has been sexed up by the West, Iran's push to continue with its nuclear program is fueling a strident Sunni Arab quest for nuclearization, with the region's states looking to the East - to Russia and China - for the incubation required to bring them up to Iran's nuclear speed.
That has concomitant and extremely toxic repercussions for the West as the oil-rich Arab regimes align ever more closely with the East in a growing array of spheres, further placing the West's strategic energy security in doubt. The crucial Middle East region is quickly slipping away from the West, and Western leaders know it fully. As the tipping point nears and the West stares into the abyss of a Middle East clearly dominated by Iran and its proxies and leaning heavily toward the East, actions that only recently were viewed as "crazy" and unjustified come to be viewed in a more justifiable light as all else fails, and the full range of military options against Iran has risen to become the foremost.
The consequences of recklessness
The Pandora's box of regionwide radical Shi'ite-Iranian ascension, thrust open in 2003 by Bush and foolishly backed by virtually all of Washington, is widely and rapidly spreading all manner of "evils" and "curses" on the world, from the US perspective. The oil-rich Middle East is being plunged into ever deeper radicalism and instability. Radical political-militarist Iranian tentacles such as Hamas and Hezbollah are making regional advances, while anti-Americanism thrives and US leverage collapses.
The fervent Iranian agenda - a Middle East dominated by a de facto Shi'ite caliphate anchored in Tehran - is much closer now than before the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-Blair "axis vs evil" pushed its way into Baghdad to take out the only viable restraint on Iranian regional ascendancy. In its supposed zeal to battle "evil", that axis has only more firmly established "evil".
The highly militaristic strategies the US is largely left with in its mission to try to put those "evils" back into the box are ones that carry enormous risk. At the same time, the range of soft-power options and strategies carries greatly diminished potency, along with the very real risk of bolstering the status and leverage of the very regimes the US is trying to put back into Pandora's box.
Not only is there deep anxiety about the potential for strong Iranian-Shi'ite retaliation throughout the region in the event that the West begins to take "measured" military action against the regime in Tehran, there is another far more serious risk, especially for the West - the prospect of a serious deterioration in its relations with Russia, China and their energy-exporting global partners. The latter have collectively acquired potent energy-based economic and geopolitical leverage over the West and have acutely tired of continued US global dominance and the current unipolar order.
With tensions running ever higher between the West and the rising East, a spark like that of military action against Iran or North Korea could re-ignite a neo-Cold War, the consequences of which would be much worse for the West than for the East this time around.
Many observers saw the recent Democrat election victory as signaling the arrival of the long-awaited change in the direction of US foreign policy, a turn back toward multilateral soft-power strategies and away from the destructiveness of the neo-con line of the past six years. However, those six years of destructive policies and their deeply entrenched and mounting deleterious effects cannot be erased merely by the "magic wand" of an election win.
The US has tied itself into a knot of unprecedented complexity and tensile strength. Cutting across that knot by further militaristic strategies will unleash an array of pent-up regional and global forces the US isn't remotely prepared to deal with successfully.
It hasn't begun to position itself in a place of independent economic strength, energy independence and geopolitical strength - quite the opposite is true as the knot tightens around the US. The current US administration will cut across that knot very soon because the mounting crises in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and North Korea are all reaching their "moments of truth" virtually simultaneously and are therefore pushing it to do the "cutting" before all is lost.
Original article posted here.
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